Over the past week, the Internet has been crackling with angry reactions to NewSouth Books’ upcoming n-word-free edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, edited by Alan Gribben. Many of of these reactions, including my own recent blog post, carried a good deal of anger and shock. But as a writer and a teacher of literature, I think I need to step back now and take a more dispassionate look at Gribben’s reasoning — reasoning which is deeply flawed. I have no doubt the man is sincere and well-meaning. He’s probably even a great hugger. So let’s forget outrage for awhile and just think this through. [Read more →]

Tags: artistic unknowns by Chris Matarazzo, books & writing by Chris Matarazzo
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Perhaps you’ve heard that a new edition of the novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is to be published with certain words removed. It’s  been all over the internet for the last day and a half:

NewSouth Books’ upcoming edition of Mark Twain’s seminal novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn will remove all instances of the “n” word—I’ll give you a hint, it’s not nonesuch—present in the text and replace it with slave. The new book will also remove usage of the word Injun. The effort is spearheaded by Twain expert Alan Gribben, who says his PC-ified version is not an attempt to neuter the classic but rather to update it. “Race matters in these books,” Gribben told PW. “It’s a matter of how you express that in the 21st century.”

There are four and only four ways in which to examine this story in a blog post. All four of these I present now.

Angle the First: Presenting actual quotes about the novel and the author, carefully edited and amended by me to ironically justify the new, edited version:

“All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. It’s only too bad it has ‘the n-word’ in it.” –Ernest Hemingway

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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I recently added two engaging and informative show business memoirs to my collection. The first, having recently won the National Book Award, is all the rage. The second was all the rage in 2006. (Even though I am not on the cutting edge, I eventually catch up.)

[Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Broadway Fred by Fred Siegel
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So anyway, the other day I was in my local HEB super center (that’s a grocery store for folks reading this who live outside of Texas and Mexico) and I decided to have a look at the books since I’m always interested to see the kind of books you can buy in a mega grocery store. Since they offer nothing but the best selling titles, it’s like a direct line to the popular reading taste.

There wasn’t too much Alejandro Jodorowsky or Daniil Kharms but there was a lot of James Patterson, Twilight, Sarah Palin and a goodly stack of George Bush’s Decision Points. What would it be like, I wondered, to spend a year only reading books purchased from HEB or Wal-Mart? I could call it The Year of Reading Dangerously, write a blog and then get a book out of it. Maybe even a film deal, like that Meryl Streep Julia Child crock of shit. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, trusted media & news by Daniel Kalder
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I picked up Writing Out The Notes: Life in Great Big Sea at a Great Big Sea concert in Kent, Ohio a few months ago. I confess: I am a folk music fan. I have a tremendously eclectic taste in music; my iTunes library has everything from the Sex Pistols and Einsturzende Neubauten to Bobby Golodsboro and Glenn Gould and all points in between, which makes for some disconcerting segues when you put the whole mess on shuffle. A friend sent me some YouTube links to a couple of Great Big Sea songs a few years ago and I was instantly hooked. I love songs that tell a story, and I love songs I can sing along with — if I can’t crank them up in the car and sing as I’m racing down the highway, what fun are they? Folk music reminds me of the songs my father used to sing with his guitar on the front porch on summer evenings. Folk songs may tell some amazing stories, but folk music isn’t exactly cool or hip, so what makes a young musician choose folk music? What sustains them as they make a career of it? Writing Out the Notes tells a bit of that story. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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10. refudiate

9. handinotes

8. hypocriticizer

7. evoludiculous

6. governoresigner

5. tea-parfection

4. mamagrizzly-fication

3. abstinonsense

2. Obomination

1. youbetcha-rific
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, books & writing, politics & government by Bob Sullivan
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Concrete Operational is a collaborative media project — a novel, art book and music cd — wrapped up in a fascinating package, each complementing the others.  It’s interesting and ambitious, with a sci-fi novel about a future world gone mad, plus art and music focusing on themes from the book (love, madness, anger).  I also have a limited edition, numbered box set, provided by the author, that I am giving away to one lucky winner.  There is a link to the contest at the end of this review. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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When I first read that Brock Clarke’s new novel was called Exley, I felt a mixture of admiration, envy, and even a hint of betrayal. To an extent, I felt scooped for a story, but one I wasn’t certain that any one had the right to tell. How dare Clarke appropriate Frederick Exley for his own purposes? How dare any one of us stoop so low as to piggyback off the fame (even in a doubly derivative “lack there of” sort of way) of A Fan’s Notes? Indeed, I had three pages on Exley in my own new novel, and I had considered deleting these in the last revisions because it felt like theft—no, well, er, actually, because I was worried that part seemed too sentimental. (My solution, if you were wondering, was to add a paragraph to make the scene more absurd.) [Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing, sports by Alex Kudera
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10. My Misunderestimated Life

9. What’s Posterity Ever Done for Me?

8. I Always Thought It Was Spelt ‘Nucular’

7. How High, Mr. Cheney?

6. Presidenting Can Be Torturous

5. Is Our Children Learning?

4. Pretzels—America’s Silent Killer

3. Fool Me Once

2. The Audacity of Dope

1. The No-Brainer
 

Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.

Tags: Bob Sullivan's top ten everything, books & writing, politics & government by Bob Sullivan
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Painters Mill is a small town in Ohio with a large Amish population.  In Pray for Silence by Linda Castillo, Kate Burkholder heads up the police force — she was raised Amish, but did not join the church, a difficult decision for an Amish teenager, but one with very ugly roots in her case.  She drinks too much (way too much, in my opinion), but she’s a good, solid police woman.  And then one night, one of her detectives makes a horrible discovery… [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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If you have ever watched the Rocky & Bullwinkle show, you may remember their fractured fairy tales.  Here are a few short (fractured) reviews to help you decide which classics to read. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing by Mark A. Rayner
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Interview with Alex Kudera, author of Fight for Your Long Day

I have known Alex Kudera since 1996 when he and I met in the café of Borders Bookstore in Center City, Philadelphia. A couple years later, Alex and I worked together as adjuncts at Temple University and at Drexel University. Alex has now written a novel, the just-published Fight for Your Long Day, and it is a bracing, painful, and sometimes funny look at the life of an adjunct college teacher in the early 2000’s.

Although Alex currently teaches full-time at Clemson University in South Carolina, he is quick to note that working full-time does not mean tenure. I recently interviewed him about Fight for Your Long Day, published by Atticus Books.

Below are some of the excerpts.

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing, education, family & parenting, race & culture, sports by Robert Anthony Watts
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Back in the late 1700’s-early 1800’s, Japan was closed to the world around them.  It was illegal for a Japanese citizen to leave Japan.  It was illegal for foreign citizens to enter Japan, except under the most strictly monitored conditions.  But countries around the world understood that Japan would be a lucrative market and trading partner, if only they could break through those barriers.  The Dutch East Indies Company (the VOC in Dutch) maintained a trading post in Deijma and fought hard to keep lines of communication open with Japan — and to keep their greedy European enemies away.  In The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, a young Dutch clerk hopes to make his fortune — and return home to marry his beloved Anna — but his scruples get in the way.  It is a lovely, poetic book full of tragedy and hardship and great honor. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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According to their website,

The Library of America was founded in 1979 to undertake a historic endeavor: to help preserve the nation’s cultural heritage by publishing America’s best and most significant writing in durable and authoritative editions.

To that end, they have been publishing volumes featuring the works of people like John Steinbeck, Dashiell Hammett, Herman Melville, Robert Frost, William Faulkner, etc. But what about future editions?

100 years from now, what will the Library of America deem to be worth preserving?

I’m pretty sure I know.

Here is a look at the covers of some future Library of America editions:

[Read more →]

Tags: art & entertainment, books & writing by Ricky Sprague
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First, a note of thanks and recognition to my ghost writer. Oh, she does not like that but I do not like deceptions. Or not much. Besides which she is as well known as I am and she was there but I will tell it all as it happened to me and maybe if we put in some steamy parts she will consent to author those from her side. [Read more →]

Tags: creative writing, just fantastic by Ken Watson
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Mark SaFranko has led a writer’s life. Dan Fante once said of SaFranko that the man would rather “write than breathe,” and Mark has stayed restless but productive throughout his working years. This means he has held too many shit jobs and too many of his manuscripts have been left to rot unpublished and unread, but this fall, a breakthrough is on the horizon. In November, his cult classic Hating Olivia will be his first novel published by a major press in America although the book was published five years ago in England. Indeed, SaFranko follows a long line of American novelists who found a home in Europe before they managed to crack the conservative culture of American publishing. As you’ll read below, Mark has fought battles as a writer, a husband, a father, and a human being. But even when the future was most bleak for SaFranko, it knew better than to fuck with him when he was on a writing kick. Keep reading to check out his excellent responses to my questions about Hating Olivia, parenting, the future of books, and more. [Read more →]

Tags: all work, books & writing by Alex Kudera
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It started back in March, 2009 — my first column for When Falls the Coliseum, and my review of The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan. I have been waiting all those long months for the follow-up, The Fall and boy, was this worth the wait.  When they get around to making a movie about this trilogy, I will be first in line for my ticket. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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Under the Poppy is a story of workplace romance and intrigue — that is, if your workplace happens to be a Belgian brothel in the 1870s and your coworkers are whores, mutes and puppets.  It’s a complicated arrangement: Decca and Rupert own a brothel.  Decca is in love with Rupert.  Rupert is in love with Decca’s brother, Istvan, a traveling performer with a chest full of very naughty puppets.  There is a lot of back-story amongst the three of them, everyone has secrets, and no one is telling the whole truth.  In the end, it may be up to the puppets, the mecs, to tell the story. [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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I’ve been a fan of spy fiction since I was a teenager in the 1960s. The 1960s was a time of spy mania in novels, films and on TV. 

I read Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Eric Ambler, Graham Greene, John le Carre and many other spy thriller writers. I went to the movies and saw the Sean Connery-James Bond films, and I watched Patrick McGoohan on TV in Secret Agent and The Prisoner. I also liked the early Mission Impossible TV show and I loved the TV spy satire Get Smart.

[Read more →]

Tags: on thrillers and crime by Paul Davis
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The Lost and Forgotten Languages of Shanghai by Ruiyan Xu is all about isolation and communication.  Li Jing is a Chinese businessman with a beautiful wife and son, a successful investment company, family and friends.  But in one tragic instant, he finds himself cut off from everything.  A gas leak, an explosion, and a flying sheet of glass change his world forever.   [Read more →]

Tags: books & writing, Lisa Reads by Lisa Hura
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