Alvah's Books

One of my favorite writers passed away. What a morose way to greet the morning.  Below is a portion of The New York Times  obit:

Jim Carroll, Poet and Punk Rocker Who Wrote ‘The Basketball Diaries’, Dies at 60

By William Grimes

In The New York Times City Room section, I stumbled across this interesting story about Hergé’s Tintin in the Congo:

A Library’s Approach to Books That Offend

by Alison Leigh Cowan

The cartoonist Hergé is popular again, as is his adventurous reporter Tintin, who will be featured in a Stephen Spielberg movie due out in 2011.

But if you go to the Brooklyn Public Library seeking a copy of “Tintin au Congo,” Hergé’s second book in a series, prepare to make an appointment and wait days to see the book.

“It’s not for the public,” a librarian in the children’s room said this month when a patron asked to see it.

The book, published 79 years ago, was moved in 2007 from the public area of the library to a back room where it is held under lock and key.

The move came after a patron objected, as others have, to the way Africans are depicted in the book. “The content is racially offensive to black people,’’ a librarian wrote on Form 286, also known as a Request for Reconsideration of Library Material [pdf].

Libraries often have policies that allow patrons to complain about content they find objectionable. New York City libraries have received almost two dozen written objections since 2005. But the book about Tintin (pronounced Tantan in his native Brussels) was the only challenged item to have been removed from the shelves, library officials said.

To read more about this and see some of the disputed artwork, go to The New York Times City Room blog.

Somehow you’d think the Canadians would be smarter than that. Below is the whole story. 

Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which challenges racial injustice in America’s Deep South, will be removed from curriculum at St. Edmund Campion Secondary School following a lone complaint from a parent whose child will be in Grade 10 this September.

“The parent was concerned about some of the language in the book,” said Bruce Campbell, spokesman for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board.

Principal Kevin McGuire made the decision at the end of the school year to resolve the complaint quickly. The book, a fixture on high-school reading lists across the country, will still be available in the library, said Campbell.

“The school administration was aware of the parent’s concern and made the decision to use another board-approved resource that teaches the same concept for the coming year,” said Campbell.

“It’s not a requirement that the novel be used,” he said. “It’s an option on our list of board-approved resources, and the school can make a decision to use whatever resource (it) would feel best suits them.”

“In this case, the principal believed an alternate resource might be better suited for that community,” said Campbell.

But at a school with a significant black population, teachers say the book is a relevant and favoured tool for discussion on racism.

With the start of the school year less than one month away, teachers have yet to be told what they will teach instead of Mockingbird. McGuire could not be reached for comment.

Mockingbird has spurred numerous debates and bans since it was written in the 1960s. A Nova Scotia school board tried to ban the book in 2002 for similar concerns about language. In 1993, the principal at a Hamilton school removed the book from a Grade 10 reading list after a parent complained.

“There will always be a small number of people to take offence to words, images and ideas in books and think that the best way to protect society is to remove them,” said Franklin Carter, of the Freedom of Expression committee of the Book and Periodical Council.

“But in the long run, it is illiberal, arbitrary – and censorship usually fails. People will read what they want to read anyway,” he said.

The school board says it expects a written complaint from the parent, which would prompt a thorough review by library services, religious coordinators, trustees, parents and the superintendent.

This is not the first book controversy at the Dufferin-Peel Catholic board.

In 2007, it removed the award-winning novel Snow Falling on Cedars – about Japanese American man accused of murder following World War II –  from library shelves and teaching materials after a parent complained about sexual content, but later reinstated the book.

Novelist, screenwriter, and HUAC informer Budd Schulberg passed away at his residence at West Hampton, NY. Mr. Schulberg was 96 years old. A son of Hollywood, Mr. Schulberg was famous for his screenplay On the Waterfront, the novel What Makes Sammy Run?, which angered both Hollywood and the CPUSA. Mr. Schulberg  also testified in front of HUAC in 1951 and named 17 directors and writers–three of whom were members of the Hollywood Ten.

Frank McCourt, Author of ‘Angela’s Ashes,’ Dies at 78

This little news item appeared on the online edition of the Columbia Spectator, Columbia University’s newspaper. I can’t express how sad this makes me. I worked in that neighborhood for many years. During my lunch or after work, I’d always stop by to buy a book or two.  Below are the first few paragraphs of the article

Morningside Books to close next month
by Sam Levin

Morningside Bookshop, a family-owned bookstore now 5 years old, will be permanently closing its doors in June, owner Peter Soter announced on Wednesday.

This store, located on 114th and Broadway, has Columbia as its landlord. Soter said that, though the University has been “very supportive, and very helpful,” he is simply not making enough money to stay open.

To read the rest of the article, click on the title.

From the New York Times:

A Writer’s Violent End, and His Activist Legacy
By Patricia Cohen

“I had a surprising call this week,” the author Richard North Patterson told the audience that had gathered last weekend as part of the PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. It was former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Patterson’s new novel, “Eclipse,” is based on the case of the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Mr. Clinton spoke of a phone call he had made 14 years ago to Gen. Sani Abacha of Nigeria, asking him to spare Mr. Saro-Wiwa from the hangman.

Mr. Clinton said General Abacha “was very polite,” but “he was cold,” Mr. Patterson related. “Clinton took away from that, among other things, that oil and the need for oil on behalf of the West and other places made Abacha, in his mind, impervious.”

The event’s moderator, the Nigerian novelist Okey Ndibe, added an unexpected epilogue. A friend in the Abacha cabinet said the general later boasted: “All these pro-democracy activists run to America and expect America to save them. But the U.S. president himself is calling me ‘sir.’ He is scared of me.”

Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a popular author who helped create a peaceful mass movement on behalf of the Ogoni people, was executed in November 1995 along with eight other environmental and human rights activists on what many contended were trumped-up murder charges. His body was burned with acid and thrown in an unmarked grave.

To read the rest of the article click on the title.

From The Washington Post:

The Origins of a Novel
By Colm Toibin

In the summer of 1967 when I was 12, my father died. For a month or more the house in the evening was filled with people, but by September, when I had gone back to school, things were quieter. People called in ones, in twos, to express their sympathy to my mother. They usually came in the evening, stayed for an hour or so, then left. My brother and I wanted this to stop because the television was in the room where they sat talking. I hardly ever went into that room while there were visitors. But one evening I did, and heard an interesting story being told.

A woman was talking to my mother, talking on and on, about Brooklyn where her daughter had been. I began to listen. She’d never been to our house before and was never, as far as I remember, a visitor again. I saw her on the street sometimes; she was a small, stout, dignified-looking woman who always wore a hat. It was almost 40 years later before I took what I had heard, just the bones of a story about her daughter who had gone to Brooklyn and then come home, and began making a novel from it.

To read the rest of the article click on the title.

About two years ago, Jodi Picoult was the keynote speaker at BEA. At that time, I had not read any of her books—although I had The Tenth Circle, sitting on my nightstand. As I listened to her speak about her writing process, I was impressed. Was I impressed by her books? Well…they’re enjoyable, but not something I would review on this site.

In any event, Ms. Picoult came across as very personable, and unlike Jonathan Littell, she’s seems like the everyman’s writer. Below is a quick interview from The Independent:

Cultural Life: Jodi Picoult, author

 Interview by Charlotte Cripps

Friday, 1 May 2009 

Back in March I reviewed The Kindly Ones for The Internet Review of Books. I haven’t come across many interviews with Jonathan Littell, but I found this one today. Below is portion of the interview.

Inside a ‘perverted fairyland’

The author of the controversial novel The Unkindly Ones talks to the Globe about the brutality of war and his effort to do it justice

Peter Scowen

Globe and Mail Update

May 1, 2009 at 5:29 PM EDT