Subject: RE: Book burning? Excuse me?
From: Sonny (holden@thepentagon.com)
Date: Sat Jun 21 1997 - 06:03:01 GMT
In this whole brouhaha, I think we are generating more heat by
inappropriate analogies. Nazis, Oklahoma bombings and other sundry acts of
violence and damage to the innocents is NOT AT ALL analogus to somebody
protesting by burning a book that they were outraged by and have shown why
they were outraged by it. Any biased ill-founded sociological opinion
worked into an ostensible work of fiction, IMHO, is perfectly open to
protest. I think Jon Tveite put the whole thing in good enough perspective
and I personally think it is bad-form to get irrelevantly ad-hominem in an
arguement for lack of anything else to say. I think Robert Garcia was more
than articulate in listing out why Paz'z writing outraged him. For him, let
me append below a "fair-use" quote from Hapworth, 16:
---------------
Do not trample too quickly on
stupid books! One of the swiftest ways, though very enervating and
tortuous, to have a young, utterly competent boy like Buddy avoid
shutting his eyes to daily stupidity and foulness in the world is
to offer him an excellent, stupid, foul book: Perhaps in utter
silence one can then say to him, avoiding emotional sorrow or rank
fury in the voice, merely handing over the invaluable books on a
silver platter: "Here, young man, are two books both of which are
subtle, admirably unemotional, and unnoticeably rotten to the
core. Both are written by distinguished, false scholars, men of
condescension, exploitation, and quiet, personal ambition. I have
personally finished reading their books with tears of shame and
anger. Without another word, I give you these two godsent models
of the feculent curse of intellectuality and smooth education
running rampant without talent or penetrating humanity." I would
not say a single, additional syllable to the young man in
question. You may quite think this sounds very harsh again. It
would be only foolish and humorous to deny it; it is very harsh.
On the other side of the ledger, you may not know the dangers of
these men. Let us clear the air momentarily by examining them with
simple brevity.....
-----------------------------
At 03:52 PM 6/20/97 -0700, you wrote:
>>Man, we need more passionate acts in this depressing little world we
>>live in. But not people passing judgment and drastically labeling
>>others just because they take their own material objects and destroy
>>them in the way they see fit.
>
>Passion does not equal soul. You could call the Oklahoma bombing a
>passionate act as well.
>
>>Ah, this whole conversation is a load of crap anyway. All those
>>questions about this guy's parents are silly and ignorant, simply
>>because they bare no relevance to the case at hand. The guy didn't
>>try to destroy Octavio Paz's work. He just torched his own copy.
>>He publicly aired a negative opinion about Paz. If somebody airs a
>>positive opinion is that wrong? Why would only the opposite be
>>incorrect? Opinions are personal and in this forum we discuss our
>>own and each others. No one has to accept what someone else says.
>>We are all people with minds who have the ability to discern in our
>>own minds which opinions are valid and which are not.
>
>Call me old fashioned, call me sentimental, but I always believed that the
>only constructive way to refute another's beliefs was to write your own
>work, not be so childish as to merely start playing with matches and admit
>your intellectual frustration by having to destroy what you can't
>reasonably refute with your own words.
>
>And that is why Salinger is constantly banned. Because the people who
>attempt to ban him can't see the forest for the trees and mistake the foul
>language as merely swear words and have no grasp of the context.
>
>
>
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Sundeep Dougal (Sonny, to friends), Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA
http://www.thepentagon.com/holden
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