Received in my inbox this morning:
Wait Until They Get Their Hands on Huck Finn
– December 24, 2009Posted in: Political Correctness
Books To Jump Up and Down Over
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (Bat Segundo interview with Murphy)
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (Bat Segundo interview with McClear)
Wow. Seeing this I wish publishers took as much care in removing typos and grammatical errors in books they release.
Ah, yes. Bowdlerization has *always* been seen as a public service.
The ‘N-word’? Good gravy. Couldn’t they find a politically correct term that wouldn’t leave a reader annoyed or confused throughout the novel?
When I first heard about this, I’d thought the ad just changed it to get it past spamblocks… but no. It’s a public service to change a word to something so ridiculous that a person wouldn’t be able to get past it. And this is supposed to make it more ‘accessible’?
What a black moment in American history.
Holy f-word!
Doug said: Wow. Seeing this I wish publishers took as much care in removing typos and grammatical errors in books they release.
Unless they just used the find-replace function.
Consider yourself lucky they didn’t use Morse Code.
Wordbridge is a Christian conservative publisher, and by their mention of white guilt this does seem to be an attempt to politically correct what they see as offensive text. I’m a little confused…
Joseph Conrad and Alex Haley both must be turning over in their graves.