The New York Times, presently being driven into the ground by Punch Sulzberger and Co., nevertheless remains an interesting read for things other than politics. Here its Interactive division highlights Al Jaffee’s iconic “fold-ins,” a feature of Mad Magazine from its beginning.

To see them in action, click on the right hand side of the page and drag it across to the left.

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It sort of works, somehow. Though Robin as a Russian hooker is kind of stretching it.

Then the Dostoyevsky fans wade in:

you americans are so stupid. 85% of your nation are retards and that is your own statistic. you think all of you are so dump because of the major evil? no. you are so dump because you have no culture, only comics.

It should be noted, though, that not all Russians are enamoured with Dostoyevky. Vladimir Nabokov:

Dostoevski, who dealt with themes accepted by most readers as universal in both scope and significance, is considered one of the world’s great authors. Yet you have described him as “a cheap sensationalist, clumsy and vulgar.” Why?

Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoevski as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist. He was a prophet, a claptrap journalist and a slapdash comedian. I admit that some of his scenes, some of his tremendous, farcical rows are extraordinarily amusing. But his sensitive murderers and soulful prostitutes are not to be endured for one moment—by this reader anyway.

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So, I go looking for a picture of Sun Tzu to illustrate this post and guess who pops up. I have no idea what the story is behind it. It doesn’t look like it’s been photoshopped, and it appears on what seems to be a serious site about the Chinese strategist. (Scroll down and it’s on the right side, under “Women Warriors.”

All this is a distraction from the most exciting news that the scholars at Something Awful have found an early draft of Sun Tzu’s famous manuscript:

Master Sun said:

If your men hear a strange sound
In the middle of the night
The best tactical maneuver available
Is to have everyone split up
And wander aimlessly in the woods
By themselves
While yelling “Hello?”

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A friend who has been, like Andrew, trying to break into the mainstream publishing business for sometime came up with some interesting insights the other day regarding the process of publishing today. Basically, a would be author needs to have a sponsor to get an agent, and the agent then pushes their work into the publishing houses. No agent; no access is about it. The problem for anyone starting out in this field is to find that all important agent. And therein, Guido has discovered, lies the rub!

Perusing a copy of Writers and Artists Yearbook is hardly rivetting reading, but, in the interests of fairness, Guido did so. It proved enlightening, because there are a large number of agents listed, the vast majority of whom openly declare that they are not interested in taking on any new authors. Those that don’t state this have other means of weeding out any would be author that approaches them – “Oh yes, delighted to look at your MS, please send the first three chapters and a synopsis” is the usual response – and when the would be author does, a week later it is returned, unread with a rejection slip. Now Guido is a skeptical man, experience has taught him that there are always three sides to a story, so he followed up on some of the information he had been given and discovered that the situation is far from open or straight forward.

Evidently there are around six thousand manuscripts submitted to publishers agents each year. Of these perhaps forty actually make it into print. That figure alone seemed extraordinarily low, so Guido double checked, and found that that was a generous figure for unsolicited fiction – it is probably much, much lower. So how does a “new” author actually get noticed?

Well, apparently it comes back to the good old system of patronage. If you have a patron the doors swing open, if you don’t, it’s the tradesman’s entrance if you are lucky. In fact even the Tradesman’s Entrance is now guarded it seems since the publishing equivalent of the TE is to go through the “self publishing” route – and now you discover that the mainstream booksellers don’t like to list or display anything “self promoted” by the author. Well, I suppose they wouldn’t want to do that, after all, it breaks up a nice cosy cartel if you let just anybody sell their work doesn’t it.

Curious, Guido next looked at how things like “Best Seller” lists, “Booker Prize” and other “promotional” opportunities were managed and discovered that here too there are a number of important filters which keep the unpatronised author at bay. Only a publisher can send in entries for inclusion to any of these – and again the self publishing houses are excluded, officially! If proof of this is needed look no further than the Edge Hill University “Booker” Prize for Short Story writers, the rules for which declare “NO self published authors, NO collections from individuals – only from recognised publishing houses. Look at the regular contributers of short stories in any of the handful of magazines which still publish short stories and you discover that nearly all of them are either graduates of one or other of the universities that run English Lit courses and have lecturers who sit on editorial boards. No wonder newcomers from outside that field stand no chance at all.

Having been stung a couple of times buying books (usually at an airport for a long haul flight on which Guido can never sleep!) that are “Booker Prize winner!” or “Best seller!” and finding after wading through the first few chapters that even the Emergency Procedure for Landing on water card in the seat pocket is more rivetting reading, (Guido has left numerous such purchases on aircraft, it simply not being worth the effort to carry them off again!) Guido has wondered what made the author worthy of the prize or the inclusion in a “Best Seller” list. Now he thinks he knows, its all a giant marketing con. If you emblazon something with the appropriate label, punters like Guido will be gulled into buying it.

Well, this little excursion into the murky world of publishing has convinced Guido of one important thing. Some of the authors in print ARE very good. The vast majority however, are not and sadly that fact that they have patrons who got them into the field through whatever doors and by whatever means, they will continue to take your money and laugh while other far better authors are excluded from being published. Its a shame really, but then, that is the system and until it can be broken up and exposed for the sham it is, it is likely to continue as it is.

One is forced to wonder just how anyone is able to break this cycle. Closed shops were always supposed to be a Left wing Trade Union thing, well, now we know, it operates at its most pernicious apparently in the rarified environs of the drawing rooms and clubs frequented by literary agents and publishers – and their fortunate few clients!

There is a Book Website that might interest those who are interested in the recent sad tale of the Russian former spy who died this week Colonel Alexander Litvinenko. It is another tale, as true, about a former successful Russian who was driven out of his country by those jealous of his wealth and success. And, of course, rather than welcome the man to freedom the American government has treated him with suspicion and disdain. Konanykhin’s book Defiance shows that a man can overcome anything if he has the desire. He reinvented himself as a rather successful entrepeneur in the land of opportunity called America.

I knew there was a scientific explanation for this.

Wikipedia:

The Inverse Ninja Law is a similar phenomenon that occurs frequently in martial arts movies, and role playing games. It is also sometimes called the Anime Ninja Effect or the Rule of One.

The Inverse Ninja Law states that the effectiveness of a group of ninja is inversely proportional to the number of ninja in the group. While a single enemy ninja is often portrayed as a significant threat to the protagonists, a large group of ninja is significantly less of a threat, and as such is easily defeated. This is sometimes applicable to other close combatoriented minions as well.

Accordingly, effectiveness, e, should be computable given the number of ninja, n, and some as-yet-undetermined proportionality constant, k, as follows:

Closely correlated:

The Stormtrooper effect, also called Stormtrooper syndrome, is a clich phenomenon in works of fiction where minor characters (cannon fodder) are unrealistically ineffective in combat against more important characters (almost always the protagonists “equipped” with character shields). The name originated with the armed Imperial Stormtroopers in the original Star Wars trilogy, who, despite their considerable advantages of close range, overwhelming numbers, professional military training, full armor, military-grade firepower, and noticeable combat effectiveness against non-speaking characters, were incapable of seriously harming the protagonists. The effect is generally employed either to increase the dramatic tension of an action scene or to accentuate the heroes’ fighting prowess.

the blog québécois

Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth (July 26, 1856) of George Bernard Shaw. By coincidence, I was going through some notes and I came across this rememberance of him by Bertrand Russell. I’d been unsuccessfully looking for it on the Internet for years. It seems to sum up the old fool nicely:

He wanted to be witty at all costs and it led him into unbelievable cruelties. He taunted [H.G.] Wells with facetious remarks about his wife—Wells’s wife—when he knew very well she was dying of cancer.

Alistair Cooke, Six Men, p. 166, Knoph, 1977

(The title of the post comes from an anecdote in Richard Ellmann’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Oscar Wilde. One day Wilde ran into GBS. Shaw said that he was thinking of starting a new magazine. Wilde asked him what it would be called, to which he replied, “Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!”

“Oh. And how will you spell it?”)

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Not this year, Norman Mailer. I don’t think so, Margaret Drabble. Fugeddabout it, Gore Vidal.

I’ve yet again scooped the blogosphere by finding out the identity of this year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. OK, I don’t know her name, unless it really is “The Woman I Was,” but I recognize Nobel Laureate material when I see it:

Bloody Bush is celebrating his 60th birthday.. he invited his tails followers to celebrate with him.. How many children and women will die all over the world to make him happy and make a wish?

Bush, the terrorist, we wish if your mum did not born you. You are the bloodies liar not only on the earth but through the history.. I do not know how your silly wife and stupid daughters are proud of you? The answer is they silly and stupid!! But what about the tails who are celebrating with him? How do they agree with him on killing more than 100 Iraqi civilians every day?
The whole world should know that the ongoing blood baths in Iraq pushing toward a civil war made by the Americans. Stop staying silence, say with me to Bush:

MAY YOUR WISHES DO NOT COME TRUE ANY MORE.
Saying is not enough, let us work; let us have an action; not only to stop bloody Bush, the terrorist, wishes, but to save Iraq and the world from the White (Dark) House..

I, for one, am in awe.

Flawless politics? Check!

Victim of colonialism? Check!

An authentic style? Check! (It will be described as “experimentially primitive” in the citation.)

You scoff? Need I remind you of the illustrious Harold Pinter and this shooting star from the year before?

The lady is a lock.

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Yesterday was Louis Braille’s birthday, and Google reworked its logo to commemorate the date:

As did Playboy:

Actually Playboy didn’t, but that’s an authentic braille copy, fron November 1995. It was apparently being auctioned off on eBay (before eBay got the jitters and removed the listing).

It’s just one of the many fine offerings of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a division of the Library of Congress.

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Colby has expressed himself on the Potter phenomenom and Harry’s fans have responded. Anyone wishing to read my review of the latest installment may head over to Blogcritics.

Straight Whiskey
by Erik Quisling & Austin Williams
(Bonus)

No, not the drink, although I can assure a fair amount of it was consumed in the making of this book. This is the story of the Whiskey A Go Go (now without the A Go Go) and its sister clubs from creation to the present days. Comprising a tale from a trip and some facts about the clubs history per chapter this a great read if you are interested in the history of LA rock & roll. Only gripe is that more time is paid to the 60s & 70s and less time to the 80s & 90s but that is me showing my age. For those who don’t know; the Whiskey is the rock club in LA having featured the creme de la creme of rock & roll greats from the Doors, through Led Zep, to the glory days of da Crue & GnR to present day. It is a cracking read that is well worth the price of admission. This book was responsible for at least one late night for me and probably will be for you as well. The book reads well and has excellent pace. If you are a rock fan I cannot think of a better summer read.

Rating: 5/5

Oh, drat. This meme has been ricocheting around for the last week or so and I thought I’d ducked it but The Meatriarchy had me in his sights:

Number of books I own:

Probably three or four hundred, not counting textbooks and technical manuals.

Last Book I Bought:

A hardbound collection of Somerset Maugham’s short stories that I found at a garage sale.

Last Book I Read:

The Face of Battle by the British military historian, John Keegan.

Five Books That Mean a Lot to Me:

Trying to narrow this down was taking me way too long. I think that the most important books that we read are the first ones, the ones that inculcate a love of reading. So here are a few categories and impressions:

Encyclopedias: One grandmother gave me a set of Encyclopedia Americana (I think that was its name), printed in 1935. The other grandmother, a bit more up to date, bought a new volume every couple of weeks of some encyclopedia offered by a grocery store for 2 bucks if your grocery order was above a certain level. So I know everything in the world, but only in alphabetical order.

Gulliver’s Travels, by Swift. One of the first books I can remember reading, it was an abridged version included in a big book of fairy tales, Aesop’s fables, kid-friendly rewrites of Greek mythology, etc.

Science fiction: I read science fiction voraciously, but got burned out on the genre in a few years. I remember H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine fondly; there was another one by Issac Asimov, also on time travel, that I found fascinating. I’d need a for-real time machine to remember the title, though.

The Hardy Boys. Don’t laugh—I used to eat these up like popcorn. When I ran out, I’d start in on my sister’s Nancy Drew novels. OK, you can laugh at that.

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky. Probably the first Serious Book I read, when I was thirteen or fourteen. It inspired me to become a tragic, moody Russian writer. That didn’t work out too well, so I instead became a moody Canadian blogger who posts weird things he finds on the Internet. Kind of tragic, in its own way.

Tag Five More:

Everyone I can think of has already been hit up on this. I might as well shoot for the stars, and offer a group challenge to Huffington’s Post. I’ll bet they can’t scare up three books among all of them.

(The picture above is via the Cynical-C Blog; it’s part of a project by Livio De Marchi, who constructed an entire house out of books, or at least sculpted representations of same.)

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A petition drive has been started to grant Lovecraft a Honorary Doctorate from Brown University. I have signed it, and so should you.

Thanks to seeing it plugged over at Instapundit, I clicked on Amazon the other day to buy “Old Man’s War”, by writer and blogger John Scalzi. The book is about a guy who, at an advanced stage of life, decides to join the military. I am not going to reveal the outline of the plot – you can get an idea if you follow the link – but any book that is likened to Heinlein’s Starship Troopers but with a more rounded worldview gets my attention. Scalzi is a fine blogger ,and I look forward to reading him. I’ll post a review up when I have read it.

The only problem is that there are so many decent books out there that I wonder how I can find the time. I still have Neal Stephenson’s Baroque trilogy to wade through, dammit.

when i’m calling you-oo-oo
oo-oo-oo!
you will answer too-oo-oo
oo-oo-oo!

hammerstein/harbach/friml

In the days before GPS, this was all-too-tragically common:

Other Photoshopped romance-novel covers here. (Some might be mildly unsafe for work.)

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“It’s one thing to see death coming at the hands of your own creation. That’s part of the human epic tradition, after all. Oedipus and his father. Baron Frankenstein and his monster. William Henry Gates and Windows ‘09.”

From David Brin’s Kil’N People.

* UPDATED *

For your delectation and edification, Dodgeblogium is pleased to present this latest compilation in the Storyblogging series.

ENJOY !!

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

Entry Title: You Sleigh Me

BLOG: A Small Victory

Total Words: 864

Blurb: A tale about the “Zorro of Love”, the less prankster cousin of that annoying little cherub Cupid.

Overview: Santa is getting bolshie at his annual photo session and things will not end well. It will probably surprise no one this is my fave of the week.

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

BLOG: Notes

Entry Title: A Sign of Peace

Total Words: 1300
Rating (OPTIONAL) none
Author name: Mary Murphy

Overview A small gift that does not matter much to you can matter a great deal to someone else. A more traditional tale for this time of year.

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

Coming of Age

Blog name: Back of the Envelope

Author Name: Donald S. Crankshaw

Suggested Rating: PG
Word Count: 5,604 word excerpt of a 90,111 word novel
Blurb: In this, the first chapter of Fire, the young Imperial
prince, Victor, celebrates his sixteenth birthday. The festivities
are dimmed by the expected but unwanted presence of a Dominus.

Overview: The first chapter of a novel called Fire, the name is most apt.

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

The Clay Man

tales by sheya

Total Words: 3836 words

Rating: G? PG?

Blurb: “free will, sovereignty, and ultimate love – as a children’s story”

Overview: An interesting take on the whole golem tale. This time the King’s son comes to realise the clay man is not there because he wants to be, at least not at first.

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

Hunting Wild Mammals with Dogs [ REX V. OTIS ]

Tim Worstall

Somewhere around 1500 words?
Rating? unrestricted.

Overview: Rather than ranting against the idiocy of the recent Anti-Hunting Bill, Tim has produced a cautionary tale of what might just happen once it becomes law. Rather amusing all around.

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

Runic Protection

Dodgeblogium

Overview: Have you ever wondered why Norway is never bothered by Cthulhu and his minions?

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

Meating of the Mines

blog: Doc Rampage
total words: 1,475
rating: PG

Blurb: Rolf gives a lesson in tall tales.

OverviewRolf and Zanter come back from a battle, only to be quizzed and criticised on why it was not as spectacular as Jerrod would like. Most amusing…

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

The Storyteller

Sneakeasy’s Joint

Blurb: I am submitting only Part 1. When the reader finishes PT. 1 there is a link to Part 2, and there they will finda link to the FOLLOW-UP.

• ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* * ^* *

We hope you found these readings fun and provocative.

I haven’t read Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird for a long time, and it’s surprising how much of the plot I’d forgotten.

Especially the burning shark, the pirates, and the flying galleons. You doubt me?

Warning: SFX and general zaniness.

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Michele has written one of the best reviews of the book I have yet seen. I agree with her sentiments 100%.

The Guardian:

“It’s accurate to say she is not cheerful,” Peter Ayrton, the English publisher for Elfriede Jelinek, said yesterday. “But reading her is a totally exhilarating experience.”

He was rejoicing at the Frankfurt book fair as word spread that the severe, feminist and dissident Austrian writer had unexpectedly won the $1.3m (750,000) Nobel prize for literature.

So some shrewish scold takes the trophy, eh? Quel surprise!

I’m not qualified to judge Ms. Jelinke’s literary merits, as “severe, feminist” books for me rate in reading enjoyment somewhere between subpoenas and Korean VCR manuals. The Swedish Academy, too, has a long and ignoble (pun intended, haha) history of promoting hacks who nonetheless fit the politics of the age.

Behold, then, from Ms. Jelinek’s crappy* website, her impeccable credentials:

Do you know him from before? Have you heard the name Halliburton and the name of Cheney, the holy lord, offspring of I don’t know what or who, but certainly of a mother, and since then he has wrestled with the numerous soft feelings. Dick Cheney. But his feelings won’t win. Halliburton will win, the company, they can build cages in Cuba, well, even I could build a cage if I had to, but it would only be strong enough for rabbits, if anything, they also built Corpus Christi in Texass, they managed that. And it earned its name. He will rebuild everything, the lord of the energy industry, Mr. Chairman of the Board, lord of the fiddled books , lord of jobs for the boys. But such boys are only found in Arabia. You can bet on it that this company will win irrespective of whoever else wins. Hang on, and what about the British with all these brave guys who so diligently butchered foreign flesh, and of course also the other way round, because nobody wants to owe the other a favour, but sometimes it has to be. They have dragged themselves to the foreign land, illusion of the avenger incarnate, and now several of them are six feet under, in the sand, and now they should get nothing?

Oho! Texass, did’ja catch that? Not exactly a Joycean level of wit—but then, James Joyce never did win the Nobel, so maybe she’s on to something.

That was from one of the few pieces on the site not in German, so maybe it lost something in the translation; but it doesn’t strike me as anything a moderately clever poli-sci student couldn’t have done, albeit with fewer comma splices.

• (All the links on her website seem to be broken, no doubt due to increased traffic. It’s worth taking a look at, though, if only to wonder at its ceramic Bambi centerpiece.)

the blog québécois

something strange is happening to me

i dont know what these shivers mean to you

is this fiction romance getting hold
—the buzzcocks

At long last, the 2003 (what, it takes 4 months to do the voting?) Worst Romance Novel Covers have been announced:

Nana had some hilarious things to say about several of the contenders, and I laughed out loud at her assessment of this one: “My choice, Flavor of the Month, brings me absolutely no joy and no small degree of the willies. I don’t want to know what’s on his face. I don’t want to know what it is, I don’t want to know how it got there, I don’t want to know what it tastes like, and I don’t want to know why he’s enjoying this so much. It’s as if someone mistook him for the underside of a middle school desk. All copies of this cover should be destroyed, and those of us who have seen it should undertake to repress it as quickly and thoroughly as possible.”

via RandomURL

I was going to write about this inane Don Cherry “controversy,” but Bob at Let It Bleed, Jaeger at Trudeaupia (permalink broken — scroll down to “Cheese Eating Visor Wearers) and Bruce at Autonomous Source have covered the territory nicely. Besides, I have other fish to fry.

John Kerry has won the Michigan and Washington primaries. He must be stopped.

This is from his official website (scroll down about one-third of the page):

In Boston, Kerry and I are discussing his poetry, a longtime and private avocation. He begins buoyantly. “I don’t claim to be a poet at all; I just like the expression, the form of it,” he tells me. “I like Pablo Neruda, who’s a great romantic. I like all the Romantics: Percy Shelley and Byron and Keats. I like Kipling; I like to mimic some of that doggerelish stuff. Oh, gosh, obviously Yeats. [. . .]”

Impressive stuff, huh?
Shows gravitas, eh?
Not so fast, bub
Let’s go, as they say,
to the tape

Or failing that, the Weekly Standard:

And now John Kerry-a man with the finest education American private schools can offer, a man of the world who winters in Aspen and summers in Nantucket-has descended into doggerel under pressure of his frontrunner status. “Like father, like son / One term only / And Bush is done,” he chanted at campaign stops last week. Well, two can play at that game. How about “IGNORE THE BORE IN 2004”? “BE WARY OF KERRY”? The possibilities are endless. If we could just figure out a rhyme for Nantucket . . .

OK, you’re thinking, he’s probably going for the Jesse Jackson rhymin’ moron vote. But wait, it gets worse.

Ben has written an interesting piece in praise of both Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. I have always been more keen on the former over the latter. I have read a decent amount of Lewis’ work including the Cronicles of Narnia, and found Dr. Lewis’ style less to my liking. I have always found Lewis’ work to be a tad twee. I think it speaks volumes that I am a completist when it comes to Tolkien’s works (as I am with HP Lovecraft), but I have no desire to read all of Lewis’ works.

Anonymous men play a part in a lot of ABPJ poems. Every other review seems to have a mystery date — but this one is introduced so violently, he makes the audience jump. He GRABS her by the hand. He doesn’t take her by the hand, he doesn’t even grasp her hand. He grabs it! He tears it right off her wrist! It’s his hand now!

This is from the Amazingly Bad Poetry Journal, a website that posts the “best” of sites like Poetry.com and ridicules them. (There don’t seem to be any permalinks, so scroll down to January 5 for the poem being discussed.)

Which is kind of like shooting fish in a barrel — but hey, we’ll take our fun where we can.

If you want to find a group of people who are full of their own imagined importance, it’d be tough to beat the American Library Association, in high dudgeon over the Patriot Act’s provisions to allow the FBI or other agencies to subpoena library borrowing records. Nat Hentoff, the renowned Village Voice columnist and First Amendment absolutist writes on this here. (It’s worth clicking on the link just to see the picture of one Marie Bryan, striking what she hopes is a heroic pose amidst the bookracks. She instead looks like she’s spying on someone, which in my experience is not an unknown habit in the profession.)

It was the night before Christmas. The house was very quiet. No creatures were stirring in the house. There weren’t even any mice stirring. The stockings had been hung carefully by the chimney. The children hoped that Saint Nicholas would come and fill them.

Via About Last Night channelling Danger Blog! channelling James Thurber channelling Ernest Hemingway channelling Clement Clarke Moore Major Henry Livingston Jr.

Oh, hell. Just click here.

The ‘most dreaded literary prize’ has been won by Wendy Perriam for a description of pin-striped sex in her novel Tread Softly.

The annual Literary Review Bad Sex prize is awarded to the worst description of sex in a contemporary novel. This year’s winner includes the lines “Weirdly, he was clad in pin-stripes at the same time as being naked. Pin-stripes were erotic, the uniform of fathers, two-dimensional fathers. Even Mr Hughes’s penis had a seductive pin-striped foreskin.”

I’d get that checked out, if I were him.

The competition this year was apparently, uh, stiff, but my vote would go to:

Via Joanne Jacobs:

Two Vero Beach High School students are in counseling to deal with the trauma they suffered when their teacher read a racial slur used by a black character in an award-winning novel, A Land Remembered, that depicts the rise of a Cracker family over three generations. The parents have contacted a civil rights lawyer.

I wondered why an 11th grade teacher is reading aloud in class. Can’t the students read for themselves?

From “Pushing The Limits In Juvenile Fiction,” The Edmonton Journal, Oct 5/03 [no link available].

As She Grows, a Canadian novel published by Penguin Canada earlier this year, is a case in point. Snow, the 15-year-old protagonist, lives with an abusive, alcoholic, mentally ill grandmother. Her 18-year-old drug-dealing boyfriend dumps her when she becomes pregnant. She’s beaten and forced to perform oral sex by her best friend’s 24-year-old boyfriend and is nearly raped by grandmother’s creepy alcoholic boyfriend, who turns out to be her father.

(So — her grandmother is, uh, her father’s girlfriend. Got it.)

Dreamland, published by Penguin, a 2003 Reachers [sic] Choice Award for 2003, [sic] describes an abusive relationsip [sic] experienced by a high school senior at the hands of her drug-dealing, BWM [sic] boyfriend.

[I was going to bracket out all the illiteracies, but screw it. The Journal had its chance to hire me as a copy editor, but it didn’t, so damned if I’m going to cover for its lousy writers.]

When Dad Killed Mom . . . is narrated by a 12-year-old boy and his older teenaged sister who discover as the plot unfolds that their psychologist father shot their mother when she threatened to leave him and expose him professionally after discovering his affair with a young patient. It’s an unsettling drama of domestic violence and abuse that includes incestuous allusions between the father and daughter.

Speak . . . which deals with the rape of a 14-year-old girl by the most popular boy in the school and the ostracism she suffers from her peers.

“Well, class, do we detect a unifying theme here?”

“That the Journal’s writers don’t write so good?”

“Yes, but that’s not it.”

“That the Journal should have hired gnotalex as a copy editor when it had the chance?”

“Indubitably, but that’s not it either.”

“Uh, that men are scum?”

“Exactly! Class dismissed!”

Sheesh. It’s enough to make you nostalgic for the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.

The purpose of literature isn’t moral uplift; but neither is it to reflect a scabby worldview worthy of Andrea Dworkin.

I don’t think it’s unconnected that boys are falling far behind girls in reading and writing skills — presented with this dreary PC diet (and many of these books are mandated reading by the militantly feminist public school establishment), I’d be inclined to pack it in, too.