Beem Weeks's Blog - Posts Tagged "book-burning"
Sex In Stories
I read a tweet the other day from an author posting a comment he'd received regarding one of his novels. The comment went something like this: "Great story, but way too much sex." In all honesty, I've not read the book in question. But the issue of sex in literature has long been a thorn to some, a crime to others, and a selling point to many.
D.H. Lawrence faced all sorts of legal issues concerning his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover upon it's original release back in 1928. That book--and much of his other works--was banned in England and the United States for decades. The Free World at its finest. I understand some people prefer "clean" stories. There are many classics that carry a solid G rating that have been favorites for hundreds of years.
Today, with the advent of self-publishing, writers of erotica have found an audience--some with great success. I don't write erotica, nor do I read it. But that doesn't mean there isn't a place for it. There is sex in my novel. Sexuality is a human trait--indeed a trait of most living creatures. There is the romantic element, which gives rise to the romance novel. For those who want their sex without love, there's lust. Lust is a strong emotion that everybody experiences at some point in life--though some would deny they've ever been guilty of that sort of sin.
Then we come to sex for curiosity's sake. A girl kisses another girl just to see what it's like. A guy cheats on his wife of twenty years just to satisfy an urge to know what it would feel like to be with somebody else. Sex and sexuality is part of being human. It's part of being alive. It's real life. It's what gives breath to the fictional characters authors create. To deny it is to deny our humanity.
Now that doesn't mean you have to read about it in some novel that makes you uncomfortable. That's why we still love the classics.
So if you're not into sex in your story, pick up a copy of Little Women, Moby Dick, or A Farewell to Arms. A great book is always a great book.
D.H. Lawrence faced all sorts of legal issues concerning his novel Lady Chatterley's Lover upon it's original release back in 1928. That book--and much of his other works--was banned in England and the United States for decades. The Free World at its finest. I understand some people prefer "clean" stories. There are many classics that carry a solid G rating that have been favorites for hundreds of years.
Today, with the advent of self-publishing, writers of erotica have found an audience--some with great success. I don't write erotica, nor do I read it. But that doesn't mean there isn't a place for it. There is sex in my novel. Sexuality is a human trait--indeed a trait of most living creatures. There is the romantic element, which gives rise to the romance novel. For those who want their sex without love, there's lust. Lust is a strong emotion that everybody experiences at some point in life--though some would deny they've ever been guilty of that sort of sin.
Then we come to sex for curiosity's sake. A girl kisses another girl just to see what it's like. A guy cheats on his wife of twenty years just to satisfy an urge to know what it would feel like to be with somebody else. Sex and sexuality is part of being human. It's part of being alive. It's real life. It's what gives breath to the fictional characters authors create. To deny it is to deny our humanity.
Now that doesn't mean you have to read about it in some novel that makes you uncomfortable. That's why we still love the classics.
So if you're not into sex in your story, pick up a copy of Little Women, Moby Dick, or A Farewell to Arms. A great book is always a great book.
Can Words Influence Acts of Lawlessness and Evil?
Do words truly have the power to incite riots, lawlessness, and acts of evil? The police department in East Lansing, Michigan, USA, seems to believe so. This past Saturday night (December 7) the Michigan State Spartans football team (American football) defeated the previously unbeaten Ohio State Buckeyes in the Big Ten Conference championship game, earning the Spartans a trip to the Rose Bowl for the first time since 1988.
During the course of the game, a television camera, panning the crowd, captured a young man holding up a sign that read Burn The Couch. For those who are unfamiliar with Michigan State University celebration tactics: every time a Spartan team (basketball, football, hockey) wins a big game or loses a big game, idiot students—just a few, mind you—rush wildly into the streets of East Lansing, where they set fire to sofas and chairs and other assorted pieces of furniture. Where this furniture comes from is anybody’s guess.
Saturday’s big win saw this ritual unfold once again. Local authorities anticipated this ridiculous drunken reaction and called in extra police officers from neighboring jurisdictions—which did little to stem the loss of yet more helpless furniture.
Jump ahead to the next morning. There they are, on TV, on Facebook. Police officers were asking for help in identifying the above-mentioned sign bearer. Seems East Lansing’s finest are entertaining the notion that this young man, by simply hoisting a sign in a football stadium hundreds of miles away in another state, is somehow responsible for this latest round of couch immolation. The mere suggestion that a conspiracy is afoot is laughable.
I’m not going to argue against the stupidity behind such misguided “police” work. Nor will I address the obvious First Amendment freedom-of-speech issue. Instead, let’s discuss the idea that one person’s words, whether written or spoken, have the power to influence others to act in disregard to the law of the land.
Charles Manson claimed the Beatles were telling him through their music to commit atrocities. Mark David Chapman assigned partial blame for his murder of John Lennon to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Others have used the Salinger novel as motivation for violent crimes as well. In the early 1980s, Canadian authorities briefly banned a music video of the Oingo Boingo song “Little Girls,” claiming the track influenced a serial child-rapist they had trouble capturing. There are dozens of examples scattered throughout history.
Do words really have that sort of control over individuals? Yes—if the person being influenced suffers from mental issues. These things do indeed happen. Should we ban or burn those created works that just might set off the unstable?
I recall, back in the 1980s, a couple of instances where distraught parents sought to blame heavy metal music for the suicides of their children. The members of Judas Priest found themselves in court over one such case. The story goes: Two boys claimed to hear Priest singer Rob Halford repeating the words “do it” over and over in a song that, at the time, was nearly ten years old. Just what did Mr. Halford intend for them to do? In the minds of these two boys, the obvious intention was suicide. The song itself? No mention of suicide. One boy succeeded, the other managed to blow his face off—though he eventually died of an infection several years later. Classmates of these kids claimed the boys had issues reaching beyond a Judas Priest song.
My point in writing this piece is simple: I am responsible for my own actions. I cannot blame Jimmy Buffet’s song “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw” for cheating on my wife. (And no, I did not; it’s just an example.) Mark David Chapman chose to pull that trigger. Charles Manson chose to become a monster rather than a productive member of society. Suicide does not dawn on a person because of a song; its roots run much deeper than a recorded piece of music.
Should we get rid of The Catcher in the Rye before another misguided soul gets a hold of a wrong notion through its pages? There are some who will answer yes to that question. I am not one of them. Let that young man hold up his sign! Those couches would have burned with or without him.
During the course of the game, a television camera, panning the crowd, captured a young man holding up a sign that read Burn The Couch. For those who are unfamiliar with Michigan State University celebration tactics: every time a Spartan team (basketball, football, hockey) wins a big game or loses a big game, idiot students—just a few, mind you—rush wildly into the streets of East Lansing, where they set fire to sofas and chairs and other assorted pieces of furniture. Where this furniture comes from is anybody’s guess.
Saturday’s big win saw this ritual unfold once again. Local authorities anticipated this ridiculous drunken reaction and called in extra police officers from neighboring jurisdictions—which did little to stem the loss of yet more helpless furniture.
Jump ahead to the next morning. There they are, on TV, on Facebook. Police officers were asking for help in identifying the above-mentioned sign bearer. Seems East Lansing’s finest are entertaining the notion that this young man, by simply hoisting a sign in a football stadium hundreds of miles away in another state, is somehow responsible for this latest round of couch immolation. The mere suggestion that a conspiracy is afoot is laughable.
I’m not going to argue against the stupidity behind such misguided “police” work. Nor will I address the obvious First Amendment freedom-of-speech issue. Instead, let’s discuss the idea that one person’s words, whether written or spoken, have the power to influence others to act in disregard to the law of the land.
Charles Manson claimed the Beatles were telling him through their music to commit atrocities. Mark David Chapman assigned partial blame for his murder of John Lennon to J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. Others have used the Salinger novel as motivation for violent crimes as well. In the early 1980s, Canadian authorities briefly banned a music video of the Oingo Boingo song “Little Girls,” claiming the track influenced a serial child-rapist they had trouble capturing. There are dozens of examples scattered throughout history.
Do words really have that sort of control over individuals? Yes—if the person being influenced suffers from mental issues. These things do indeed happen. Should we ban or burn those created works that just might set off the unstable?
I recall, back in the 1980s, a couple of instances where distraught parents sought to blame heavy metal music for the suicides of their children. The members of Judas Priest found themselves in court over one such case. The story goes: Two boys claimed to hear Priest singer Rob Halford repeating the words “do it” over and over in a song that, at the time, was nearly ten years old. Just what did Mr. Halford intend for them to do? In the minds of these two boys, the obvious intention was suicide. The song itself? No mention of suicide. One boy succeeded, the other managed to blow his face off—though he eventually died of an infection several years later. Classmates of these kids claimed the boys had issues reaching beyond a Judas Priest song.
My point in writing this piece is simple: I am responsible for my own actions. I cannot blame Jimmy Buffet’s song “Why Don’t We Get Drunk and Screw” for cheating on my wife. (And no, I did not; it’s just an example.) Mark David Chapman chose to pull that trigger. Charles Manson chose to become a monster rather than a productive member of society. Suicide does not dawn on a person because of a song; its roots run much deeper than a recorded piece of music.
Should we get rid of The Catcher in the Rye before another misguided soul gets a hold of a wrong notion through its pages? There are some who will answer yes to that question. I am not one of them. Let that young man hold up his sign! Those couches would have burned with or without him.
