I don’t think anyone could like Turner Diaries. It is a disturbing book, frightening even—even if you agree with him, as I obviously do. But it is undeniably heavy. In a way that Covington’s novels, so beloved of Johnson, are not. They are almost fruity in how bubbly the characters are, given the situation, although they are certainly enjoyable escapism.
Pierce’s work has a gravitas befitting a genocidal struggle, and no other WN novel has come even close to it except Raspaille’s Camp of the Saints. Raspaille is a better artist than Pierce, by a long stretch, but both books are about equally heavy, in that they impress and linger.
2 replies on “Linder on The Turner Diaries”
I think that Pierce had the most profound effect on the development of my racial and historical awareness and in the undermining of my trust in the system. I read the Turner Diaries first in 1982 and was profoundly impressed by it, rereading it several times in the following years. As you state, it does not compare to Covington’s work in entertainment value, however, it is direct and uncompromising. It may well have influenced Bob Matthews and his comrades to take up arms against the monsters in Washington. It was certainly the first instance of fiction which suggested something so radical as a white revolution against the jew and its minions; a war to the death.
After reading the novel I no longer felt utterly alone. Sooner or later I will confess why…