The novel is dedicated to Susan Sontag, who published an influential essay in 1966 in which she said the following:
"America was founded on a genocide, on the unquestioned assumption of the right of white Europeans to exterminate a resident, technologically backward, colored population in order to take over the continent."
If I ever meet Larry McMurtry, I want to ask him if his dedication had anything to do with this quote.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Ray Bradbury on Censorship
As a staunch believer in intellectual freedom, I abhor censorship. Ray Bradbury addresses this evil in his Coda for the 50th Anniversary of Fahrenheit 451, which I think is worth reading:
About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.
But, she added, wouldn’t it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women’s characters and roles?
A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn’t I “do them over”?
Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire store should be dropped.
Two weeks ago my mount of mail delivered forth a pip-squeak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader.
In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.”
The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.”
Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count ‘em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book?
Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron’s mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost!
Every story, slenderized, starved, blue-penciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Doestoevsky read like - in the finale - Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention - shot dead.
Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above?
By “firing” the whole lot.
By sending rejection slips to each and every one.
By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.
“Shut the door, they’re coming through the window, shut the window, they’re coming through the door,” are the words to an old song. The fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butchers/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.
A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago. My play is based on the “Moby Dick” mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama premieres as an opera in Paris this autumn.
But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to my play - it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with ballbats if the drama department even tried.
Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band (no women), or The Women (no men). Or, counting heads, male and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially if you count lines and find that all the good stuff went to the males!
I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week, and The Women the next. They probably thought I was joking, and I’m not sure that I wasn’t.
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real word is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my “Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” so it shapes “Zoot,” may the belt unravel and the pants fall.
For, let’s face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.
In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It’s my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m going out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you.
About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.
But, she added, wouldn’t it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women’s characters and roles?
A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn’t I “do them over”?
Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire store should be dropped.
Two weeks ago my mount of mail delivered forth a pip-squeak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader.
In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.”
The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.”
Some five years back, the editors of yet another anthology for school readers put together a volume with some 400 (count ‘em) short stories in it. How do you cram 400 short stories by Twain, Irving, Poe, Maupassant and Bierce into one book?
Simplicity itself. Skin, debone, demarrow, scarify, melt, render down and destroy. Every adjective that counted, every verb that moved, every metaphor that weighed more than a mosquito - out! Every simile that would have made a sub-moron’s mouth twitch - gone! Any aside that explained the two-bit philosophy of a first-rate writer - lost!
Every story, slenderized, starved, blue-penciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Doestoevsky read like - in the finale - Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored. Every image that demanded so much as one instant’s attention - shot dead.
Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above?
By “firing” the whole lot.
By sending rejection slips to each and every one.
By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.
The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.
Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever.
“Shut the door, they’re coming through the window, shut the window, they’re coming through the door,” are the words to an old song. The fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butchers/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.
A final test for old Job II here: I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago. My play is based on the “Moby Dick” mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama premieres as an opera in Paris this autumn.
But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to my play - it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with ballbats if the drama department even tried.
Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band (no women), or The Women (no men). Or, counting heads, male and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially if you count lines and find that all the good stuff went to the males!
I wrote back maybe they should do my play one week, and The Women the next. They probably thought I was joking, and I’m not sure that I wasn’t.
For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real word is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent typewriters. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my “Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” so it shapes “Zoot,” may the belt unravel and the pants fall.
For, let’s face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold eternal winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer - he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings in variety and forbids the appetite to fail.
In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.
All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It’s my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m going out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
The Downside of Social Networking
I am fascinated with social networking websites. Thru the miracle of the internet I am glad we have such a valuable tool to use to keep in touch, share thoughts, and make new friends. At the same time, I believe we live more and more in a superficial society. The depth of life comes from actual esperiences, face-to-face contact with other human beings, AND reading, which, as we know, is in serious decline. The article below is appopos.
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: July 22, 2008
One of my great surprises from roaming the library stacks during graduate school was discovering that every author, no matter how minor, was already the subject of a quarterly or a newsletter. I would stumble upon a new name — Felicia Hemans, say, or Edward Young — and find that there was already a society devoted to their work, even, in many cases, a concordance and an annual meeting with elected officers. I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived late in the day, after the literary teams had all been chosen.
Skip to next paragraph
The Board Blog
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.Go to The Board »
I get the same feeling — vastly multiplied — from the many worlds of social networking on the Web. I get wind of a new site, pay it a visit and discover that it already has a population four times the size of some midsized countries — everyone speaking the local dialect, taboos and kinship patterns well worked out, a robust economy and brisk trading with other social-networking sites. I have begun to fear the result if one site declared war on another. What if Bebo fired upon fubar? What if LinkedIn threatened to blockade imeem?
I can see the appeal of a virtual community. I’ve joined three or four of these groups, partly just to see what’s going on but also to reconnect with old acquaintances and find new music. But some of these sites I don’t quite get.
I’ve used Twitter a couple of times since it came to the iPhone recently. The idea is to send short messages — microblog entries of 140 characters or less — to a group of people who are “following” you. The reason is so they’ll know what you’re doing. What I come away with is a mental image of 30 or 40 people following me around all day long asking “Whatcha doing?” while I’m trying to work.
One effect of so much social networking — so many overlapping communities of interlinked individuals — is that the language of actual human interaction begins to feel degraded. What can the word “friend” mean after Facebook, where it is really a synonym for “coincidence”? How subtle can the emotions be in a TiVo-ish world like iLike, where it’s thumbs up or thumbs down? There’s no room even for the hand-wiggle that means “meh.”
There is, of course, a pleasure in sharing the things you love. But the greater pleasure will always be secret sharing. You find a book you love, you tell your best friend about it and the two of you share the secret. Something is ruined if your friend tells someone else about the book. Surely you remember this from fifth grade. I hope there will be room soon for some anti-social Web sites — places on the Web where you can go to be alone, to hide from your “friends.” Perhaps that is what real life is for. VERLYN KLINKENBORG
More Articles in Opinion »
By VERLYN KLINKENBORG
Published: July 22, 2008
One of my great surprises from roaming the library stacks during graduate school was discovering that every author, no matter how minor, was already the subject of a quarterly or a newsletter. I would stumble upon a new name — Felicia Hemans, say, or Edward Young — and find that there was already a society devoted to their work, even, in many cases, a concordance and an annual meeting with elected officers. I had the distinct feeling that I had arrived late in the day, after the literary teams had all been chosen.
Skip to next paragraph
The Board Blog
Additional commentary, background information and other items by Times editorial writers.Go to The Board »
I get the same feeling — vastly multiplied — from the many worlds of social networking on the Web. I get wind of a new site, pay it a visit and discover that it already has a population four times the size of some midsized countries — everyone speaking the local dialect, taboos and kinship patterns well worked out, a robust economy and brisk trading with other social-networking sites. I have begun to fear the result if one site declared war on another. What if Bebo fired upon fubar? What if LinkedIn threatened to blockade imeem?
I can see the appeal of a virtual community. I’ve joined three or four of these groups, partly just to see what’s going on but also to reconnect with old acquaintances and find new music. But some of these sites I don’t quite get.
I’ve used Twitter a couple of times since it came to the iPhone recently. The idea is to send short messages — microblog entries of 140 characters or less — to a group of people who are “following” you. The reason is so they’ll know what you’re doing. What I come away with is a mental image of 30 or 40 people following me around all day long asking “Whatcha doing?” while I’m trying to work.
One effect of so much social networking — so many overlapping communities of interlinked individuals — is that the language of actual human interaction begins to feel degraded. What can the word “friend” mean after Facebook, where it is really a synonym for “coincidence”? How subtle can the emotions be in a TiVo-ish world like iLike, where it’s thumbs up or thumbs down? There’s no room even for the hand-wiggle that means “meh.”
There is, of course, a pleasure in sharing the things you love. But the greater pleasure will always be secret sharing. You find a book you love, you tell your best friend about it and the two of you share the secret. Something is ruined if your friend tells someone else about the book. Surely you remember this from fifth grade. I hope there will be room soon for some anti-social Web sites — places on the Web where you can go to be alone, to hide from your “friends.” Perhaps that is what real life is for. VERLYN KLINKENBORG
More Articles in Opinion »
Monday, July 21, 2008
Larry McMurtry - Books
McMurtry's latest offering is a delightful collection of short essays--anecdotes--on his days as an antiquarian bookseller. It seems that this man loves books as much if not more than writing!
We bibliophiles can relate. I will read anything by a booklover.
Having been to San Francisco many, many, times, I especially enjoyed his details concerning the city by the bay. San Francisco takes some getting used to; I chuckle to see Larry struggling to adjust.
Here are some specifics.
57
McMurtry wonders if bookmen are eccentrics and if reading is becoming an eccentricity. Interruptive narrative has become natural. Our technology toys have interrupted our concentrated reading into shorter and shorter sequences.
He wonders if some day our technology toys might lose their freshness and the book, such an old-fashioned thing, will come to hold some interest for the masses again.
I hope Larry is right, but I doubt it.
69
He says that many bookmen rarely, if ever, read. I am not surprised. I sell textbooks for a living, and my impression is that most of my fellow textbook sellers do not read either.
70
"I'm proud of my carefully selected twenty-eight-thousand-volume library and am not joking when I say that I regard its formation as one of my most notable achievements."
I undertand, Larry, I do understand.
We bibliophiles can relate. I will read anything by a booklover.
Having been to San Francisco many, many, times, I especially enjoyed his details concerning the city by the bay. San Francisco takes some getting used to; I chuckle to see Larry struggling to adjust.
Here are some specifics.
57
McMurtry wonders if bookmen are eccentrics and if reading is becoming an eccentricity. Interruptive narrative has become natural. Our technology toys have interrupted our concentrated reading into shorter and shorter sequences.
He wonders if some day our technology toys might lose their freshness and the book, such an old-fashioned thing, will come to hold some interest for the masses again.
I hope Larry is right, but I doubt it.
69
He says that many bookmen rarely, if ever, read. I am not surprised. I sell textbooks for a living, and my impression is that most of my fellow textbook sellers do not read either.
70
"I'm proud of my carefully selected twenty-eight-thousand-volume library and am not joking when I say that I regard its formation as one of my most notable achievements."
I undertand, Larry, I do understand.
Friday, July 18, 2008
My New Blog
Hello Hudsons,
I have created a personal blog on this site. Please check it out and read my single post. The blog's name is Immersed in the Madding Crowd. The target is http://housefulofbooks.blogspot.com/
I have also, this morning, created a blog where I will try to post books I am reading, and some thoughts on each at http://onemanreview.blogspot.com
As I told Fred, now that I have grasped the computing fundamentals of this, I hope to continue on. Let's inspire each other to write great things... or at least to continue to remind each other that we are intellectually superior to most of our peers.
I have created a personal blog on this site. Please check it out and read my single post. The blog's name is Immersed in the Madding Crowd. The target is http://housefulofbooks.blogspot.com/
I have also, this morning, created a blog where I will try to post books I am reading, and some thoughts on each at http://onemanreview.blogspot.com
As I told Fred, now that I have grasped the computing fundamentals of this, I hope to continue on. Let's inspire each other to write great things... or at least to continue to remind each other that we are intellectually superior to most of our peers.
Sunday, July 13, 2008
Larry McMurtry
I am currently reading McMurtry's COMANCHE MOON after first reading LONESOME DOVE and DEAD MAN's WALK. The former, which won the Pulitzer, is a magnificient novel of the old West whereas DEAD MAN's WALK was a disappointment. So far COMANCHE MOON is every bit as good as LONESOME DOVE.
I am also perusing McMurtry's new memoir called BOOKS. In addition to being an author, McMurtry is a long-time antiquarian bookdealer and collector. He owns bookstores in Archer City, Texas, his hometown, and Washington D.C.
The book is composed of short chapters of a page or two or three with stories about his life in books. Here is what he says in one place with regard to his penchant for collecting reference books.
"Most young (book) dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Everything there is may be a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them."
I identify with McMurtry, but I fear that our way of thinking may be passing away.
I am also perusing McMurtry's new memoir called BOOKS. In addition to being an author, McMurtry is a long-time antiquarian bookdealer and collector. He owns bookstores in Archer City, Texas, his hometown, and Washington D.C.
The book is composed of short chapters of a page or two or three with stories about his life in books. Here is what he says in one place with regard to his penchant for collecting reference books.
"Most young (book) dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Everything there is may be a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them."
I identify with McMurtry, but I fear that our way of thinking may be passing away.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
How to be Good by Nick Hornby
About a married couple, with two kids, who have serious marriage difficulties. David undergoes a sort of spiritual shift in which he tries to be good, by no longer being cantankerous towards his wife Katie and by doing such things as housing the homeless and giving away the family's possessions to charity. Katie is disturbed by this, leaving her feeling lonely and embarrassed. She insists that her being a doctor makes her good.
This is an interesting premise. I think it suggests that you cannot be good in David's way because it is disruptive to normal life and because our culture is too cynical. Also, though, Katie's goodness is not real, but a rationalization to avoid her difficulties. Goodness is somewhere in between, and these characters must learn to accept that life is not an ideal in your head, but fraught with bumps and triumphs. Katie is forced to look at herself and contemplate what it means for her to be good, but I do not think she ascertains what that is.
However, I didn't like it as much as A Long Way Down. I couldn't resonate with the characters. It also dragged and would be better if it lost fifty pages. As much as I like Hornby's other books, this is a disappointment.
This is an interesting premise. I think it suggests that you cannot be good in David's way because it is disruptive to normal life and because our culture is too cynical. Also, though, Katie's goodness is not real, but a rationalization to avoid her difficulties. Goodness is somewhere in between, and these characters must learn to accept that life is not an ideal in your head, but fraught with bumps and triumphs. Katie is forced to look at herself and contemplate what it means for her to be good, but I do not think she ascertains what that is.
However, I didn't like it as much as A Long Way Down. I couldn't resonate with the characters. It also dragged and would be better if it lost fifty pages. As much as I like Hornby's other books, this is a disappointment.
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