The Best Headline in the World
When Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison’s beloved book Beloved was challenged in Michigan last week, The New York Daily News responded with what has to be one of the top newspaper headlines of all time. Ready?
Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' is simplistic pornography, say two Michigan parents who don't appear to be very smartThat’s the headline. The piece itself doesn’t pull any punches, either:
Okay, if you compare "James and the Giant Peach" to "Beloved," then you are a moron and your opinion on anything doesn't count for anything ever again - not only on literature, but whether pepperoni belongs on Friday night's pizza. Also, regarding all the sex and violence and violent sex in a book about slavery whose author happened to win the highest literary prize in the world: watch "Roots," sister.As it turns out, the stylish NYDN piece is the good news. The bad news? Beloved, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1983, has already been pulled from some Michigan classrooms.
Labels: banned books
posted by Linda L. Richards at 2:15 AM
2 Comments:
Love it! Thanks.
It's both hilarious and heartbreaking. I love the fact that the depictions of slavery in Beloved are deemed to be too violent for a work of fiction...because of course, slavery was not at all a violent institution. Moreover, the classroom leaders seem to not know that Beloved is based on a real incident.
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