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| A Banned Book Is a READ Book One of Many Famous Banned Books: Lady Chatterley's Lover D.H. Lawrence ______________ |
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Has Anybody Seen the Invisible Man? (Jeffrey A. Brown)
__________
About
Has Anybody Seen the Invisible Man?
WHEN TED ELIOT, New York cabdriver and Army
veteran, sees two men attempting to abduct a pair of young, struggling
actresses—men who can turn both themselves and their victims invisible—he
should:
A. Get
his eyes checked.
B. Get
his head checked.
C. Leap
from his cab and attempt a daring rescue.
If
you’re a wannabe hardboiled detective, the obvious answer is C.
Eliot,
an old-school soul in a young man’s body, is crusty, rough around the edges,
street smart, irreverent, often politically incorrect, snarky, sexist, funny,
impulsive...
And
oddly likable, despite his myriad faults.
Blessed
with pluck and abundant dumb luck—and not much else—Eliot and actress Becky
Towers manage to capture one “invisible man”—even as the other absconds with Tower’s
roommate, Patty Robinson.
Eliot and
Towers resolve to keep their captive’s abilities a secret. They want Robinson
found and doubt that claims involving invisibility will persuade the police to
take her disappearance seriously.
But
when the “invisible man” escapes police custody and comes looking for Eliot and
Towers, they soon learn that, in order to rescue Robinson, they must journey to
a world of nightmarish monsters, megalomaniac psychics, and a traitor from
their own world.
They
learn that seeing isn’t always believing.
And
vice versa, too.
________________
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
JEFFREY A. BROWN lives near Dover, PA, a small
town on the edge of the Pennsylvania Dutch country that attained fleeting
international notoriety in 2004 when its school board added “Intelligent
Design” to the district’s Biology curriculum.
Both
Brown and his wife “Casey”—members of Dover’s school board at that
time—resigned in protest, testified in the subsequent trial, and Mr. Brown, at
least, thoroughly enjoyed his fifteen minutes of media attention. He was even a
punchline in a Jon Stewart monologue on The Daily Show, a fact he
intends to have emblazoned on his tombstone.
Brown
now writes fantasy/mystery novels, light humor—and recommends Ed Humes’ Monkey
Girl to anyone still interested in his hometown’s issues with Charles
Darwin.
When he
isn’t writing deathless prose, Brown cartoons, acts in and/ or directs plays,
and is also, when money gets tight, a self-employed electrician.
Has Your Book Been "Banned"?
If so, tell your story in the comment thread.
Keep in mind that a book ban entails more than a library or school choosing to remove your already published book from its premises.
For example,
Publishers, via omission, "ban" good and even excellent book manuscripts by rejecting them. Often, agents and editors will tell you that while your book is interesting and well-written, it has no market and will not sell enough to justify its cost.Fortunately, the marketplace is being shaken up with e-book publishing; getting published cheaply and getting one's book indexed online are now realities for those who go the self-publishing route. But keep in mind that search engines also have their ways of filtering information by burying it deep.
Book distributors typically ban self-published books from their distribution systems, almost ensuring that a book will not reach its market.
Book reviewers, who seem to fawn all over celebrities and their often lightweight tell-all books, tend to stick their noses up at self-published books, no matter their literary merit.
Bricks and mortar bookstores often refuse to stock self-published books, and when they do, the self-pubs will get shelved in out-of-way spaces.
This suggests that we have to get creative in getting our books indexed properly--one reason I have set up this site, which is doing surprisingly well, considering its newbie status (11 days old).
It has been suggested by establishment publishers that the "cream" will always rise to the top, but this is simply not true. The "cream" is decided by a few powerhouses in the publishing industry. Otherwise, how is it possible for poorly written celebrity books to hit the best seller list? How people connected to the publishing industry always seem to find publishers willing to take a chance on their books?
In the U.S., public schools and libraries face the wrong side of the legal system when they try to ban books from tax-payer public institutions, although some overly-sensitive souls will attempt to do so via backdoor techniques.
So it is unlikely that your book will be totally banned in a public venue. Most likely, it will be moved to an adult section, which is not always a negative thing. After all, you wouldn't want to find Last Tango in Paris shelved next to Charlotte's Web.
However, if a book is restricted in such a manner that accessibility is nearly impossible, then that's a problem.
Food for thought.
Ban My Book Publishing
Has your book been rejected by traditional publishers because (1) It's not commercial enough, (2) You're not a celebrity, and/or (3) Your book is too controversial?
If so, watch this space for a special announcement.
Meanwhile, feel free to tell your manuscript rejection tale of woe below.
If so, watch this space for a special announcement.
Meanwhile, feel free to tell your manuscript rejection tale of woe below.
Lady Chatterley's Lover: A Book Banned in Several Countries AND Tried in a Court of Law!
(Unexpurgated Edition)
__________________________________
You can read all about the troubled publication and legal history of Lady Chatterley's Lover on Wikipedia.
The basic plot summary:
The story concerns a young married woman, Constance (Lady Chatterley), whose upper-class husband, Clifford Chatterley, has been paralyzed and rendered impotent. Her sexual frustration leads her into an affair with the gamekeeper, Oliver Mellors. This novel is about Constance's realisation that she cannot live with the mind alone; she must also be alive physically.I have a personal tale about this book.
Wikipedia
Back when I was in Catholic high school (back in the mid-1960's), my best friend suggested that I read Lady Chatterley's Lover, a racy pot boiler filled with illicit sex and infidelity--a definite winner for a 15-year-old girl who avoided any book that smacked of being "Literature." I had managed to dodge Jude, the Obscure, The Scarlet Letter, and anything Shakespeare. I had read To Kill a Mockingbird, however, because I liked the teacher.
And our school library had the delicious Lady C in its collection!
I was puzzled, though--why was such a book in a Catholic high school library?
And after reading the book, I couldn't figure out why my friend had thought this book was such a big deal. In fact, the book seemed overwrought and missing something. I was disappointed.
Fast forward to my college years. Lady C was a required book for a course called Love and Sex in Literature.
Groan...Not that boring old thing. Dr. Ames, my prof, just smiled and said, "I think you'll see it in a different light now." And then she challenged me to find out why.
Wow, was she right! This college edition was nothing like the flaccid (excuse the pun) work that I had read in high school.
Had my innocent mind simply blanked out all those racy passages?
Nope. After some basic library research, I discovered that my high school library had added a heavily expurgated edition to its collection, perhaps the librarian's way of solving the thorny problem of literature vs. pornography. Evidently, my friend and I had read two different versions of the same book.
I went back and found an expurgated version and compared it to D.H. Lawrence's intended version.
It was horrible; the deleted passages, albeit racy and sometimes even a bit profane, constituted the heart of the book. Lady C isn't just about two people engaging in an extramarital affair and having a lot of sex in forbidden places but an entire treatise on the vast class divisions in Great Britain. Despite some profanity--most notably, the F-word--the love scenes are actually quite sweet and mild, at least by today's standards.
Although a bit overwritten, Lady C is an important literary work; in 1959, U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in favor of its literary merit:
Lady Chatterley's Lover was one of a trio of books (the others being Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill), the ban on which was fought and overturned in court with assistance by lawyer Charles Rembar in 1959. It was then published by Grove Press, with the complete opinion by U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Frederick van Pelt Bryan, which first established the standard of "redeeming social or literary value" as a defense against obscenity charges.The "redeeming social or literary value" standard was later upheld by the Supreme Court and has remained ever thus.
Wikipedia
Any time we think something should be banned, expurgated, or censored, we should keep Lady C in mind.
That means we must tolerate (maybe not like) hard pornography as part of the package, only going after those aspects of the industry that break the law (child porn, snuff porn, slavery, etc.).
We don't want to open that censorship door again just because we don't like someone else's depiction of sex.
Your thoughts?
Have Any of Your Own or Favorite Books Been Banned...
...By a school, library, bookstore, book club, or any other organization?
If so, post your story below!
If so, post your story below!
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