(Stolen from Tim and Donna). However, now I feel a little pretentious. Oh well, I am writing about being in graduate school, so I should hope that my reading level would be equal to the task...
But I do want to make my thoughts accessible to anyone who stumbles across the blog; I don't want to be some snooty academic pontificating on literature.
I think I just won't worry about it. I have fun with my posts, and I hope you (my dear readers) have fun reading too.
I am also thankful for the British Romantics, for Nathaniel Hawthorne, for J.R.R. Tolkien and the world of Middle Earth. I'm thankful for Jane Austen and her terrific heroines and her sharp wit. I'm thankful for brilliant song-writers, poets and lyricists, and those writers who bring magic to their art.Some keep the Sabbath going to Church --
I keep it, staying at Home --
With a Bobolink for a Chorister --
And an Orchard, for a Dome --Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice --
I just wear my Wings --
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton -- sings.God preaches, a noted Clergyman --
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at least --
I'm going, all along.
I hope that helps Tim! Go forth with enthusiasm and courage, and don't be afraid to have an idea. Run with it and see where it takes you--and if you need someone to edit anything, feel free to ask me! I've read your writing and I know it's good. First seminar papers can be so frightening (I was terrified when I turned in my first grad school paper), but don't let that fear show up in your writing--fake confidence until you forget you aren't. Good luck!
A [I got an A! Yay!!] Picture with me, reader, a dark November night. A woman [my professor] sits at a table in a richly decorated and furnished but otherwise empty living room. Before her lies a mysterious manuscript, its pages gleaming in the lamplight. She bends her head, heavy with its burden of untamed russet curls--she lifts a page--she discovers--and extremely good paper!You can probably imagine my response when reading this--overjoyed, excited, etc. I felt really good when I saw her comments and thought about the prospect of getting published. It was hard work, but I see now that I can do it--I can produce work that has a shot at publication. What a great feeling!
Jenn, this is really excellent work. You have a fine voice, a strong argument, and reasoning and evidence that it's very difficult to argue with. [Aw, shucks]. I do feel that your writing is not as sophisticated as it will be, but that's a matter of time and practice.
I think you should consider sending this out for publication. [Really?!?] I suspect you will get a revise and resubmit, but the comments will help you learn, and you can resubmit if you choose to. Consider sending it--we can talk about where.
Thanks, ADAllen, for the meme.
The American Library Association's most challenged books of all time
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (Maya Angelou)
"The Chocolate War" (Robert Cormier)
I read this one in my adolescent literature class in undergrad. It's definitely a book for boys, but it has something to offer teens of all sorts about resisting the pressures of authority if personal convictions conflict with that authority. A valuable lesson, especially under our current administration. Oh wait, that's probably why it's banned...we don't want kids to learn to challenge their social structures.
"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (Mark Twain)
Thanks to my liberal education (haha), I read this in American Literature in college. I was always puzzled by the accusations of racism--the book is about as anti-racist as a book published in nineteenth century America could possibly be. Twain would be both proud that his book can spark so much to debate, and a little sad (maybe) that people are dumb enough to only read the surface, to only see the words and think that's what the book means.
"It's Perfectly Normal" (Robie Harris)
"Scary Stories" (Alvin Schwartz)
"Daddy's Roommate" (Michael Willhoite)
"Of Mice and Men" (John Steinbeck)
This is a beautiful, sad book. I'm guessing it's banned because of violence; however, the novella is a tragic story of friendship and the inability to survive in this cruel world for someone who is different and misunderstood. I cry every time I read this book.
"Harry Potter" series (J.K. Rowling)
I'm a fan. I actually avoided the series in high school because my parents warned so strongly about it (the one time that they actually said anything about books that I paid attention to). I finally picked up the first book when the movies were coming out because all my friends were reading them, and I was hooked. (This is also, incidentally, where I started to realize that my parents' judgment was not absolute, and that perhaps I should start figuring things out for myself.)
"Heather Has Two Mommies" (Leslea Newman)
"Goosebumps" series (R.L. Stine)"The Catcher in the Rye" (J.D. Salinger)
Why does the best literature always get banned? I didn't encounter Salinger as a teenager, unfortunately, but when I read The Catcher in the Rye, I realized why so many adolescents love this book and found meaning in Holden's narrative.
"The Color Purple" (Alice Walker)
"A Wrinkle in Time" (Madeleine L'Engle)
I read this many times as a little kid, and am baffled as to why it's on the banned list. I haven't read it for a while, so maybe I should go back and read it again...
"Earth's Children" series (Jean M. Auel)
"In the Night Kitchen" (Maurice Sendak)
"The New Joy of Gay Sex" (Charles Silverstein)
"Blubber" (Judy Blume)
"The Handmaid's Tale" (Margaret Atwood)
Of course a feminist dystopia would be banned--it's too easy to misunderstand Atwood's intention, which is to horrify and shock us into seeing how easy it would be for our world to become like the one in her novel. I'm guessing most of those crying out for the book to be banned get caught up with all of the sex and violence and miss the true point...if they bother to read it at all.
"The Bluest Eye" (Toni Morrison)
"The Outsiders" (S.E. Hinton)
I like The Outsiders. It's another one of those books about not belonging, a condition so many teenage readers could identify with, I'm sure. If they were allowed to read it...
"Captain Underpants" series (Dav Pilkey)
Banned because the hero wears underpants? How silly...I've seen these books and thought they were harmless and cute. My potential kids are going to be so corrupted...
"A Light in the Attic" (Shel Silverstein)
How can they ban Shel Silverstein? The man who gave us The Giving Tree? Man, this book was hard to find in my elementary school library because so many kids wanted to check it out all the time. I'm guessing the silly poems about boogers didn't endear it to parents in the same way that it captured so many children's imaginations.
"Brave New World" (Aldous Huxley)
"Asking about Sex and Growing Up" (Joanna Cole)
"Cujo" (Stephen King)
"James and the Giant Peach" (Roald Dahl) .
I have a great story about this book. When I was seven or so, I was reading this book and noticed the word "ass" cropping up a lot. (I think the grasshopper calls everyone an ass). So I showed my parents. Shocked and outraged, they then petitioned to have it banned from school--in the end, they blacked out all the "ass" with a Sharpie. Little did they know that their act would help create a die-hard anti-censorship liberal daughter...
"The Anarchist Cookbook" (William Powell)
"Boys and Sex" (Wardell Pomeroy)
"Ordinary People" (Judith Guest)
"American Psycho" (Bret Easton Ellis)
"Athletic Shorts" (Chris Crutcher)
"The House of the Spirits" (Isabel Allende)
I've started this several times. Allende is a great writer, and I really need to finish it...
"Slaughterhouse Five" (Kurt Vonnegut)
I feel like a bad English major for not having yet read any Vonnegut.
"Lord of the Flies" (William Golding)
The rule must be "all disturbing literature shall be kept from those of tender years". You know, because kids need to be innocent until they encounter all the world's nastiness in person.
"Mommy Laid an Egg" (Babette Cole)
"Private Parts" (Howard Stern)
"Where's Waldo?" (Martin Hanford)
I was enlighted by ADAllen that this is banned because of wantonly bared tiny breasts. I never saw any tiny breasts, since I was too busy looking for Waldo.
"Girls and Sex" (Wardell Pomeroy)
"How to Eat Fried Worms" (Thomas Rockwell)I was given the assignment to talk about how I would handle the editing of the letters of famous literary figure Eupheus MacAdder, author of the famous sonnet sequence "On the Teats of Muffy, My Catte". Here is what I turned in, after a bit of research and thinking.
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Why do we publish collected letters? Almost every (dead) major literary figure has at least one edition of published letters, and likely more than one. Perhaps the motivating factor is to give us some insight on an author’s creative processes. Or perhaps editors wish to show a human face to often-mythologized poets and novelists: Grant F. Scott in his recent edition of Keats’s letters offers, “For those who have encountered Keats’s poems only in weighty anthologies, it is refreshing to come upon them in this warmer human environment. In context they seem to breathe again, to take on new life and interest” (xxiii).
Since not every letter can be included in an edition (unless one is publishing multiple volumes, or the extant letters are very few), an editor must decide on an approach and let that approach determine which letters she selects. The traditional method is to choose those letters which include details about an author’s works or in some way illuminate their texts. Humphrey Carpenter chose this approach when selecting among the massive quantity of Tolkien’s extant letters, “Naturally, priority has been given to those letters where Tolkien discusses his own books; but the selection has also been made with an eye to demonstrating the huge range of Tolkien’s mind and interests, and his idiosyncratic but always clear view of the world” (1). H.L Jackson’s purpose for Coleridge’s letters was “to display his achievement as a writer in the minor genre of the familiar letter; to reveal his complex personality in evolution; and to record his astute judgment, especially in literary matters” (xii). Leslie Marchand chooses to illuminate Byron’s personality in comparison to the tone taken in his works. Alan G. Hill chooses the letters of Dorothy Wordsworth “not only for the interest of their subject-matter but also to indicate the range of her correspondents,” i.e. her brother William Wordworth and their friend Samuel T. Coleridge: Hill seems interested in using Dorothy Wordsworth’s words to illuminate the humanity of the famous men who were her correspondents (xvii).
A more holistic approach (like that of Grant F. Scott with Keats’s letters) allows the editor to present the author as a whole person by including letters with various details not pertaining to them as an author. This second approach is the one I’d like to take with Euphues MacAdder’s letters. Working with Jack Stillinger, Scott brings a fresh approach to Keats’s letters: several definitive scholarly editions of Keats’s letters have already been published, therefore Scott’s goal was offer an edition that would allow maximum accessibility for any reader to the life and mind of John Keats, including his poetry but not excluding details of his life. Scott even chooses to end his edition with letters written by Keats’s death-bed companions, instead of Keats’s own final letter written several months before he died, commenting that they “offer valuable additional testimony concerning Keats the man” (xiv).
MacAdder’s extant letters include a mixture of his own letters, received letters from his correspondents, daily ephemera, and drafts (that may have been part of his letters) of his famous sonnet sequence, “On the Teats of Muffy, My Catte.” I favor Scott’s approach precisely because he does not include only the letters that show the influences on a writer’s works: he wants to give as full a picture of Keats-the-man as he can, which of course includes Keats-the-poet. Thus my choice would be to include some of the minutiae of MacAdder’s daily existence, where it is most charming or interesting or illuminates MacAdder’s habits and relationships with his friends. (As Scott points out, the letters that contain Keats’s most brilliant ideas often begin with a simple account of day-to-day occurrences). Also, if the letters from MacAdder’s correspondents contain some ongoing dialogue about his poetry or ideas, I think it would be worth including selections to give a reader a fuller idea of MacAdder’s composition process and how much other people contributed to his writing. If anything, I would at least summarize the letter to give a reader context for MacAdder’s reply. I agree with Stillinger that writing rarely, if ever, occurs in isolation.
Which leads to the question: what about all those drafts of his sonnet sequence? I think they are worth including, especially if there are indications they were part of his letters. After all, the reason readers are interested in the letters is to get some glimpse into the mind of a well-known author, and that includes how they came to produce their art. Thus, I would certainly include the drafts of his poetry where evidence suggests they may have been included with a letter, and refer to the other drafts in a footnote or appendix if no evidence exists to demonstrate that they were sent to MacAdder’s correspondents. Since this is an edition of letters, poetry manuscripts and other papers would be better suited in another volume. I believe, however, that to the degree the poetry was part of MacAdder’s letters, they should be included in my edition.
Another question that most of the editors brought up was how much an editor should interfere with spelling, typographical errors, and punctuation. Correcting obvious errors is generally not considered interference. The murkier situation is a particular author’s spelling and punctuation habits.
Out of all the editions of letters that I perused, I admired Scott’s edition of Keats’s the most. Scott’s approach did not attempt to focus on the possible influences on his poetry; instead, they offered up a picture of Keats through his own words, minutiae and all. I think scholars and editors enter into murky water when they attempt to determine what is could be an influence and what is not, since questions of authorship and creativity are not so easily answered. My edition of MacAdder would take a similar approach: I want to offer my readers a MacAdder that visits friends, drinks tea, and buys shirts not just a MacAdder that locks himself in his study with only his Muse (or Muffy) for company and feverishly scribbles. That image would be false. I would like readers to be able to connect to MacAdder as a real human being, not an abstract ideal of an author.
