And books that write themselves, too.   Sort of. A couple of posts back, Cheryl commented: >>>I must be missing something. I can see that good literature has ‘real’ characters – ones who act and talk like real people within the world of the book. I’ve read comments from a number of authors saying that their…

Okay.  That’s a sound I make when I’m feeling especially frustrated.  At least, it’s the way I write the sound I make. If you don’t usually read comments,  I’d like to suggest that you make an exception this time and read the two that  Robert made on the last post, because I  want to address…

I got an e-mail yesterday that made me realize that I had been less than clear.  The example in the post before this one, about how various people read Clifford Pyncheon in The House of the Seven  Gables, is about left wing criticism.  Only the left finds gay people in books from eras whose authors…

I think we left off, the other day, talking about sex–about censorship as a way to target what one group or another thinks of as “deviant” forms of sexuality, on the assumption that if we can absolutely forbid anybody from mentioning them, we can also stop people from engaging in them. And it really is…

I don’t know.  I’m all distracted today, or at any rate Im not thinking about good and evil and censorship.  Maybe it’s because I had to send out tax stuff, or just that I’m really stoked on caffeine, which happens.  And I’ve been reading The House of the Seven Gables, for the first time in…

Okay, I know, I know.  This is the second post in one day. The REAL post for today is the one called WIM 4. But I needed to clarify something, re Robert’s last comment:  when I’m talking about censorship here, I’m talking about censorship:  banning the production and distribution of written material. I’m NOT talking…

If there was no case to be made for censorship at all, on any level, at any time, dealing with Really Bad Readers, Ideological Division, would be a lot easier.   But the problem of censorship–of the urge to censor; and the need to censor; and the collateral damage from even the most rationally based form…

I’ve never understood people who try to defend the world against censorship by saying things like “no girl was ever ruined by a book.”  That was Clarence Darrow,  I think, and his comment had the same problem then as similar ones do now:  it assumed that if  it was possible for a girl to be…

Robert complains that he didn’t actually mean to say that any reader’s interpretation is as good as any other’s, and I knew that.   And I agree that his points in defense are well taken, and that I did mean to get them them eventually.   The problem of readers–of good readers–is even more complicated than he…

I know I said I was going to talk about the way various cultures/religions/philosophies/Sunday afternoon bridge clubs deined what it means to be “human,” and how that affects everything from moral codes to murder mysteries to chocolate cake, but I want to backtrack a little yet again and address something brought up by Robert and applauded…