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Before that report the Board had some lively discussion about the library's Internet use policies. A resident complained (after the fact) that her 12-year old daughter was invited to view a pornographic web site by her friends at the library. Viewing porn is a violation of library policy, but the library does not use any filters. The Board will be reviewing this complex issue, including a presentation on the state of the art of such filters. Assuming one could define what porn is (recall US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's declaration on obscenity that "I know it when I see it,"), there no 'porn switch' that one can turn off. Filters tend to be over-inclusive or under-inclusive. frontline: american porn: readings & links: the definition of ...
The Board also discussed some unhappiness with the presence of the Monona Municipal Court in the media room. Some members and staffers feel the uses are simply incompatible. The Board decided that the library staff should talk it over with the court staff and see if we can resolve some of the issues.
On a happier note, the Board voted to accept a donation from MG&E for the Sustainability Section of the Monona Public Library.
Book Talk (and talk and talk...)
I brought 8 books to the Board's attention (yes, that was too many), all fiction on this go round. I brought representative books in some my favorite genres.
My first pick was Rumpole Misbehaves: A Novel (Rumpole Novels) by John Mortimer. British barrister Horace Rumpole is one of my very favorite fictional characters. His views on society, law, justice, and marriage are nearly always hilariously funny, but insightful. He actually still believes in a fair trial for the criminally accused - even for the ones society despises. The book features a regrettable innovation in British law known as Anti Social Behaviour Orders.
Another book in the line of British humor and excellent historical fiction is George Macdonald Fraser's Flashman: A Novel (Flashman), the first book in a series. Flashman is an anti-hero who serves in the British army beginning in the The First Afghan War (1839-1842). Flashman is a cad, a coward, a womanizer, and an accidental hero who finds himself in the midst of famous and not-so-famous British episodes in British imperial history.
Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian, the book that started perhaps my favorite series of all time, introduces the reader to lucky Jack Aubrey, his inimitable physician Stephen Maturin, and feats of remarkable derring do by the British navy in the age of sail (Age of Sail - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia). Aubrey's character was based on the real-life exploits of Thomas Cochrane (Lord Thomas Cochrane : Naval Leaders : History : Royal Navy and Thomas Cochrane, the real 'Master and Commander' : Explorers ...). O'Brian's writing gives the lie to the false belief that historical fiction can not also be fine literature.
The movie Master and Commander - The Far Side of the World (Widescreen Edition) ~ Russell Crowe, Paul Bettany, James D'Arcy, and Edward Woodall (DVD - 2004) was based on this and other of O'Brian's books.
I also brought along two books from the excellent reprint series NYRB Classics.
Life and Fate (New York Review Books Classics) by Vasily Grossman and introduced by Robert Chandler is the classic epic novel of WWII Russia that centers on the Shaposhnikova family and their life in totalitarian Stalinist Soviet Russia, and in particular on the Battle of Stalingrad, but there are literally dozens of characters in a multitude of settings. The tale is unrelentingly grim. Nearly every character dies, is betrayed to the Soviet authorities, or simply suffers - and no ordinary suffering, but genuine Slavic deprivation.
Grossman was a decorated Soviet military journalist who moved gradually toward the dissidence that flowers in his epic novel. (See this article for more on how this hero became a dissident, Under Siege: The New Yorker) What is remarkable, and a matter of some debate today, is how Grossman ever imagined that his book would be published in the Soviet Union - as he proposed during the thaw under Nikita Khrushchev. Instead, while Grossman was not molested, his book was taken "under arrest" by the KGB in 1961. Fortunately, Grossman kept two undeclared copies that were smuggled out to the West in 1980 and published in 1985. Life and Fate is not an easy book to read on several levels. As Robert Chandler's excellent introduction to the New York Review of Books edition puts it, Life and Fate is "almost an encyclopedia of the complexities of life under totalitarianism" and the pressures brought to bear on the individual.
Chandler has also written about Grossman and the book at: Portrait: 'Vasily Grossman' by Robert Chandler Prospect Magazine ...
The other NYRB book I discussed was The Towers of Trebizond (New York Review Books Classics) by Rose Macaulay and introduced by Jan Morris. Rose Macaulay was a fascinating person and popular author in the first half of the 20th century. Her book The Towers of Trebizond is described by Morris: Introduction by Jan Morris:
"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass." So begins The Towers of Trebizond, the greatest novel by Rose Macaulay, one of the eccentric geniuses of English literature. In this fine and funny adventure set in the backlands of modern Turkey, a group of highly unusual travel companions makes its way from Istanbul to legendary Trebizond, encountering potion-dealing sorcerers, recalcitrant policemen, and Billy Graham on tour with a busload of Southern evangelists. But though the dominant note of the novel is humorous, its pages are shadowed by heartbreak—as the narrator confronts the specters of ancient empires, religious turmoil, and painful memories of lost love.
I've always loved the American West, in particular the Old West. I chose The Big Sky by A. B. Guthrie Jr. to represent this interest. This book was chosen "the best novel of the American West" by the Western Literature Association. If you enjoy Larry McMurtry's westerns, you'll enjoy Guthrie's work. Alfred Bertram Guthrie, Jr. The book description runs thus:
Originally published more than fifty years ago, THE BIG SKY is the first of A. B. Guthrie, Jr.'s, epic adventure novels of America's vast frontier. THE BIG SKY introduces Boone Caudill, Jim Deakins, and Dick Summers, three of the most memorable characters in Western American literature. Traveling the Missouri River from St. Louis to the Rockies, these frontiersmen live as trappers, traders, guides, and explorers. The story centers on Caudill, a young Kentuckian driven by a raging hunger for life and a longing for the blue sky and brown earth of big, wild places. Caught up in the freedom and savagery of the wilderness, Caudill becomes an untamed mountain man, whom only the beautiful daughter of a Blackfoot chief dares to love. With THE BIG SKY, Guthrie gives us an unforgettable portrait of a spacious land and a unique way of life.
I've always enjoyed a good tale of espionage and this fictional genre has generated a surprising number of excellent writers, such as like Graham Greene and John LeCarre. I would include Alan Furst in this category and brought along his book Kingdom of Shadows. From Amazon: "Furst has fashioned here an elegant gem that vividly portrays the city of Paris during the last peaceful days of 1938 and the menace of Hitler's ambitions in the Sudetenland and beyond." Furst calls his work "historical spy fiction".
See CNN.com - Spy novelist Alan Furst: 'I love the gray areas ... and Alan Furst News - The New York Times
I closed with a reading from A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor. O'Connor sets her stories in the rural South and populates them with flawed, grotesque, and twisted characters - this is not the imagined noble, glorious, and chivalric South, but rather the real South of the poor and middling whites of the 1950's(race is mostly in the background). She catches the nuances of human behavior. Her stories have powerful, unexpected and disturbing endings. My belief is that reading the first paragraph of any of her short stories is enough for the story to grab you by the lapels and insist that it be read.
"The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when they saw Mr. Shiftlet come up their road for the first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned forward, shading her eyes from the piercing sunset with her hand. The daughter could not see far in front of her and continued to play with her fingers. Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of..."
"The Board will be reviewing ... the state of the art of such filters. .... Filters tend to be over-inclusive or under-inclusive."
ReplyDeleteNot exactly. Hopefully the Board is fully informed with the truth and not only the American Library Association's misinformation. Here is something that should be considered, for example:
ACLU v. Gonzales, E.D. Pa., March 2007 [ACLU expert and court agree Internet filters are about 95% effective and no longer block out breast cancer and other health-related information—so effective that another law, COPA [Children's Online Protection Act], was found unconstitutional].
Further, the library makes Google available, but Google only searches 1/8 th of the Internet. The rest, known as the Deep Web, is searchable, but libraries do not make searching the Deep Web available. So while people complain about a few sites filters may miscategorize, the reality is the library is de facto blocking 7/8 ths of the Internet. Personally, I would take the library's concern over a few web sites more seriously if they were not skipping the chance to provide access to the Deep Web.