Banned Books and Modern Censorship

So last week in class we talked about censorship and the arbitrary way in which the characters in Don Quixote chose which books were acceptable. Personal variables in criticism are bad, but this list, provided by Time, shows that personal viewpoints are really the only opinions that get books banned or protested like when it was argued that Brave New World opposes an optimistic view point. This is most seen in reference to the Harry Potter series, which anyone who had read and enjoyed them cannot really imagine it's promotion of devil worship. However, I didn't know before reading this article that Salmon Rushdie had a price on his head and had to hide for ten years after publishing The Satanic Verses. I really enjoyed this article: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1842832_1842838_1845265,00.html

But if you don't have time here's the short version:

Candide by Voltaire

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (some said that it promoted communism...hmmm?)

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (not too surprising, even if Dr. Sexson recites the first paragraph beautifully)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (on one account because it depicts racism graphically...but isn't that the point?)

The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell (who later apologized for the novel, but since he no longer owns the rights, he can't get it banned or even stop publishing it)

The Satanic Verses Salmon Rushdie

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

palin speak

"Artists use lies to tell the truth, while politicians use them to cover the truth up..."--V for Vendetta

Just couldn't help but think of this insight to rhetoric and who uses it.

In Response to the Critic of Movie Critics...

When we were talking about this in class...that there is a journalist who thinks that movie critics should be nicer to those poor movie stars who have to go home and cry into a bag of money after a bad review...sorry, tangent...well, it made me think of the movie Almost Famous. It's a good movie, and if you haven't seen it, you should: good classic rock sound track, Kate Hudsen has ringlets, and it's genuinely entertaining. But now I see it as a defence of the integrity and importance of criticism.

Lester Bangs was a semi-popular rock critic who wrote free lance for Rolling Stone Magazine...well, he was criticized for being too critical (this is evident in this interview http://www.furious.com/Perfect/lesterbangs.html ) Anyway, in the movie he mentors the main character and warns him agains writing "sanctamoneous stories about the genius of rock stars" because it will ruin rock and roll. The main character goes on tour with a rock and roll group in the 70s with the aim of writing a cover article for Rolling Stone, but he's young and he gets swept up in the world and becomes friends with group. In the end he follows Lester's advice and is "honest and unmerciful" in his article.

The consequence for being to friendly and praising is making the industry more powerful. We are consumers who deserve products that are the result of the best effort made. Critics keep artists honest.

Then, of course, MTV blew that to hell.

Don Quixote, page 21

"In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spend his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset, and so with too little sleep and too much reading his brains dried up, causing him to lose his mind."

Well, if we are to believe the narrator's assertion that in Don Quixote there is "absolutely no deviation from the truth," then I fear for my sanity as an English Lit major. :)

But, in all seriousness, the premise of Don Quixote, that he lost his mind reading his favorite books and wanting to live them, is relatable because there have been many books that I wished I could be transported into. I think anyone who loves reading has had some experience, whether it was with the Harry Potter series or something equally fascinating. My boyfriend really likes Star Wars books; he likes them because they transport him, they make him want to interact with that world and to be a part of it. And when I was reading Harry Potter, I would go to bed too late, thinking of the chapters in Hogwarts, and dream that I was there telling Harry not to be such a "prat" (because in my dream I'm also Brittish). Also, given the opportunity, I would don a hoop skirt, corset, and prance around like Scarlett O'Hara. I reread that book every now and then, just to relive the expirience. But, like drugs, I can't get the same high I got the first time, no matter how hard I try. I think that it's because avid readers have such a desire to be transported by their favorite stories that Don Quixote has enjoyed popularity and respect for several centuries.

There's no place like home...?

"We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time. "
--T.S Eliot

But, in the case of The Wizard of Oz, it's ironic that the only way Dorothy appreciates her own home is to leave it. She must learn about her own home was by going "over the rainbow", and then she learns that she never wanted to leave...but she had to leave in order to realize this. Ergo leaving home is necessary, even if it's not desirable.

The Idea of Order at Key West...by Wallace Stevens

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.

The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

Criticism is Everywhere in Literature.

I am a critic, though not as pompus as "Anton Ego", I hope. More often than not, I dislike a book. I either have a feeling that the author is only writing to sell copies, that he or she is trying to be something that they aren't, or that even I could have done a better job. Whether that's my own ego emerging or the fact that I've experienced really good books, I'm not sure. Maybe where the authors of mediocre books fall short is that they worry too much about the critics. This is a problem since every reader is, in my opinion, a critic.
Virginia Woolf said, "Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others". What is essential to writers is to forget the critic; what is essential to the critic is to forget his own critic--and to criticize truely what he reads. Because professional critics, such as Frye, often write books and use words, they create literature.
So, against many more educated decrees, I will continue to criticize William Wordsworth.