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To: Hemingway's Ghost
You wrote: "Does it bother you, as an artist, that there are those who'd seek to censor and prohibit your work based on their interpretation of it as pornographic, when creating a pornographic work was not your artistic intent?"

Interesting point.

I don't know of anyone who would seek to censor or prohibit my work. It is far (REALLY far) from what anybody would call legally pornographic.

I myself would not want it in a high school library, though, and that still causes me some consternation.

At present, the novel is only available as a read-only CD, distributed by me. So I've been able to control its distribution myself. I want to get myself organized enough to sell CD's via magazine ads and eBay, and use the money to fund an interactive website --- but then how would I discourage teenagers (for instance, my two young adolescent boys) from accessing it?

Only by the way I market it, I suppose. If I don't advertise in teenage venues, and the introduction has a fair warning of (mild) sexual content, I think I've done my duty.

Flannery O'Connor --- whose novels and short stories some people found disturbing --- was told by her confessor that she had no moral obligation to limit her writing to the level appropriate for 15-year-old girls.

O'Connor also says that if the writer has good previewers who will vet the unpublished work --- and has satisfied herself that the writing has moral integrity --- she is not responsible for the reactions of every imaginable (possibly emotionally unbalanced) reader.

If that were the case, no writing --- in fact, no communication --- would be possible.

If someone wants to ban my CD from their high school, though: quite frankly, I wish they would.

44 posted on 06/10/2005 7:31:35 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Make love. Accept no substitutes.)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
Interesting point. I don't know of anyone who would seek to censor or prohibit my work. It is far (REALLY far) from what anybody would call legally pornographic.

Well, see, therein lies the rub. There are those---many who post on FR, by the way---who see no distinction between pornography and obscenity (i.e., that which doesn't enjoy 1st Amendment protection), and would ban your work outright. What might be mildly erotic to you would be outright obscenity to others, and you would have no market, and no artistic voice whatsoever, if they had their druthers. When you make blanket statements like "all pornography is destructive," you give those folks all the ammunition they need to carry the day.

45 posted on 06/10/2005 7:45:20 AM PDT by Hemingway's Ghost (Spirit of '75)
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