quarter of a century

yesterday was my 25th birthday. i had a great day. i worked (which was no fun) but then i went to the blackhawks game that night which was great. they won in a shoot out and two of my favorite players scored; kane and toews. so over all it was a great birthday.

every day i get an email from the new york times with the days headlines. and yesterday one of the headlines was called this: light out, huck, they still want to civilize you. and it was written by michiko kukutani. the article was about how alan gribben, a professor of english at auburn university, at montgomery, alabama, has produced a new edition of mark twain’s novel, huckleberry finn, that replaces the word “nigger” with "slave".  Never mind that attaching the epithet slave to the character Jim — who has run away in a bid for freedom — effectively labels him as property, as the very thing he is trying to escape.


Nigger, which appears in the book more than 200 times, was a common racial epithet in the antebellum South, used by Twain as part of his characters’ vernacular speech and as a reflection of mid-19th-century social attitudes along the Mississippi River.


Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.


Mr. Gribben’s effort to update “Huckleberry Finn” (published in an edition with “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” by NewSouth Books), ratifies the narcissistic contemporary belief that art should be inoffensive and accessible; that books, plays and poetry from other times and places should somehow be made to conform to today’s democratic ideals. It’s like the politically correct efforts in the ’80s to exile great authors like Conrad and Melville from the canon because their work does not feature enough women or projects colonialist attitudes.


Efforts to sanitize classic literature have a long, undistinguished history. Everything from Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” to Roald Dahl’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” have been challenged or have suffered at the hands of uptight editors. There have even been purified versions of the Bible (all that sex and violence!). Sometimes the urge to expurgate (if not outright ban) comes from the right, evangelicals and conservatives, worried about blasphemy, profane language and sexual innuendo. Fundamentalist groups, for instance, have tried to have dictionaries banned because of definitions offered for words like hot, tail, ball and nuts.


In other cases the drive to sanitize comes from the left, eager to impose its own multicultural, feminist worldviews and worried about offending religious or ethnic groups. Michael Radford’s 2004 film version of “The Merchant of Venice” (starring Al Pacino) revised the play to elide potentially offensive material, serving up a nicer, more sympathetic Shylock and blunting tough questions about anti-Semitism. More absurdly, a British theater company in 2002 changed the title of its production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to "the bellringer of notre dame."


Ballantine Books published an expurgated version of “Fahrenheit 451,” Ray Bradbury’s celebrated sci-fi classic about book banning, in which words like “hell” and “abortion” were deleted; it was reportedly 13 years before Mr. Bradbury became aware of the changes and demanded that the original version be restored.


Whether it comes from conservatives or liberals, there is a patronizing Big Brother aspect to these literary fumigations. We, the censors, need to protect you, the naïve, delicate reader. We, the editors, need to police writers (even those from other eras), who might have penned something that might be offensive to someone sometime. 

turkish publisher on trail and also getting an award for the same book.

A Turkish publisher on trial for publishing a classic erotic novel by French writer Guilliame Apollinaire has been recognised with a special award by the Geneva-based International Publishers Association.

Irfan Sanci, owner of publishing house Sel, is being prosecuted under article 226 of the Turkish penal code, an anti-obscenity law, for publishing a translation of Apollinaire's Les exploits d'un jeune Don Juan (The Exploits of a Young Don Juan). The novel, first published in 1911, features the escapades of a 15-year-old hero who impregnates three women, one of them his own aunt.

Sanci is due to receive his award from the IPA's Freedom to Publish committee on November 2nd at the Istanbul TÜYAP book fair, with his next court hearing currently scheduled for the morning of the same date.

Sanci said of his situation: "I am being punished in my own country but am also getting an international award. This is tragic. Everything aside, Apollinare's book, which is a part of the world's cultural heritage, is being tried for hurting the public's sense of shame."

-my thoughts on this: i love that the publisher is also getting an award for publishing this book.

john milton is really just a dirty old man

dr jennifer batt, an english lecturer at the university of oxford, was somewhat surprised when she came across a filthy, innuendo-laden rhyme "by milton" while reading a forgotten, early 18th-century poetic anthology; the oxford and cambridge miscellany. it cannot be proved for sure if the poem is by milton but the poem is introduced in the volume as An Extempore Upon a Faggot, by Milton.

the rather smutty ditty reads: "Have you not in a Chimney seen / A Faggot which is moist and green / How coyly it receives the Heat / And at both ends do's weep and sweat? / So fares it with a tender Maid / When first upon her Back she's laid / But like dry Wood th' experienced Dame / Cracks and rejoices in the Flame."

the coarse, and frankly misogynistic verse likens a young woman to a faggot, a bunch of damp sticks, which, when cast upon the fire, produces moisture "at both ends", like (according to the poem) a weeping virgin when sexually aroused. by contrast, the more sexually experienced woman is more like dry wood, which becomes joyfully enflamed when put on the fire.

it is all rather a long way from the lofty, christian sentiments of milton's great epic, Paradise Lost.

love is a dog from hell

so i went to the book store yesterday. which can be really dangerous for me for i just love buying new books! trust me when i tell you i'm always reading. to the point that my side bar on this blog about what book i'm reading just can't keep up. by the time i think about changing it, i'm two books past the one that is on the blog.

so yeah, book store, so i went for i had a 40% off coupon that i wanted to use. i looked around and then went to the poetry section. it had all your normal poets, walt witman, william carolos williams and john milton. but then i saw charles bukowski. who i have heard of before and have read one of his books. but all i could remember of him is the title of the book i read and that i liked his poetry. so i found the book i had read before and bought it. i bought love is a dog from hell. i started reading it and fell in love with his work all over again. he is a great writer! he writes about the ever day things; drinking, sex, relationships, hookers. and they way he writes is just great. so i strongly suggest you go and read his stuff.

here's a poem he wrote.

writing

so i've decided to change this blog just a little bit. it's not just going to be about my one story i'm writing but i'll post about all the works i'm working on. for i have a bunch of different things that i'm working on. so here's my first post in that field. i'm still working on my story. but i'm also working on getting published with some poetry. i have 4 different poems sitting out in the world waiting to here back from the magazine's to see if i will get published. also there's a magazine that wants a flash fiction story about the first time a person had sex. so i'm trying to come up with something for that. mine wasn't all that eventful (not saying it wasn't enjoyable, but it's wasn't like 'holy crap amazing!'). and so i don't know what i'll write. but then again i could just have it as the person not overly enjoying it. i'll have to think on it. and i have time before the deadline.