Home » Posts tagged "stephen king" (Page 9)

North Carolina School District Bans Literary Classic “Invisible Man”

No, not that Invisible Man.

 Yes, we write about the horror genre here, but the book under question is this  one:

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953 and is counted among the top 100 novels of the 20th century by the Modern Library, was just banned in Randolph County, North Carolina.

It’s a different kind of horrifying than what we usually talk about here, although the confusion is understandable, I guess– even Google Books makes mistakes (link here). Invisible Man addresses many of the social issues African-Americans faced during the middle of the 20th century, especially in the South. Rather than physical invisibility, Ellison’s narrator describes himself as socially invisible, and is a part of the “underground”. This is the book that the school board in Randolph County, North Carolina, voted 5-2 to remove from school libraries and reading lists (link here).

Banned Books week starts September 22. That’s Monday. This incident will, I’m sure, give Invisible Man some new visibility.

It’s been interesting following the news regarding banned and challenged books since last year’s Banned Books Week. Alan Moore’s graphic novel Neonomicon was removed from the library of Greenville, South Carolina in December of 2012; The Diary of Anne Frank was challenged in Michigan (it stayed); Marjane Satrapi’s incredible graphic novel Persepolis was removed from the Chicago Public Schools to public outrage (and restored); the anti-war manga classic Barefoot Gen was banned and then restored to libraries in a school district in Japan; and emails revealed that the former governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, had attempted to influence the textbook adoption process to prevent A People’s History of the United States from being taught in Indiana schools (not that that ever would have happened here anyway) and teacher education classes; and an Alabama senator attempted to remove Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye from state reading lists. With this week’s removal of The Invisible Man from North Carolina schools, that makes seven times I’ve seen banned and challenged books make the news, and there are so many more cases out there that I’ve never heard of, or that haven’t been reported to anyone at all.  And none of that includes the many other cases of censorship around the world.

To learn more about Banned Books Week, visit the website for Project Censored here and the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week here. And to discover more about banned books and media visit our Pinterest board on Banned Books here. Trust me, I worked hard on it and it is awesome. As for the kids of Randolph County, I’ll quote them Stephen King:

Don’t get mad, get even… Run, don’t walk, to the nearest nonschool library or to the local bookstore and get whatever it is they banned. Read whatever they’re trying to keep out of your eyes and your brain, because that’s exactly what you need to know.

 

Well said, Mr. King.

Not everyone, everywhere, has that choice. This week is a great time to celebrate that in this country, you can, in fact, do exactly that.

Posted on September 20, 2013 by , Reply

The Horror of Science Gone Awry

An article in The Guardian suggested that the absence of the supernatural monster from books generally considered horror fiction could be the end of the genre. I must respectfully disagree. While Becky Siegel Spratford, considered the expert on reader’s advisory in horror fiction, suggests that supernatural forces must be present for a book to be considered part of the horror genre, here at MonsterLibrarian we have always taken a broader view of what constitutes horror fiction (some would argue, I’m sure, that our definition is too broad). In fact, when we started out, with a much smaller number of genre divisions, one of the categories we had was “science gone awry”. It can be as terrifying as any supernatural creature, that’s for sure. We’ve since integrated the titles from that category into other subgenres, because it’s now such a common source of monstrosity. I confess that the books I remember as most terrifying from my own teenage years included not just Stephen King’s early works, but science fiction stories such as Asimov’s “Nightfall”, and medical thrillers, like Robin Cook’s Godplayer and Mutation. The natural world at its most frightening, and the dangerous obsessions of the mad scientist intent on altering, extending, or creating life–these are the stuff of terror, fear, and dread. And they have been for ages.

The advancement of science and the expansion of our world have changed us, and the source of our fears is now much more often the evil we do to each other and to the world around us, and how it rebounds to us. That’s not to say that we have abandoned our fears of attack from outside or supernatural forces, but mad science is hardly new to the horror genre. Critique of social, economic, and political issues isn’t new to the genre either, and the existence of that critique in a text doesn’t determine whether it’s horror–the emotional punch to the gut does that. Horror does not have to be, as the author of the Guardian’s article suggests, drawn from ancient fears and folktales, or from gothic novels. If it’s not somehow situated in the real, or at least the believable, then the fantastical elements are unlikely to succeed. In spite of the occasional moaning and groaning that horror is dead, it’s not. Like so many of the iconic monsters of the genre, as long as there are things to fear, it will rise. And, to answer the question the author poses of where we will find books that really scare us now… well, in a genre as broad as horror, there is a place for everyone to get their literary chills. And if you’d like some recommendations, we at MonsterLibrarian.com are happy to oblige.

Posted on May 18, 2013 by , Reply

Guest Review by Rocky Wood: The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy by Bev Vincent

We are lucky today to have a review by Rocky Wood, an expert on the work of Stephen King, of  Bev Vincent’s reference work The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy, which will be released in April.  Thanks very much, Rocky!

 

The Dark Tower Companion: A Guide to Stephen King’s Epic Fantasy by Bev Vincent (New American Library paperback – April 2013)

The Dark Tower Cycle is Stephen King’s magnum opus – an epic dark fantasy contained in eight novels and a novella. The ‘Cycle’ also leaks over into many of his other books and short stories; so that it can be argued King’s entire canon is Dark Tower-centric. We all know King’s popularity with readers but many have yet to be exposed to this complex tale – so much so that many readers would benefit from a Guide to the series. The protagonist is Roland Deschain – a sort of gunslinger knight from a fallen empire on a quest to save the central hub of the Universe from destruction. Along the way he gathers a group of followers and we learn more about the flawed hero as each novel passes.

Robin Furth, a former research assistant for King, has previously published a work closely aligned with defining each character, place and things like social aspects of Mid-World (the setting for Roland Deschain’s search for the mysterious Dark Tower) – Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Complete Concordance, Revised and Updated.

Bev Vincent, author of The Road to the Dark Tower, takes a different tack – explaining each novel and related story in a clean, easy to follow narrative style. Allied to these are a number of small chapters dealing with such things as Roland’s enemies and a fascinating section about settings from our own world (there is a definite transfer between Roland’s world and ours).

The book will be a boon to new readers, as well as those who are familiar but find some of the complexity and what King admits are loose ends daunting. There’s even an interview with King, in which he reveals some interesting background. Possibly less useful to the average reader but of value to Dark Tower junkies is the Dark Tower artwork section (each book has ‘Artist’s Edition’ featuring exquisite imaginings of many characters and the Dark Tower itself); although the section on the many graphic novels the series has spawned will be particularly useful in libraries carrying that popular form.

Libraries should benefit from carrying this book in two ways. Firstly, it will assist new and even seasoned readers of the Dark Tower Cycle to a better understanding and enjoyment of the tales. Secondly, it should help those who haven’t dabbled in the King of Horror’s fantasy master work to decide whether to jump in and borrow those novels and graphic novels and commit to the series. Vincent has a clear eyed commitment to providing these readers with a portal into Mid-World and its never ending reading pleasures.

Reviewed by Rocky Wood.

Rocky Wood is the Bram Stoker Award winning author of Stephen King: A Literary Companion and other works. He lurks at www.rockywoodauthor.com

Posted on March 23, 2013 by , Reply
First « 7891011 » Last