Prompt Response - Week 7

When it comes to controversial novels, in general, I rally to the side of the written word.  However, I'm making quite a few internal assumptions when I say this, and these assumptions mostly have to do with the type of content I'm assuming is causing controversy around the book.  What I mean to say is that it seems like in America, the content that is objected to most frequently is sexual in nature.  From Tropic of Cancer to Lolita to Fifty Shades of Grey, our country has a long established history of an inability to handle sexual content rationally--most likely a puritanical hangover from our days in the original colonies getting dusted on moldy bread. Any piece of art or literature or media in this culture that makes it to the mainstream is judged, first and foremost, on its sexual content.  Look no further than Janet Jackson's immortal nipple-- thank you Google images-- if you really need proof that our country loses its collective shit over sex.  But on the other hand, every 8-year old boy in America is running around with a stuffed ninja turtle, kicking and punching his way to the corner for a time out while his parents just kind of smile, and shake their heads, and "boys-will-be-boys themselves" down to the juvenile detention center.

The point I'm trying to make here is not that somehow violence trumps sex, or vice versa, or that we should be scared of either in an artistic context, but simply this: who am I to judge? There're too many people in this country with radical values, and given that I don't rely on some ancient spectral figure(s) to discern what is morally or ethically right or wrong, the fact is that I'm never going to understand that kind of a perspective. This is good, in my opinion, because this helps me to ignore the "controversy" and focus on whether the work in question has any kind of artistic merit. This is why I can explain to someone, with no shame via a nuanced argument, why Lolita and Tropic of Cancer are canonical literary masterworks, and Fifty Shades of Grey is a trivial, if entertaining, exploration into light BDSM and sexual power dynamics.

Of course, there are different types of controversy. A work like A Million Little Pieces, written by James Frey and endorsed by Oprah's Book Club, was deemed "controversial" not because of its content, but because it was marketed as a lie. Initially published as a memoir, there was a major public backlash once it was discovered that Frey's work was largely fiction.  Oprah even recanted her personal endorsement.  In my mind, this shows exactly the value of a celebrity endorsement. Does the fact that Frey lied about the genre of the work somehow alter Oprah's posthumous experience reading the book? I don't think so. It was the content of the book that initially appealed to Oprah, not the controversy surrounding it; I think her initial review still has some value. Her initial review still implies that she enjoyed reading the book. The book was beautifully written, from a mechanical standpoint, and it feels like Frey was acknowledging a sort of "beat" tradition-- as in Ginsberg and Kerouac and Kesey and Thompson and Burroughs-- as far as novels centered around drug abuse are concerned.  Many, many other people disagree with me. The fact is this: an endorsement can only ever amount to an opinion. 

I also happen to have an opinion concerning A Million Little Pieces: I think it's brilliant. I think that it's brilliant for a true author of fiction-- someone who's job is essentially to be a fantastic liar-- to show such dedication to the lie. 

But then again, I haven't read it yet.