Catcher in the Rye and TKMockingbird out of American Schools

[amused]

I just checked and there appears to be no ebook version of TKAM!!1!! WTF!!1!!??/??

Yeah, I wondered about that too. Harper Lee is opposed to the idea:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack ... s_yo_1.php

The torrent site versions are not legal.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I just checked and there appears to be no ebook version of TKAM!!1!! WTF!!1!!??/??

Yeah, I wondered about that too. Harper Lee is opposed to the idea:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack ... s_yo_1.php

The torrent site versions are not legal.

Oh noes!!!! I wouldn't want to download an illegal torrent!

btw, that link leads me to... "The torrent you are requesting does not exist... " but it is easy enough to find elsewhere, assuming you have less scruples than me.

[amused]

The best part of using the legit methods of ebook purchase is that your library is always stored in the cloud. I can lose every device I have and still get my library back. That has value, to me.

[hadespussercats]

I can understand how TK Mockingbird would resonate with people from Britain and America, two countries dripping with white guilt, but as an Irish person, whose people never harmed anyone except the odd occupational force, I'm not sure it would have the same resonance.

Well, maybe I might feel a special empathy with the black guy to a degree you lot may fully understand.

Hm. You think feeling guilty about slavery is necessary to consider TKAM a compelling read?

I don't.

To an extent, yes. The whole book was aimed at enlightening whitey over racial issues in America at the time. It's a culture Americans are steeped in. Racial tension is deep-rooted. The likes of the KKK have philosophy, religion and dodgy science on that shit. We have no equivalent in Ireland. I'll always just be reading it as a tourist.

That's not to say I won't find it good. It would be like you reading Joyce. Sure you may enjoy it but you won't have the intimacy with Dublin to fully appreciate. Maybe if you lived there a few years.

I don't know. When I was in high school, I felt zero personal responsibility for American racism and our heritage of slavery. Not only was my family Northern (and, as I thought at the time, by definition not racist) but I was descended from Quakers (my mom always talked of us hailing from a long line of abolitionists, which is true, but is only a small part of the story.) And I didn't live near anyone who wasn't white (much like you Irish folks) so I had no occasion to see racism in action. And I was too young to remember the civil rights movement as anything but newsreels on MLK day.

My stance on this stuff has changed a bit since then. But at the time, I connected with the book because of Scout and her family. The story of race was secondary. Maybe third-ondary.

[Animavore]

I just checked and there appears to be no ebook version of TKAM!!1!! WTF!!1!!??/??

Yeah, I wondered about that too. Harper Lee is opposed to the idea:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/artattack ... s_yo_1.php

The torrent site versions are not legal.

Oh noes!!!! I wouldn't want to download an illegal torrent!

btw, that link leads me to... "The torrent you are requesting does not exist... " but it is easy enough to find elsewhere, assuming you have less scruples than me.

Of course it doesn't work. You didn't think I'd post an illegal torrent did you?

[Animavore]

I can understand how TK Mockingbird would resonate with people from Britain and America, two countries dripping with white guilt, but as an Irish person, whose people never harmed anyone except the odd occupational force, I'm not sure it would have the same resonance.

Well, maybe I might feel a special empathy with the black guy to a degree you lot may fully understand.

Hm. You think feeling guilty about slavery is necessary to consider TKAM a compelling read?

I don't.

To an extent, yes. The whole book was aimed at enlightening whitey over racial issues in America at the time. It's a culture Americans are steeped in. Racial tension is deep-rooted. The likes of the KKK have philosophy, religion and dodgy science on that shit. We have no equivalent in Ireland. I'll always just be reading it as a tourist.

That's not to say I won't find it good. It would be like you reading Joyce. Sure you may enjoy it but you won't have the intimacy with Dublin to fully appreciate. Maybe if you lived there a few years.

I don't know. When I was in high school, I felt zero personal responsibility for American racism and our heritage of slavery. Not only was my family Northern (and, as I thought at the time, by definition not racist) but I was descended from Quakers (my mom always talked of us hailing from a long line of abolitionists, which is true, but is only a small part of the story.) And I didn't live near anyone who wasn't white (much like you Irish folks) so I had no occasion to see racism in action. And I was too young to remember the civil rights movement as anything but newsreels on MLK day.

My stance on this stuff has changed a bit since then. But at the time, I connected with the book because of Scout and her family. The story of race was secondary. Maybe third-ondary.

'k.

I've just obtained it somehow so I'll be reading it soon.

[hadespussercats]

Wow! How did you come by it so quickly?

[Cormac]

Well, apparently, in order to pave the way for more non-fiction books, Catcher in the Rye and To Kill A Mockingbird are out. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/book ... culum.html

Well, I have no objection to Catcher in the Rye being eliminated, on general principle of suckage. Holden Caulfield is perhaps literature's biggest toolbag, and the story is pointless and sucks, and the ending is a big nothing and monumentally blows.

But, TKaM? Harper Lee's book is certainly a must read.

Agreed, Catcher in the Rye is shite.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[JimC]

"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a very commonly proscribed text in secondary school English classes in Australia...

[Svartalf]

prescribed or proscribed? Your schools would forbid it? why in hell? I mean, when I was in high school, I was encouraged to read black authors like willa cather, carson mc cullers, or the guy who wrote Invisible Man.

[JimC]

prescribed or proscribed? Your schools would forbid it? why in hell? I mean, when I was in high school, I was encouraged to read black authors like willa cather, carson mc cullers, or the guy who wrote Invisible Man.

"On the required reading list"

[Svartalf]

Makes more sense.

[hadespussercats]

prescribed or proscribed? Your schools would forbid it? why in hell? I mean, when I was in high school, I was encouraged to read black authors like willa cather, carson mc cullers, or the guy who wrote Invisible Man.

Willa Cather:


Carson McCullers:


Ralph Ellison:


Only one of these authors was black. I'll let you figure out which.

[Svartalf]

Dammit... I've been misled... The teach was putting black perspective everywhere, esp in Reflections in a Golden Eye , The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or Sapphira and the Slave Girl... Of course, I wouldn't know it was white stuff, I was too busy reading Michael Moorcock and Friz Leiber at the time.