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. 

happy birthday to me!

today this blog is one year old! woot woot! i can't believe i've been doing this for a year. it doesn't seem that long. it started out as a simple blog for a story i was writing. then i decided to change the direction and write about all things to do with writing. adding along the way things that are going on with my writing.  for today's post i think i'm going to highlight different posts i have done over the year. so here are some of my favorite posts from this past year. 

the very first post i ever did
critics
tuna poem
celebrate banned books
the wheel of time turns
dr. horrible comic review
death
life is full of them
the first quoteables
world war z
the power of words
poetry coat
muse quoteables
poetry/art swap
a lighted carousel

wow, if you went back and read all of those, your amazing! thanks for sticking with me and i hope the next year is just as amazing as this past year has been. keep writing and keep reading. 

sharp objects

so i just finished the book sharp objects by gillian flynn and i have to say i liked it. the only objection i have to it was that the main character cuts and it's kinda randomly thrown at you. it's not lead up to at all. it's almost 4 chapters into the book until the main character tells you all about it, it's half way through a chapter and it's just like oh by the way i cut. i don't know if the author needed to do that. instead i think the author could have just strongly alluded to it, like just showing the readers the images of the cuts all over the body.  i think it would have been better that way. here the quote "what i like about a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers" - logan pearsall smith, would fit perfectly. i think if the author whispered the cutting i would have liked the book better. but i'm not the author and it's not my vision. i did enjoy the book and would suggest it for others to read. writing this review makes me think of a quote i found one day: "a critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote." - mignon mclaughlin. i can only review what i read, which is for sure different then what the writer wrote.

i will eat you!

so this past weekend i went and saw where the wild things are. it was a wonderful movie! i was a little worried because the book is very short and has barely any words. thankfully the movie was great! it quotes the book and uses more imagery than words to tell the story. which i think follows the book wonderfully! the book was written by maurice sendak. the movie was written by spike jonze (he also directed it) and dave eggers. i think the they did a wonderful job adapting sendak's work into the movie. i think they made the right choice by having the imagery tell more of the story then actual words. sometimes in life words can't say how you fell and imagery is the only way; whether it's a smile or a bite on the arm or a pat on the butt.

so your wondering why i'm writing about this in my blog? well i'm writing about it because it's just a well written movie and i thought i would share with everyone why i thought so. even though i hate critics, and i'm pretty much being one in this post, i just had to share that this movie was well written!

critics

so i was looking at my book of quotes i have. it's a spiral that i have that when i find a quote i like i write it down (i'm on my second one now). and i came across this quote that goes perfectly with what i was saying about critics and symbolism.

"a critic can only review the book he has read, not the one which the writer wrote." - mignon mclaughlin.