It’s Banned Books Week — time to celebrate your right to read Women in Love, Ulysses, and other notables from the ALA’s list of banned or challenged books. Though, according to the Wall Street Journal, this is a whole lotta hoo-ha over nothing.
Cheers to You, Madame Bovary
I Sanction This
Talk about built-in irony: the class of tricky words known as “contronyms” can mean the opposite of what you think they mean.
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Talk of the Town
Michael Wolff’s palace intrigue book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump Whitehouse has dominated the news cycle this week. After receiving a cease-and-desist letter, publisher Henry Holt and Co. responded by pushing the publication date up four days. Currently #1 on Amazon’s Bestseller list, many independent booksellers say they have sold all their copies as well.
Friday Night Filibusters
Going Clear author Lawrence Wright is adapting his play, Sonny’s Last Shot, to develop an HBO series about “the crazy, brutal world of Texas politics,” reports Deadline.
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Jesmyn Ward to join Tulane faculty
I’ve long thought that New Orleans is the greatest city in America and that it’s nigh impossible to make it much better. That was before Tulane University announced that Salvage the Bones and Men We Reaped author Jesmyn Ward will be joining their faculty. Let it be thus known: on July 1, 2014, New Orleans will get even better than I could’ve imagined.
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The Marriage of Opposites
“I can’t help but worry that those of us who hoped that the marriage of pop culture and feminism would yield deliciously progressive fruit might have a lot to answer for.” Andi Zeisler on her new book and 20 years of Bitch Magazine. Also check out this Millions essay on feminist pop anthems.
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2015 Tournament of Books Winner Announced
After five rounds, sixteen books and more hard choices than we can count, The Morning News has chosen this year’s champion of the Tournament of Books. Who won, you ask? (Here’s a hint: we’re pretty happy about it.)
Wow–thanks for pointing out the Mitchell Muncy WSJ op-ed. Muncy seems to feel that a 10% success rate in book banning is negligible; one wonders how high the percentage needs to be in order to be significant. Regardless, saying that attempted bannings don’t matter simply because the books weren’t ultimately banned is a little like saying that attempted murders aren’t a problem because the victims all survived–or that attempted terrorist attacks aren’t anything to worry about because they didn’t succeed. And his conclusion–that Banned Books Week is actually a form of *censorship*–is mind-boggling.
I’ve written a much longer response to the Muncy piece here:
http://fictionwritersreview.com/blog/banned-books-week-an-act-of-censorship-say-what
Thanks again for bringing this up.