Posted on 07/18/2008 11:38:31 AM PDT by leonard33
The New York Times recently ran a commentary on its Paper Cuts blog asking readers to name the most overrated books of all time and though the questionnaire was open to anyone who can read and write and still chew gum, mostly liberals chimed in, or so it seems. Two books topped the list, J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye," and God's "The Bible."
We'll take up Salinger some other time, except to say that the age of discontent (the 1960s) began the day "The Catcher in the Rye" was published, 1951
But, did you say the Bible? Yes, many people did. Apparently, God is politically incorrect, and so is Moses, who took down the dictation. Those five books would never get published today since, throughout the text, it makes a clear distinction between right and wrong, good and evil. No moral relativism. Imagine that!
(Never mind that our entire civilization is based on a single line from Leviticus: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.")
More than 300 readers wrote in, some in such fury as to be akin to literary road rage, and I read all the comments and even agreed with some. Yes, F. Scott Fitzgerald was a marvelous writer but "The Great Gatsby" is not really a great novel, and yes, Vladimir Nabokov wrote like a man new to the language with a thesaurus resting on his lap.
As if to prove that nothing goes these days without a whiff of anti-Semitism, one angry caller blamed everything on those "neocons."
In another section on Paper Cuts, there's an item on David Mamet, who declared, in the Village Voice, that he's given up being "a brain dead liberal." This, obviously, did not go over too well with brain-dead liberals, such as the brain-dead liberal who wrote: "I'm ashamed that jerks like Mammet (sic) have an audience."
What's next for Mamet (or even the Bible) - boycott? That's always a popular move when we don't like what the other person has to say. Al Sharpton, for example, tells us that he's "monitoring" Don Imus - here in this land of freedom of expression. Sounds like Big Brother to me, but that's just me.
Given my own experiences with political correctness in the world of publishing, I'd like to suggest another Q and A topic, this time on the question of "Which Books Would Never Get Published Today?" I'd open the discussion with the Bible, of course. ("Dear Moses: Thank you for your submission. However, we feel that your book does not meet our needs at the present time. Marketing would be especially difficult, given our demographics. Good luck elsewhere.")
A particular book editor once went bananas on me when I congratulated women in their 50s and 60s who still went romping. I was referring to the news that even the good women at the NY Times, like Maureen Dowd, were never too old for some hanky panky.
Why should governors have all the fun?
I can't think of anything more damaging to our culture than rules that restrict writers to specific codes of behavior. That's everywhere these days. (Try this line as I have in my latest novel, "The Bathsheba Deadline," and see what happens -- "The Koran Has Arrived and It Has Come to Devour The Bible.")
Though politically incorrect writers have always walked among us, starting perhaps with King Solomon who, in Ecclesiastes, summoned us to remember that "all is futile," two come to mind because they flourished at a place and at a time when to displease the authorities could mean decapitation - yet they wrote, and were even more outrageous than anything we have today, by way of fact, fiction or satire.
Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was a Dutch essayist and theologian and despite his devotion to his (nearly all-powerful) church, he satirized piety in "The Praise of Folly." Erasmus declared that foolishness is superior to wisdom, madness superior to sanity. ("A foolish man is no more unhappy than an illiterate horse. Both are true to themselves.") Back there and back then, that was dangerous!
But he persisted, and even got his works into the Canon, and it is doubtful that he'd have an easy time of it today, right here in the United States.
(Ann Coulter and Christopher Hitchens prove or disprove the rule; take your pick.)
Then we come to Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) who satirically suggested, in "A Modest Proposal," that the poor give up their children to the rich, as food. "I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled."
Good luck selling that to Knopf.
About the author: Jack Engelhard's latest novel, THE BATHSHEBA DEADLINE, now available in paperback, places journalism at the center of our war on terror. Best-selling author Robert Spencer ("The Politically Incorrect Guide To Islam") cites this book as "a rousing thriller about clashing civilizations" and Letha Hadady names it "a towering literary achievement." Engelhard wrote the international bestselling novel INDECENT PROPOSAL that was translated into more than 22 languages and turned into a Paramount motion picture starring Robert Redford and Demi Moore. .
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