Laura Murphy wants people to know that she is no book burner . . . just a book banner. The Fairfax County mother of four has been campaigning to ban the Pulitzer-prize-winning American novel “Beloved” from the school system due to its depictions of bestiality, rape, and murder. She says that her teenage son read the book as a senior in his Advanced Placement English class and was traumatized with nightmares as a result. Now she wants to ban the book for any child to read.
“Beloved” depicts the harrowing life of a mother who killed her child to protect it from a life in bondage. In receiving the Pulitzer prize, the citation says that Toni Morrison wrote “novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, giv[ing] life to an essential aspect of American reality.” That however is a bit too much reality for Murphy. She has campaigned for six months to ban the book and school board members are now reading the book as part of the long appellate process.
The fact that this book is being read by seniors in advanced placement English is a particularly important fact. Murphy’s son is one year from college and being sent into the world as an adult. He wanted to take advanced English which deals with a higher level of reading and reading material. Even if his mom succeeds in banning this book, he will face the same nightmares in college where such books are common.
I respect Murphy’s commitment to her child and her work as a member on school committees. However, her protection of her son from these forms of literature does not serve his interests any more than banning it for others. These books can shock and disturb students. However, they also challenge their preconceptions and expose them to extraordinary writing. Indeed, it is Morrison’s passion and skills as a writer that produces such intense responses.
Murphy insists that “I’m not some crazy book burner.” No, she would be a book banner who (for students and teachers wanting to read this book in school) is like a book burner without the fire.
Source: Washington Post
Apologies to all, my summations miss the real content which you expose.
Particularly, to Mike Appleton and even more to Malisha.
If we don’t look into the chamber of horrors, how can we say that we should be entrusted to decide anything in this nation. Go back to your football. Get your jollies and sleep well after a “bra knull”. Tomorrow another day of a55-kissing.
Leave the big stuff to Obama or Dubja or any ot our two party pols.
And to Gewurtztraminer, thank you for revealing the clay feet of the latest WashDC immigants. Beautiful imagery.
But would it have been weaker if they were agnostics from Wisconsin? Ask yourself that.
PS
Democracy does not mean a two-party system. Nor is the addition of several parties requiring careful negotiations between to establish alliances.
The weakness is the “majority rules” rule. 🙂 Rule again is enforced by one votes margin.
Democracy for anyone (?) who does not know, I believe, is the rule by the common man, not the elite.
Do we have it? Hardly..
Wow, whom should I praise most:
Messpo, with his amusing and litterarily founded review of “Beloved”. Much appreciated.
GeneH, for his attention to correctness but missing my liberty to take “pompous” from one row/sentence and put it together with “hot air bag” from another. As for not making a molehill out of nothing. Soft answers are not usually of much value here. Conflation is in the eye of the beholder.
Mike Appleton, who provides an effective rebuttal as to the intent and wished for effect of “Beloved”.
That is an effective example of how the reader is obliged to work a bit with his own notions, and try to see if the message is there and if it is worthy in itself.
Malisha, who walking her own path, as she usually does, shows us a world, convincingly our world, as a place of horrors. A source for nightly nightmares or daymares if you nap. One disturbing experience after the other, and some will not see it or can not. I., like an unnamed person here, can not enter these horror chambers other than at my emotional peril. It ain’t healthy for me. Not saying how it is for others.
But Messpo’s tastes are most interesting in that I have views on litterature, and can often discern what “genre” or technique the whole is aimed at. But his feat, and it is that, to read 494 (?) pages of Civil War descriptive material is impressive both as to length and as to the type of book it was. More citations, but this is not a litterary blog. Sad.
I abhor those books that open with 15 pages of purely descriptive material, and those who expect us to miraculously see the world through their eyes without any aid, or those who venture into a genre where they have no apparent talent.
Conceit reigns in Stockholm again? Perhaps.
Let’s be sure not to mention that the housewife, Laura Blake Murphy, is trying to sell copies of her vanity press book, My Little Messenger — or that the daddy, Dan Murphy, is general counsel at BGR Group: Haley Barbour’s megalobby devoted to the Bushian promotion of tobacco, big oil, and central Asian dictators. The messed up kid, Blake, is just a pawn for their money-grubbing backward poltical positions. Nothing to see here folks: it’s what you get with C-student Floridians going to Christian white flight academies, Alabama public colleges, and Notre Dame, then swooping in to Washington to cash in with the party of rape.
Malisha´s right.
Excuse me, is it not a sign of mental health to have nightmares when you read a book that correctly and accurately portrays a REAL NIGHTMARE that occurred in the lives of REAL PEOPLE? Shouldn’t we hope that our high school seniors are sensitive enough and empathetic enough to have nightmares when they read depictions of slavery that are essentially accurate and historically supported by primary source documents? Shouldn’t this mother be teaching her son that there are times when man has been so inhumane to his fellow-man that he has made life into a veritable nightmare? Shouldn’t this young high school senior get some genuine help, if it be therapeutic or religious or spiritual or educational, whatever, to help him deal with the realization that torture, murder, deprivation of rights, and yes even infanticide are ALL PART OF OUR WORLD?
I began to read accounts of the Holocaust at a very early age because I am a post-Holocaust Jew. I was horribly upset by them; who wouldn’t be? That is part of being human. Then, in school, I began to read accounts of slavery, and again, was horribly upset. I could never get to the answer to the simple question: How could anybody DO THIS? But unfortunately, one of the answer is: We do not let ourselves suffer the consequences of our own inhumanity, if we can help it. Those of us who can slide by without feeling the terror, rage and helplessness one naturally feels when reading about such things often do so — to the ultimate peril and detriment of our entire world. Saving one person from having to feel bad about bad things is itself a manifest evil. Let us understand what we have done as a people, as humans, as sufferers of and inflictors of exploitation, deprivation, torture and death. We must come to a point of having enough courage to understand this; there is no easy way.
Special thanks to Toni Morrison for writing that book. And to the AP English teacher who taught it.
Thank you for your loving caring heart. All need to be like you.
Ms. Murphy’s concerns are misdirected. She ought to be focused on why her high school senior son appears to have been so traumatized. Since millions of people have read the book without similar reactions, one must consider whether this young man does not fall within the class of individuals whom we would describe as persons of ordinary sensibility.
High school AP classes are supposed to be challenging. Moreover, the graphic language and disturbing scenes in Ms. Morrison’s novel are not intended to serve as historical narrative, but as illustrative of the dehumanizing and soul-destroying effects of slavery, a lesson which I personally do not believe has been well absorbed in this country. Whether Ms. Morrison is a good storyteller or a bad storyteller is beside the point. Presumably AP students can use their developing critical thinking skills to discuss both the literary merits of the book and the truth of its underlying themes.
Contrary to her self-serving remarks, Ms. Murphy is indeed a book-burner in the classic sense. Her desire is to censor literature that does not meet her lowest-common-denominator guidelines or which raises issues which she finds uncomfortable.
P.S. to all: If you want a good book, I just finished re-reading — for the third time — James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom. I have no idea how you can totally capture the most important four years in our history in 952 pages but McPherson does it magnificently. Simply put there is no better fit-in-your-hand treatment of the Civil War era anywhere. It’s all there from the practically bloodless Battle of Ft. Sumter to the gentlemanly end of hostilities at the Mclean House in Appomattox. Along the way you feel the late afternoon July heat in Gettysburg, cross the bloody bridge at Antietam and go into Lincoln’s War Cabinet as he battles confederates, copperheads, and his own party. Not just recommended reading but implored reading.
Hmmmmm……sounds like a good read. Would have never heard of it, had that wacky lady not wanted to ban it…
College prep students used to be the ones that always had their noses in a book. If her son really wanted to go to college, he should have already read at least half of the books in his local public library on his own. Alas, times have changed. Still, in Europe university prep students attending their local public schools receive the equivalent of the first 2 years of an American college education “for free” (OK, we pay high taxes, but at least we get something for them).
Gene H:
“On that we agree 100%.”
*********************
We always agree; we just “think” it different.
ID:
“I seldom like Nobel Litterature Prize takers books. Perhaps because I don’t understand them. Can this be the case here in your appreciation of the work? Just asking, not snarking. I don’t snark, but I do speak directly.”
***********************
You should never apologize — even a little — for not understanding the written work of someone else. It is the duty of the writer to permit the reader to understand his perspective taking into account the nature of the audience. That’s communication 101.
If the writer can’t get his point across to you, that’s his fault. Not yours.
mespo,
“Morrison’s just not a particularly good story teller. She’s like a lot of southern authors: self-indulgence approaching the bounds of eccentricity and with little regard for the reader. It’s a tough read and not really worth effort like say, Dostoyevsky. With him you put the wordy treatise down and think, “I’ve actually discovered something worthwhile about myself or someone else.” With Morrison you usually think, “Who the Hell is she talking about now with all these unclear pronouns?”
On that we agree 100%.
I didn’t call you pompous, id707. I said, “you are a bag of hot air on the issue of causation versus blame and I’m calling you out on it.” Also, do not be so sure about that intent thing. It sounds to me from your Syrian exchange like you learned what I wanted you to learn. Namely, when you don’t know, don’t conflate. The analysis of causation requires knowing, not conjecture, unless there is no other option in dealing with a relevant unknown.
id:
I think Morrison’s book was written to awaken some sleeping dollars but aren’t they all. It’s a shock value book (cutting your kid’s head off with a hacksaw?. I’d get nightmares about that, too.)) written with a perspective that was rarely seen before its time. Unique or not it’s not my cup of tea. I have no problem with books on the evils of slavery but Morrison does a sloppy job as a historian, a grammarian, and a writer and the the thing just moves sooo slooow. It also fails as a fantasy tale or ghost story. Morrison’s just not a particularly good story teller. She’s like a lot of southern authors: self-indulgence approaching the bounds of eccentricity and with little regard for the reader. It’s a tough read and not really worth effort like say, Dostoyevsky. With him you put the wordy treatise down and think, “I’ve actually discovered something worthwhile about myself or someone else.” With Morrison you usually think, “Who the Hell is she talking about now with all these unclear pronouns?”
I’ll take the classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin if I want a rabble-rousing, slave trader hatin’ story:
“The huge green fragment of ice on which she alighted pitched and creaked as her weight came on it, but she staid there not a moment. With wild cries and desperate energy she leaped to another and still another cake;–stumbling–leaping–slipping–springing upwards again! Her shoes are gone–her stocking cut from her feet–while blood marked every step; but she saw nothing, felt nothing, till dimly, as in a dream, she saw the Ohio side, and a man helping her up the bank.” (Ch. 7)
Now that’s an American novel.
Mespo,
I must disagree with you on Morrison’s book. I think it is very appropriate for high school. At the age of 8 I was blessed to have parents who would go to the local library and sign a document saying I could take out any book in the library without restriction because of my age. I had no censorship of my reading at home, or what I could watch on TV, or in the movies. I rsised my children into adulthood with the same philosophy and all of us have turned out fairly well. Too often people try to hide the reality of the cruelties that exist in life from their children. Not only do I think it does a disserviice to the child, but it also runs counter their own growth experiences.
The book she wants to ban has a sexual activity mentioned in it.. There are murder novels no one complains about. Why get up in arms about a sexual activity. That is beyond stupid. That book unashamedly talks about life as it is. That offends the devil. Innocent honesty enrages the devil. That is who is speaking through the person wanting to ban that book. Don’t ban it. Spit into the face of Satan.
Mark,
Were slave men like this during slavery? I would only presume to offer Betty Kath’s link which provides a little of the truth of Margeret Garner’s life.. Morrison’s book was certainly conceived to awaken some sleeping souls, black or white.
Tastes do differ, but how to get people to read it and get the message, it is often necessary to use, as in this case, the realities of life. Including bestiality, rape and restraint of a peculiar kind not often witnessed today.
I seldom like Nobel Litterature Prize takers books. Perhaps because I don’t understand them. Can this be the case here in your appreciation of the work? Just asking, not snarking. I don’t snark, but I do speak directly.
For myself, I am only speculating as I have not read it. But it was with pleasure I saw a black American woman receive the prize here in Stockholm.
I would recommend it to any pre-college, but perhaps not as first exposure to reality. A child springs with short legs, and an immature mind sees the world within its grasp. Impaired by the glitz and glam of today. JC, himself, help us!!!.
The book she wants to ban has a sexual activity mentioned in it.. There are murder novels no one complains about. Why get up in arms about a sexual activity. That is beyond stupid. That book unashamedly talks about life as it is. That offends the devil. Innocent honesty enrages the d4vil. That is who is speaking through the person wanting to ban that book. Don’t ban it. Spit into the face of Satan.
Mesopo,
Maybe it strikes to close to home and they try and keep some family history in the attic…. So to speak…..
It is the low of the day there. I will make this post and depart.
To all Americans, not pompously meant but as a loving gesture from me.
Now black men are still threats to the white man’s virility or lack thereof, as the white man experiences it. So, how otherwise explain their disappearance in our system of social entrapment and rapid disappearance in our incarceration for profit system. Terms like “lazy drug-ridden morally degenerate good for nothing—black man will not do. All the black men were castrated once upon a time, not physically but literally in being denied the chance of fatherhood in its fullest expression..
And we wonder at their PTSD that is renewed at every opportunity here in America, home of the free, but also home of cowardly white men.
Amazing, the loss that America made in their souls in allowing the first slave to be brought her at 3/8th of a human value. My African contacts are delighted to meet someone, even in Sweden, who sees them as a person bearing a worthy heritage. Of course, it’s availability can be discussed. They were all living in what were recently cruelly persecuted colonies at one time and the descendants bear that burden vv the white world. Enslavement in your native country, how cruel is that. And the Belgians were worst, followed by the Portuguese. Nuf said.
(Let us not forget the IMF and World Bank and the rapacious greed that we attack the continent again in these very days.)
Thanks for the loan of the platform. I hope that the Professor’s expectations of ROE are met in part at least.
=============
I write in this manner because I would feel the pain excruciatingly and perhaps unbecomingly if I used my heart’s words.
Keeping it at arms length is necessary, when I face the terrible news of each passing day. Today, besides the news, I was asked, as my sympathy and world knowledge was evident, by a Syrian Christian (30%) immigrant what I thought ot the situation in Syria. I don’t know, which is true, I replied; but I was more interested in his views. When did you last speak openheartedly with an immigrant to USA?
Thanks to GeneH for helping me reach that insight. But he did not intend that, but I do listen carefully to what he abuses me with. As usual there is some truth in what he says.
“Pompous, hot air bag”, he called me.. Perhaps this declaration will help you all understand and perhaps me as well.
I cannot cry as some here can, but I bleed, just as Shylock of the “Merchant of Venice” did..
I think we can draw the distinction between banning books and simply not making this a required book for high school reading. It is beyond racy and not suitable for every kid about to enter college. That said, it seems we could make it available to older teenagers and parents who want to read it without forcing them to do it. I’m not a fan of the book since it seems more heat than light to me, but here’s a possibly arguably objectionable excerpt for your consideration :
Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home …The five Sweet Home men looked at the new girl and decided to let her be. They were young and so sick with the absence of women they had taken to calves. Yet they let [Sethe] go, so she could choose in spite of the fact that each one would have beaten the others to mush to have her … It took her a year to choose — a long, tough year … eaten up with dreams of her. A year of yearning, when rape seemed the solitary gift of life. The restraint they had exercised possible only because they were Sweet Home men — the ones bragged about while other farmers shook their heads in warning at the phrase.
“And so they were: Paul D., Paul F., Paul A., Halle Suggs, and Sixo, the wild man. All in their twenties, minus women, f*cking cows, dreaming of rape, … rubbing their thighs and waiting for the new girl … She waited a year. And the Sweet Home men abused cows while they waited for her.”
Not exactly Rebecca of Sunny Brook farm stuff.
Betty Kath,
I will repeat your link after reading it. It hurt in my belly to read it. Perhaps we can begin with this link and proceed to “Beloved”. There is neither here in the link or the book, nor in reality any happy endings to the consequences of slavery in America. It would not have been Pulitzer Prize material otherwise.
http://www.margaretgarner.org/MargaretGarnerBrief.pdf