Subject: Re: a plea in mitigation
From: Jim Rovira (jrovira@drew.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 13 2001 - 14:34:48 GMT
It's hard to disagree with a response like that :) I guess the questions
to ask are, "Does a depiction of an evil psychiatric hospital in someone's
fiction necessarily imply a depiction of most psychiatric hospitals in
general?"
You can ask this question a number of ways:
"Does a person who depicts a single selfish, evil woman in a piece of
fiction hate all women?"
"Is a person who represents a single dishonest African-American a racist?"
When we start ansering "yes" to these questions (however sophisticated our
"yes" answers might be), we start playing the role of censor and
restricting creativity and start sounding like Thought Police or something.
I think it's pretty unfortunate that Kesey's book had that effect, though,
cause I agree with you here:
> Humanity & imaginative understanding remain irreplaceable.
> You can still come across them under the starchiest of uniforms
> & the wildest of hairdos.
>
> Scottie B.
I'm not entirely sure how he could have rewritten his book to avoid this
effect, and I'm not too sure if his book would have been as effective,
then, either.
So what do you do if you're a writer, Scottie?
Jim
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