Sunday, February 13: The A.D.D. Detective
WHY? WHY? WHY NOT?
by Leigh Lundin
Thursday, Deborah listed questions readers (and apparently non-readers) asked. John and James have written about readers’ questions, and I think Melodie may have.
Wait! Nobody asks me! But that might be my own fault when my writing turns dark.
Deborah’s questions intrigued me to vicariously respond.
- Why should we still be reading old-fashioned books when technology is throwing entertainment at us faster than we can understand all the apps before a new and improved model is announced?
- Betcha authors fatten electronic copy with iPadding.
- Orlando represents a microcosm of a larger problem: The city couldn’t keep a symphony. It couldn’t keep an opera. It can’t even keep an NPR classical music FM station. I began to realize a rule: People confuse entertainment with culture.
- In the 1970s and 1980s, studies determined television was an insidiously passive form of entertainment. Unlike reading, music, sporting events, stage plays, and even movies, television shut down parts of the mind. ‘Vegging’ was more accurate than viewers realized. Now parents worry about nimble-fingered game-playing children with sluggish metabolisms. Likely a few decades from now, their descendants will worry about offspring with brain implants in immersive entertainment worlds. It’s part of the cycle of nulife.
- So why books? They have substance. They have texture. They have scent. They have 600 years of tradition. I don’t think readers have a thing to worry about, but authors might.
- Velma: Shhh! I’m using my new Xoom.
- Why are some people allowed to change a revered author’s masterpieces just because they think they have a reason to censor some of the wording that was popular at the time the novel was written?
- Call them unwriters.
- They’re not allowed, they just do whatever the hell they like, but they sometimes manage to infect libraries and communities.
- Some people feel compelled to neuter: dogs, cats, horses, authors, morning talk show hosts.
- The most egregious modern case is that of Andrew Schlafly, who decided the Bible didn’t suit his agenda, parts of the Bible were a ‘hoax’, and he’d brew his own version. When floods and famine and locusts didn’t appear, he took that as a sign to proceed. His efforts make bastardizations of Twain pale by comparison.
- Why read mystery or crime fiction at all? Isn’t it non-fiction books that educate us?
- Velma: It’s a crime if you don’t read fiction, buster!
- Lightning might strike with another mention of the Bible, but much of it contains stories, fiction called parables that teach a lesson. I used to detest the Book of Job, but I think it was Rabbi Harold Kushner‘s When Bad Things Happen to Good People, who pointed out what should have been obvious– Job is a parable. The story was a lesson disguised as a story. So yes, some fiction is mindless entertainment, but other fiction delves into questions of life, death, and the universe.
- Why are some really great authors not selling as much as they used to do?
- Dunno. I thought John Floyd was selling more than ever.
- Why do mystery writers write about crime? Isn’t it terribly depressing writing about bad things happening?
- We tried writing Deborah Anne MacGillivray romances, but she kept killing off her readers.
- It can be relieving when a story grabs wickedness by the throat and whips it into submission.
- Alternatively… Say a crime novel introduces a character, Paree H, a blonde gossip columnist who sucks (used advisedly) the soul out of civilization. Enter über-villain Revengo who kidnaps and fertilizes acres of Napa Valley with the character. Already, we have a feel-good story and we haven’t gotten to the good part. Lincoln Rhyme might choose to sit this one out.
- Won’t writing crime stories just show someone how to commit a crime and get away with it since you’ll tell how they get caught?
- See Revengo above. (heh heh)
- Oh, c’mon. Aren’t more criminals caught thanks to mystery writers pointing out loopholes? I’m sure far fewer criminals read than the general public.
- Mothball Homeland Security and turn the MWA loose on the bad guys. As they used to say, Don’t ƒ with the Falcon!
- Why read when we can just wait for the movie — if the book’s really any good?
- Because SpongeBob needs the money.
- If nobody buys a good book, it’s unlikely to break through in Hollywood or New York. Besides, the book is usually far better and, unlike a movie, gives the author’s true view unfiltered by screenwriters’ notions.
- Velma: Don’t read or watch the movies if your lips move.
- Why do writers always think so much different than the rest of us? You guys are kinda crazy.
- Well, yes!
- You said the book was finished a month ago, so why can’t I find it at the book store yet?
- Publishers procrastinate worse than I.
- When are you going to write a real book? You know, one that Oprah would like?
- I’ve been working on The Color Violet.
- What made you think you could be a writer?
- After reading a ‘mystery’ in which the protagonist had an advanced degree in nuclear physics (but never demonstrated or used), owned a "fabulous Fifth Avenue dress boutique", and opened a seaside house in New England (with an address convenient for bad guys to find), I realized my brothers and I (with ages in single digits) made up better stories in the middle of the night camping in the back yard.
- No, the thought didn’t cross my mind I could be a writer, but I was obsessed with the thought of wanting to write. A woman on the telly said her husband ruined her life because he wouldn’t let her go to Hollywood to achieve her dream as an actress. The talk show host asked her if she craved the spotlight and glamor of Hollywood or the desire to act. "The desire to act," she said, and all of us knew she was lying. That makes a difference… the real difference with any goal.
- Velma: Would such be WINOs? Writers in name only?
What questions do you have for the Criminal Brief help desk?
Leigh,
Good questions, excellent answers. By the way, I “rewrote” my favorite children’s book years ago when I taught fourth and fifth grade. My favorite novel was Huckleberry Finn until I read Look Homeward, Angel and The Sound and the Fury (neither was age-appropriate for my classes.)
After recess, teachers read to the students for ten minutes each day, and I introduced every kid I ever taught to Huck–just read the word “friend” everywhere the “n word” appeared.
Right? Wrong? I didn’t and don’t care. I just wanted those kids to know my friend Huck Finn.
Leigh, thanks for a great, thought-provoking read with my morning coffee!
Fran
PS – Second favorite book to read to kids was The BFG.
I have never written a column about readers’ questions. John and Rob both have.
Hmmm…
“Was anyone hurt?”
“No, ma’am. Killed a friend.”
“Well, that’s a relief, ’cause sometimes a body can get hurt when that happens.”
Not sure the discussion makes any sense that way. Changing the word to “slave” as the recent bowdlerization did gets closer to the real meaning in this case.
As far as I’m concerned you (generic you) can have the kids read it anyway they want, as long as you discuss in class what the word meant to Twain and means today.
As for me, I never thought I could be a writer…but, I always enjoyed making up stories. It’s just nice when other people like them and want to pay to read them. Great article, Leigh!
Thanks for seed, Deborah. I enjoyed it.
Like Rob, I’m a purist and unlike Fran, I’m not a teacher, but I confess Fran’s unusually clever solution for ‘youngins’ is the first I’ve heard worthy of consideration. One thing we don’t want is a school board dictating what we should read.
Rob, when I said I exchanged “friend” for the “n word,” I didn’t mean every single time. I used a little common sense as I went along, and yes, I explained the historical aspects and that I was substituting for that word.
The first year I taught secondary English, I tried to do a unit on American writers who had won the Nobel Prize. I had to go to the school board to make the librarian release most of those books to my room because she had them locked away and wouldn’t let students check them out.
Heaven forbid the kids read Grapes of Wrath. She even had The Red Pony off the shelves along with Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth and everything by Hemingway.
Those were interesting times!
fran
The part-time librarian in our tiny school fought to keep everything on the shelves, even if books had swearing or s-e-x in them. She did a great job.
I remember editions of classics “for younger readers” that did some editing. A Sherlock Holmes novel had Holmes’ coccaine habit edited out. Oh, and I want to see the Spongebob cast inserted into the works of H.P. Lovecraft…
(laughing)
If my memory serves (doubtful), children’s author E. L. Konigsburg gave a speech about censorship years ago which was brilliant.
She talked about getting a call from a publisher who wanted to use an excerpt from one of her books in an anthology for classroom use. However, the passage included kids hiding from the guards in a museum by standing on toilets and the New York publisher wanted to remove the mention of toilets.
ELK asked who exactly would be offended by toilets and the answer was vaguely people out in, you know the small towns.
This caused ELK to say that there is no one more provincial than New Yorkers. They don’t know anything about the rest of the country.
(And as a New Jerseyan I say, boy, is she right.)
But my main point is this: a censor, she said, is like a prostitute. You will almost never find someone who admits to being one, they claim to be doing a public service, and they have utter contempt for the people they are working for.
Thus endeth the sermon.
Amen.
I never before heard the Konigsburg comment, but when I lived in NYC, I commented similarly about how parochial the city is.
During the early apartheid era, the South African government, rabid in its censorship laws, reached new heights of paranoia with the banning of Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty.
(Later repealed when it was suggested they move beyond the title!)