Modern Authors

Something that has been on mind for a few days now is that of modern authors. In recent years, I have started reading what I consider to be "popular" authors and books, with the excuse that "I want to know what all the hype is about". I have mixed feelings about them, thinking that certain authors are absolutely fantastic, whereas others are fly-by-night fads that will fade soon. However, that latter sentiment is only a hope, because these authors have become popular already, which to me implies that they will stay popular for a while. In the next few posts, I intend to discuss such popular authors as Dan Brown, Elizabeth Kostova, and Stieg Larsson, with perhaps a couple forays into Stephanie Meyer and J. K. Rowling, and maybe some reference back to Tom Wolfe. I have read all of Kostova's and Rowling's books, and unfortunately I've also read all of Meyer's Twilight books; the whole Robert Langdon series of Brown; The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Larsson, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Wolfe. These authors are all ones about whom I have strong feelings, be it good or bad. I welcome any speculation about how I feel about each one, whether I feel like they are the fly-by-night that I mentioned or if I believe that they are actually contributing to the canon of literature. But in due time, I will reveal my feelings about each one, for better or for worse. So please, let me know how you feel, and we'll see if I agree or not.

Dan Brown

One of my friends recently read The Lost Symbol, which he called a "Waste of my life" in a text message to me. I almost completely agree with him. I replied with the comment "Where is the Dan Brown of Angels & Demons?" I read The Da Vinci Code in December of 2005, and I was decently pleased with it. Not a bad read, although it didn't quite live up to the hype that it got through the media. It was good enough that I decided to read the aforementioned Angels & Demons, which was actually a very good book. I was impressed by the ambigrams, which were pretty cool. And the plot was engaging, keeping me rapt from one page to the next, from the beginning of the book to the end.

But once the movies started coming out for these books, I started remembering the faults I had with these books. Angels & Demons was faultless for me, but The Da Vinci Code is another story. There were moments I disliked in it (but being 5 years since I read it, I can't remember exactly what they were), and the movie only served to emphasize them. Add that to the fact that Tom Hanks was not the man I would have chosen to play Robert Langdon, and I was not at all pleased. But that's beside the point. I want to talk about the books, not bad casting directors.

I intend the main points of these posts to be a discussion of why I think these authors have become popular. For Dan Brown, I have little doubt as to why he became popular: he offered an alternative view of history in regards to some of our most beloved symbols, or even in regards to the symbolism that doesn't even register when we see them (I'm thinking of the all-seeing eye featured on the back of the dollar bill). In particular, he offered an alternative view of religious history, which is almost always a surefire way to gain an audience.

Now, I don't believe the stories told by Brown in his books. There is a reason that we classify these books as "fiction". But just look at the hype that has come out of his books: I consistently see shows on the History and Discovery Channels about "the truth behind the Da Vinci Code" and similar topics. People, particularly those with vested stakes in religion, feel the need to dispel any sort of rumor that might hurt the image of the church. I consider myself a Christian, but not a particularly devout one or even one who buys into the dogma of particular religions. But I don't care whether or not the stories told in Dan Brown's books were true; if anything, I think Jesus would be more relateable if he had had relations with a woman at some point in his life, even if it was Mary Magdalene.

But I digress. The reason I think that Dan Brown is popular is that he knows how to play on people's most longstanding beliefs, such as religion or American history. Those with the largest stake in the matter react almost violently to his assertions, which in turn makes people (like me) who don't really care about the topic that much, to read the books to figure out just why everyone is so upset about the content. Despite his shocking content, the most disappointing thing about Dan Brown is his inability to tell a good story. His decline has been progressive: he had me engaged throughout Angels & Demons and through most of The Da Vinci Code, but by the time I was halfway through The Lost Symbol, I was beginning to ask when the story would begin. A tip to all authors, and Dan Brown in particular: SPEND MORE TIME TELLING YOUR STORY THAN YOU DO SETTING IT UP!!! The background can certainly be important to a story, but it should not take more pages than the story itself; in fact, if you go above a 3:1 ratio of story to background, I would say that you have gone too far.

So there are my opinions on Dan Brown. A bad writer who has the knack for making people react to his controversial subject matter. Despite this dislike of Dan Brown's writing style, I still intend to read the rest of his books and any more that may come out in the future. He knows how to create a good story, even if he's terrible at telling it. I have Digital Fortress on my bookshelf to read at some point, and I hope that it will involve better storytelling when Brown is not trying to upset the foundations of Christianity and democracy through one of his Robert Langdon tales.

Banned Books and Urban Revitalization

Unfortunately, I don't have much to say about urban revitalization. I grew up in one of the most rural states of the Union (I could easily go off on a tangent about Union/Confederacy and how West Virginia re-seceded, but I'll spare everyone the trouble), meaning that I have almost no experience with urban revitalization, homelessness, etc. I did, however, post about the exact same article as the group used, about the homeless and the downtown Madison library, on November 18th. So yeah, I think I will let that stand as my discussion of that topic.

Now for the other topic, that of banned books. Naturally, as an avid reader, I have much stronger feelings about banned books than I have about other topics. I don't believe that books should be banned, although I do believe that some books should perhaps not reach the hands of some people. One example would be that I would prefer that criminals not have access to The Anarchist Cookbook. Interestingly, I have reservations about letting children read books like Lolita or Anna Karenina, and yet having read (most of) Anna Karenina, I don't think that it would harm children to read it. I can hardly tell where the sex scenes happen, let alone do I think children would be able to. Madame Bovary is another example, which I read for my senior French thesis, and yet I hardly knew where the sex happened in that book, either. I in fact had to read some Cliff's notes to even point out the spots where it happened. Tess of the d'Urbervilles falls in the same category, that even after I was told where to look to find the sex scenes, they were impossible. I remember reading the introduction before I read the book (almost always a bad idea, but in fact absolutely necessary for reading this book, or else I would have missed the primary theme entirely), and it explained what was going to happen to Tess. Either I'm oblivious, or Thomas Hardy hides all of the sex very well.

Now, I realize that not all of these books have been banned. But they're books that stand out in my mind as possibly "offend[ing] the public morals" (the reason cited for originally banning Madame Bovary in France). I realize now that I'm in fact making the same judgments about Lolita that many censors often make about books they challenge: I, like they, have never read it. I've read the other three, and they're all definitely offensive (if you can get beyond the flowery language of the past to actually find where it's offensive). But as I said, children won't be able to flesh out those hidden nuances. It reminds me of when I read Gulliver's Travels. It was nothing but a fun read about an adventure a guy goes on. It had nothing to do with satire; in fact, I didn't even know what the word meant!

So, I suppose I should pull this all back in. I'm surprised at how much I'm actually leery of letting children read some of these books, but I also would have been offended as a child if there had been a book I wasn't allowed to read. Even now, the fact that a book is "off-limits" makes me want to read it even more. When the group presenting mentioned that book sales rise after a book is banned made me think of this very reason: people want to feel like they're doing something "rebellious", and this is an easy way to do that.

One [Insert Entity], One-or-So Book(s)

As soon as the group presenting on One City-One Book (OCOB) mentioned that 48 states have had OCOB programs, I wanted to know which two states haven't had similar programs. Upon asking one of the group members the same question, my suspicions were confirmed: West Virginia was one of those two states (Arizona being the other, as far as the group member could remember). Not surprising to me at all. In what is traditionally ranked as the 50th-least-literate state/District of Columbia out of 51 (we have a saying in West Virginia, "Thank God for Mississippi"), I'm not at all surprised that a literacy-promoting program has not been instituted there. And yet West Virginia managed to produce some of my favorite librarians of all times, the public and school librarians who inspired my love of reading through pre-school and elementary school times, on through middle school (probably my favorite librarian content-wise, because she knew exactly what types of books I liked and used that to introduce me to new books, including my now-favorite author) and even the grandmother of one of my best friends who was my high school librarian. But anyway, I digress for the sake of lauding some of my librarians, in contrast to the abysmal lack of literacy programs and even of literacy itself in West Virginia.

So how do I feel about OCOB programs? I'm not a huge fan, to be honest. I think the concept behind them is pretty good, to encourage discourse amongst community members, based in a common experience. But having participated in two years' worth of them here on campus, I have yet to experience that heightened sense of engagement. I mean, I may have enjoyed Henrietta Lacks because it was a pleasant read, significantly less academic than the rest of the stuff I was reading. And I may have felt passionately about Michael Pollen's In Defense of Food (I was the one on Wednesday night who rather loudly whispered "That books sucked!" when the OCOB group mentioned it. I don't like being told that everything I do is wrong, particularly when it comes to the love of my life, food.). But the extent of my discourse about that book was with my roommate, who thinks that Michael Pollen is a god (perhaps she thinks he is God? No, she's an atheist, but I think she believes he's as close as it gets), when I complained about his abrasive manner of presenting his arguments. And the extent of my HeLa discourse was limited to in class. I find this one more surprising, because with a science background, I would expect myself to engage more passionately in these discussions, but assigned readings just really don't do it for me.

e-Readers

I've been putting a lot of thought into e-readers recently, largely because I just purchased one myself and did a bit of market research before I decided which one I wanted to buy. I ultimately went with the Sony Touch for a variety of reasons, some of which Jason Griffey disparages in the article we read for class. I tried out the Kindle, the Nook, and a few e-readers that Borders keeps in stock. The biggest problem that I had with all of them is that they aren't intuitive. Quite the opposite, in fact; they worked against what I was trying to do half the time. Like Kindle having a page-back button on the right-hand side. Or making me use a D-pad as the clicker button, on top of the screen not refreshing fast enough for me to see when my cursor had actually moved. With the Sony Touch in particular, that's not a problem, because all you do is touch the screen to access the book you want. While Griffey is right about the overlay causing some "issues" with the touch, a little bit of glare is the only problem I've noticed (which is not one of the problems he mentions), and I haven't noticed any reduction in sharpness of my text. One other feature that could be nice would be wireless access on my device, but I'm perfectly fine plugging it into my computer if I need to download something.

One problem I had with the presentation on Wednesday was that the group presenting didn't seem to make the connection that Sony's "proprietary" epub format is not really proprietary at all, considering that it's becoming the de facto open source format. Speaking of formats, I think Amazon is rather ridiculous in their use of proprietary format. On top of a physical layout that defies all forms of logic, it also makes it nearly impossible to use the most popular formats without going through the rigmarole of e-mailing it to yourself or to Amazon to convert it for you. Further, I have no intentions of actually buying books for my e-reader. I mean, if it's a textbook that's significantly cheaper than the paper copy, then I might purchase it; but there are so many public domain books at this point (including many classics that have been on my reading list for years) that I see no reason to start buying e-books that actually cost more than the same book in paperback form. Plus, I have this fantastic thing called a "library card" that saves me from having to buy more than a few books each year. Actually, not one library card...I actually have four public library cards and three university library cards (Madison; Minneapolis; Lexington, KY; and North Central West Virginia. UW-Madison, Transylvania University, and University of Kentucky. I plan to get Bridgeport, WV, while I'm home for Christmas break, since my parents moved there last year). I'm not lacking for electronic reading materials, particularly free ones.

In Soviet Russia, Books Censor You!

I must say, I was really hoping to watch Storm Center in class. Partly because Louise's 450 class watched it, partly because I feel like I've already watched it through Louise's description in the The Dismissal of Miss Ruth Brown, partly because I graded something like 550 exams before coming to class and could have used a mental break, and partly because I just watched another Bette Davis movie, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, on Thanksgiving. It would be nice to see her in a less-creepy, not-so-evil role than that of a grown-up Baby Jane. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it, but brace yourself for some psychological horror. I tried to find as evil-looking of a picture of Bette as possible that also portrayed Joan Crawford as significantly more innocent, and the result is seen here.

But anyway, enough about Bette Davis. Back to the book in hand (well, not in hand, because I already returned it to the library at this point). I think the most interesting part of this book for me was the fact that Louise talked more in-depth about the McCarthy era than I've really seen in any other context. I know I studied the time period in my junior-year-of-high-school history class, but I remember focusing more on the Korean Conflict and not so much on the closer-to-home policies. I have trouble understanding how communism could have created such a scare in America, but I don't doubt that it truly did. It was particularly interesting to see in this book how the national scare of communism really managed to work its way into a small town in Oklahoma.

And now I wonder, how much have we really gotten away from the McCarthy era? How safe are we from censorship, especially as librarians? When I think about censorship in libraries, I immediately think of an article that I read sometime in the past year: Child protection or censorship? Library employees lose jobs over book. I think I remember it in particular because I spent four years of undergrad in Lexington, KY, fairly close to the town in question. What is surprising about this article is that it shows the opposite of what we expect: it's the "librarians" (you'll notice in the article that it makes a point that they're not librarians because they don't have the MLS degree) who are censoring materials, not the community. The ALA relies on its librarians to properly enforce the Bill of Rights and freedom of access to information, and these employees of the library clearly didn't do that. I can fully understand moving a book to another location, or keeping it as a reserve material, but only if the community at large truly deems a book to be inappropriate. It's not the role of a single library employee to decide what is or isn't appropriate for the public at large. The evidence from other area libraries (granted, Louisville isn't a particularly good example, as it's a larger city and as such traditionally much more liberal) just goes to show that it's possible to house the book and sill not cause an uproar. In fact, I don't think it was even causing an uproar where it was in the Nicholasville library; it was a single person who had a problem with the book. Moreover, even when she went through the proper channels, no one saw any problems with the book. So, in response to the article's title: it's censorship. In response to hero or villain: it appears she's much more toward the villain end of the spectrum. I doubt she meant any harm by her actions, but the broader impacts of her actions are what make it dangerous: if we allow one book to be censored by a single person, how far do we allow individuals to go in the censorship of library materials?