Spontaneous Musings

Just read in EW, an article about The Hunger Games movie - it's an interview with Gary Ross, who directed Pleasantville and Seabiscuit. Apparently he tore through the books as well. It's the first YA novel since Harry Potter to really hit a huge cross-over audience (ie. male/female adults and children). The producer and director seem to really get it - that this is a story so universal that it doesn't know any age.

Of the three books? The Hunger Games is by far the best, although I'm partial to Catching Fire - because it does a great satirical riff on the cult of celebrity and the cost to both society and the objects of the worship.

Agree with Ross about YA books - some great works of literature are YA. Here's a brief list of the books I've loved as YA and adult:

* Witches of Worm by Zelphia Keatley Synder
* Animal Farm by George Orwell
* Lord of the Flies by William Fielding
* The Chocolat War by Rodger Cormier
* The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
* The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson
* The Outsiders by SE Hinton
* Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key
* The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Quin
* Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
* Mary Poppins by PL Travers
* Charlie and the Chocolat Factory by Ronald Dahl
* James and the Giant Peach by Ronald Dalh
* The Dark is Rising novels by Susan Cooper
* Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
* A Separate Peace by John Knowles
* Blubber by Judy Bloom
* Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
* The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien
* Farhenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
* The Veldt - a short story by Ray Bradbury
* The Contender by Robert Lipstye
* Vision Quest by Terry Davis

As an aside, I'm against censoring or changing any of the words in Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn for the following reasons: 1) Twain a humorist and social critic of his time, deliberately wrote the novel in the dialect of the region in which he grew up and knew. Using colloquialisms and verbage used at that time. He used the word "nigger" in part to depict the racism of the society and critique it. At the time the book was published, the white society attempted to censor the novel and ban it for how it depicted racial relations at the time (Mark Twain wrote it shortly after the Civil War, and the book took place before the Civil War when Missouri was still a slave state). I figured that out when I was in Junior High and read it for the first time. Anyone who has read this novel - realizes it is written in dialect and in the voice of an uneducated, poor white boy, in Missouri in the 1800s. 2) It is in my opinion the height of self-righteous arrogance not to mention gall to change someone else's words to please your own sensibilities - specifically in their published work of art without their permission or knowledge, and long after their gone. Granted Twain most likely wont care, but we change his meaning, we change his words, it's not longer by Mark Twain. And where does it end? The slippery slope is a slick one. It reminds me a bit of when Turner decided to colorize black and white films - ruining several as a result. His decision to do this had a positive result - many, Martin Scorsese amongst them rushed forward to restore the films to their original black and white glory. In many cases the filmmaker deliberately chose the black and white medium even though color was available. 3) How do we learn from past blunders if we erase them? Our novels are history. A historical record of where we have been. To go back and change bits that we don't like, edit them out - is worse than George Lucas going back and editing his original Star Wars Films (something that still grates on my nerves - but at least he was the original creator.). 4) Why do it? To protect someone's feelings? To make it accessible? First children have been reading this novel for ages. The word exists. And I've read books by numerous authors who have used words such as "cunt", "mick", "honky", "puta", etc...And as a child I was tormented by kids who used words they'd read in Kurt Vonnegurt's Slaughterhouse 5 (which I remember reporting to my mother - whose response was to initiate a Junior Great Books Reading Club at lunch time to discuss these books and books like them in a safe and friendly setting. She could have protested and had the book banned from the library or school of course - which is the easy path, the one that requires the least time on her part -- and they would have complied no doubt - but banning books any books was considered the root of all evil in my home, and besides what would it have solved? That's why the boys reading it to begin with - because it was forbidden. What they ached for was someone to discuss it with. ) I was taught by my parents that the answer is not to censor but to discuss, to analyze, to examine, to think it through and to understand why a word such as "nigger" is nasty and how Mark Twain used it and how others have and what it means. In short I was taught to THINK not run away, or hide from things that offended me. But to think about them. Censorship is not the answer - all you do is bury it underground and slide into Orwellian Groupthink. Perhaps, methinks, a re-reading of George Orwell's 1984 and Ray Bradbury's Farentheit 451 is in order?

Sorry, for the rant. But I feel rather strongly about that. I'm all for political correctness in some settings, but art...and expression? We need that. We need to know how others view the world. Twain's Huck Finn challenged how many of his contemporaries saw racial relations, and serves as a historical reference point for the race wars that existed. It took place before the civil war - in a slave state. From the perspective of a boy, who runs away with a runaway slave - Jim. The boy sees Jim as Jim. But those around him...see Jim as the slave, a nigger, lower than low - and Twain deftly shows through Huck's eyes that the people who use that word are in fact the unworthy ones. It is a love story between Jim and Huck - and you need, require that word to understand what Jim sacrifices for Huck and what Huck owes Jim. How alone Jim is, how desperate. And how dependent they are on each other. There's a reason Huck Finn resonates ...it's an anti-racism book, depicting that people are in the end just people.

But interpretations clearly vary. (shrugs). And that's okay. But censoring is NOT the answer. Nor is changing the content. That's kills discussion. And we need the discussion!