Topic: "Censorship In Literature; should it be imposed upon us, or self imposed?" My guest, Author Dan Holloway.

Please join in the discussion with my guest, Author Dan Holloway

Banned Books

Banned Books Week is a fabulous movement (this year, coinciding with this series, it runs 24 September – 1 October) and website (http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/) that, among other things, contains a truly scary map (http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/node/2) of schools and libraries that have withdrawn books in response to protest.

The thing is though. Um, what is the thing? Well, the thing is this, to be frank. Most times I see censorship discussed by writers I see a whole hoopla of hypocrisy. Censorship is bad. It’s Satan’s spawn… “but of course…” after which there’s the whole thing about responsibility and self-censorship and duties and how sex should never be censored “only I’m of course not including xyz.”

And I genuinely think a lot of people don’t see the hypocrisy, and think that they really are being open-minded. But this is way scarier than overt censorship. Most explicit censorship decides on a line it wants to draw, draws it, and enforces it. “But of course” censorship genuinely thinks it’s not drawing meaningful lines because the lines it draws are “obvious”. Am I the only one who thinks stating that something is “obvious” is *way* more dangerous than whatever that something may be?

The fact is the most fucked-up paraphilia is only “obvious”ly beyond the pale to those who consider it fucked-up and paraphiliac.

I’m not calling for an end to censorship. I *do* think we are most likely to win people over to the same revulsion at what we revile if we expose those things to scrutiny – if we really revile them, why be afraid? Is it that we don’t trust our fellow humans? Or do we not trust our own judgement? And if we say something is beyond scrutiny surely the message that sends is that it’s not up to scrutiny?

But that’s by the by. Like I say, I’m not calling for an end to censorship. I’ve yet to meet someone who called for an end to censorship who actually had a coherent position. What I’m calling for is an end to hypocrisy. There are things that truly repel me. Racism and homophobia, stereotyping of mental illness. Some of them I’d happily remove from the shelves. But on the grounds that what they depict is wrong? Well, no. On the grounds that they repel me. That I hate them. That *is* the reason.

What I’m saying is simple. Write about something I find repugnant, shame on you. Pretend I find it repugnant because it’s “wrong”, shame on me. So come on. Let’s quit pretending there’s a moral high ground, and acknowledge the central, perfectly natural, and actually essential place of hate.


Take a look at what Dan has on his agenda for October.

October 18th 7pm, Blackwell’s
for one night only, introducing you to the finest poetry, prose and punk commentary in Oxford. Bringing you:
Lucy Ayrton, Hammer and Tongue finalist
Joe A Briggs, Oxford’s voice of punk
Anna Hobson, Oxford International Women’s Festival and Oxford Pride poetry MC (author of Tales of Unrequited Love)
Dan Holloway, Literary Death Match Champion (author of (life:) razorblades included)
Clarissa Pabi, 2010-11 president of the Oxford University Poetry Society
with special guests
Neil Anderson, Oxford Arts Group
and introducing the winner of the 2010 Tower Poetry Prize
Emily Harrison (author of Typewriter on the Bed)
with music from Grey Children
tickets £2 from Blackwell’s shop, customer service (01865 333623) or on the door

http://eightcuts.com/2011/08/27/this-is-oxford/

Topic "Violence in Literature; when is enough, enough?" My guest Author G.Russell Gaynor.

Before I begin, allow this simple greeting. As you lay eyes upon these words, my fate impart prosperity upon you trek!

Secondly, I give praise to Ms. Suzannah Burke, for providing the medium of this blog and the invitation to participate. I am both touched by your grace and grateful for the opportunity.

Now… l-l-l-l-l-let’s get ready to RUMBLE!

I’m sorry, was that over the top? I can never tell!

And enough of that nonsense! Let us get down to the heart of the matter. I will share with you that I have been reading some of the entries for this month’s topic, and I have come to fear for my eyes… all of them! The two with which I call myself seeing/watching/observing, and the many in my brain and mind taxed with the burden to sustaining both the bane and the boon to open thought and consciousness. I suppose here is just a good a place as any to remind you, this is merely my opinion, but I will try to remain as close to the wheelhouse of fact as my passions will allow!

Violence in Literature… when is enough, enough?!

While the “it depends” answer has been given a time or two, it is the best answer to such a question. But I shall not let my thoughts remain there. Nay, nay! That would be too cryptic and far less than fulfilling. After all, aren’t we all looking for something to stimulate thought, reason, perspective, and passion? Ahhh, but what have we tripped upon here? What exactly are we doing when we read? What is it that we are looking for?

Go for it, Johnny 5! (and so much for “enough of that nonsense”) INPUT!

Yes, yes, yes – input! And if in the act of reading we are seeking input, what then can be said for the act of writing? If you said ‘the attempt to communicate and/or convey personal perspectives of truth, opinion and/or abstract thought’, try decaf! Output, pure and simple! What sort of output it is takes us back to the wordy answer, but that is hardly the focus for the moment.

You see, whether or not it is a conscious effort, writers are Public Servants; every artist is! Literature, in this case, is not an exception. Whether we are trying to educate, entertain or just shake shit up, doing it to ourselves is called masturbation. Doing it to you is called Free Love… at a price! So when a question like this is posed, it seems a little shallow in thought to go into a tirade of singular perspective, as some of my colleagues have demonstrated (you know who you are – shame on you). For you see, the public has the power, and they will let you know when you’ve crossed the line. This is not a matter of Line Control! Please, we hold so little true control in our lives that it seems insulting to that precious and small amount to engage in debate over whether violence belongs in literature. For such is rarely the purview of the writer.

Allow me to give you an example… it is the Winter Games of the Olympics, and if you’re the femme, you don’t mind tuning in to the Ice Skating Finals. If you’re the alpha, and not single, you’re trying to keep someone happy by watching with a forced smile on your face. And there she is, Suki Tonya Doskovich (tried to cover the countries that normally take the gold there) as she begins her compulsory run (I wonder how many will catch me on that one). She glides across the ice, the breeze generated by her speed of movement blows through her bright, blonde, brown, black hair, moving it back and out of her face and it trails on the wind behind her head. The same winds sweep over her (OMG is that an Armani she’s wearing?!) body as her left leg is bare and her right is wrapped in swirling multi-colored, sparkling fabrics that seem to move in the same rhythm of her music (an ode GaGa Winehouse Franklin). She builds up speed until she skates into a tight circle and then into a spin. Her back arches, and her head is thrown back as her hands sway up and down from over her head to down her sides. She plays a harp none can see but all can hear, and her arm movement never throws her out of balance as she spins faster and faster, becoming a blur of light and bodily form, stopping on the down beat as the music stops. The crowd goes wild; the Russian judge needs a cigarette and a towel. GOLD!

Now that is one way of looking at what STD was doing – ice-skating. But I failed to mention the blades on her skates, cutting into the ice in a barbaric thrashing of tempered steel and toned muscle! How her toe-pick gashed into the placid sheet of glass-like water. How she pushed her body for more speed! Muscles contracting and expanding as she pushed against the ice and pulled against tortured tendon and bone. And we she reached the center of the rink she dug into the ice once more, hurling her body into a powerful spin. She remembered every step of her Wing Chun Gung-fu Kata and her hands danced around her body, blocking the unseen arrows launched at her sides; parrying the thrusts, punches and kicks levied at her by the punishing sensei that only seemed to have concern for how much blood she would be made to spill! Her brain pounded inside of her skull as she began to lose equilibrium, and she placed her focus on the single blue light her coach had placed along the ceiling of the building. She could see only that light, and hear only her music as her form started to give way. She was losing control, losing cohesion and the efforts for speed and strength were now ripping her apart. But then she heard the tone, her signal for release and she closed her eyes, summoning one last surge of vitality. Her body exploded as she threw her head forward, her arms out from her side and her skates as deep into the ice as she could thrust them. They served as sure anchors and suddenly… the storm of her mind, body and spirit passed… followed closely by the thunder of applause.

Anyone who makes the effort of removing violence from literature is not writing life. Life (IMO) is a sliver of reality the universe allows us. But within that sliver is one thing that is most difficult to argue: balance! Take for instance (as a mild tangent), the argument of the vegetarian. You think when you bite into that salad that the vegetables weren’t cut, and pulled, and twisted, and drowned in some sort of condiment. I must admit, I smile when someone asks me, “How could you eat that knowing something had to die for it?” Depending on the mood, I might fire back with,” What? Are you telling me you eat something that was never born, never grew, and was never removed from its home so it can fill your belly? Oh, but it’s then about consciousness. Right. Just because you can’t perceive it means it’s not there! Good one! You aced the ‘tree falling in the woods but no one was there to hear it’, question. Not! (Here endeth the tangent) When the cheetah catches is prey, it is hardly passive yet we can accept that as nature. Despite our so-called higher functions, that nature resides within each of us. Fight or flight, sink or swim, do or die – the list is endless!

Now, as for me, I write violence. But I will go one step further and say I attempt to write life. Even in the frame of fiction, my perspective remains, “Well, what would you do?” Now when one creates alien life-forms, you’re allowed all kinds of variations of perspective, but in truth, Gene Roddenberry called it, everybody’s human if for no other reason because as the creator of the species, I am still human. That chip will not fly far from the block. With any luck, however, it might land in such a fashion that the other chips might reflect on who and what they are, violent or otherwise, and turn the page – in their lives if not in my books!

Thank you for your time and attention. It is my most sincere hope that you have read and gained something from the reading. That these words strike you not as ramblings of a nearly mad man, but as your servant who seeks to entertain, educate while being entertained and taught by you.

Stay Up, Stay Gold!

G. Russell Gaynor is a member of the Confederacy of the Quill and you can find his offerings, published under his name and that of Reiter, at www.quicksylverpublications.com

Facebook: http://facebook.com/grussellg

E-Mail: g.russell.gaynor@gmail.com

Topic: Violence In Literature; when is enough, enough?" My guest is Author, Diane Nelson

Violence in Literature, When Is Enough, Enough?

My guest today is Author, Diane Nelson.

My name is variously Diane Nelson, Nya Rawlyns and T.S. Bond. Under “DN” I write squeaky clean YA fantasy—no sex, a few misdeeds, errors of judgment, consequences and betrayals of trust. It’s Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew era stuff. I grew up with it. I like writing it. And I really like that it’s resonating with teens. I have fans clamoring for a sequel.

Does it mirror, in any way, shape or form, the realities that teens face today? Oh heck, no. Does it teach life lessons—that there are consequences for one’s actions, that you are defined by the choices you make, that trust is something earned, not bestowed—yes, it does. And I opted not to resort to overt violence to drive home any of those life lessons. Violence, stylized or otherwise, did not serve the story, and quite honestly, even if it did, I would have made the conscious choice to find another way of telling that tale. Why? Because I believe in offering teens alternatives to what has become a social milieu awash in violence of every sort: bullying, media (TV, music, movies, video games), dysfunctional families, sexual harassment, and sexualization of young girls and women.

Does that mean I never use violence in telling my tales? Well, as NR and TSB, I write erotica tinged with violence—both psychological and physical—and action-adventure dark urban fantasy awash with sexuality and mayhem, and with a certain moral flexibility imbued in almost all of my characters. The protagonists (and antagonists) are rarely mainstream, rather they exist on the margins of society, sometimes by circumstance, often by choice, and almost always the rules as we know and understand them do not apply. Because when civil society fails—either in part or in whole—violence often accompanies the disintegration of mores and rules of law. It is at this juncture, where chaos threatens survival, that—like Shan Yu—we meet the ‘real man’.

This is the premise for Dance Macabre, a noirish erotic story from Dancing in the Dark: An Anthology of Erotica. Angel, a fortyish ex-mob enforcer, raised and nurtured in a culture of violence herself becomes the victim of a shocking episode and flees to South Beach to rethink her poor life choices. She falls in with a lesbian porn star and her significant other who give Angel the second chance she needs. But Angel cannot escape her compulsions and need to live life on the edge. A blind date leads to her incarceration, where psychological manipulation and torture push her to the limits of her endurance … and her own dark desires. The story explores the boundaries where pleasure and pain become indistinguishable, where one’s own sexuality and sensual hungers override and swamp the instinct to survive, and dominance and submission will be decided by the flip of a coin. The violence, both physical and otherwise, is administered with serial killer deliberateness, to drive the plot and to accentuate the control one human being can exert over another, especially when that control is a shared set of behaviors. It explores the ritualistic nature of consensual power exchange, even when that occurs within the acceptance of violence as a valid model for social intercourse.

We’ve approached this topic straddling several divides: could I, should I, would I? We’ve all agreed that human history is violent, it’s part of the ‘human condition’, that life mirrors art and vice versa, that when it comes to ‘enough is enough’, we all ‘know’ at some intrinsic, moral level where the boundaries are and that crossing a boundary is a matter of choice, intent, purpose. We eschew imposing social boundaries in favor of individual rights/choice because the alternative to choice is censorship. We eschew censorship because we deem the individual to be the ultimate arbiter of what is acceptable, until that paradigm fails and the repercussions fan out to encompass the collective.

Could I have told Angel’s story using no violence whatsoever? No, because her history, her upbringing proscribe who and what she is. To be true to that character required taking the added step of crossing certain boundaries into sexual manipulation and torture. Should I have gone further than I did? Possibly, but that would have teetered on the edge of prurient. To do more would have diluted the impact of the stranger’s manipulation and control. Would I have gone further had it served the plot and advanced the characters’ development? Yes, with the caveat that when it comes to sexuality and violence, my opinion is that often a minimalist approach is better.

I tend to think cinematically. And realistically. My characters are never so devoid of humanity, never so outside the realm of what is physically and emotionally possible, that I would risk pushing the boundaries to the point where suspension of disbelief collapses entirely.

Case in point: Greg Rucka’s latest Queen and Country novel: The Last Run. Tara Chace, a British secret service agent, has one last mission before retirement, sending her to Iran where she’s shot and seriously wounded and spends the bulk of the book on the run, using various MacGyver maneuvers to keep herself going. While I’m generally willing to go along with the ‘special’ in special agent, the level of violence and mayhem she endured stretched my credulity to the limits, and I found myself huffing with disappointment at the end. I wanted his usual tight, very cool spy story but instead confronted innumerable ‘you’ve got to be kidding’ moments. The upshot is that any future Q&Cs will be kindlesized before I shell out dinero for hardcopy.

I believe that if you use violence to advance the plot, then as an author one needs to understand how the actual act/scene is crafted/choreographed, what the outcomes are, what the psychological fallout from creating an atmosphere of victimization might be, and whether or not it adds to or detracts from the tension.

To answer the question: when is enough, enough? As usual, equivocation is the name of the game. I will add my ‘it depends’ to the list, with a tendency to stay on the ‘less than’ side of the equation. Not because of superior moral and intellectual acuity … but mostly because, for me, less-is-more works better for my style of writing.

As with everything … your mileage may vary.

Diane Nelson (and all her personifications) has a solid background in technical writing. Leaving corporate America was easy. Writing was and always will be my singular passion.

Her titles to date:

Dragon Academy, Diane Nelson (YA), Dancing in the Dark: An Anthology of Erotica, edited by Nya Rawlyns/Dance Macabre, Sculpting David, Nya Rawlyns (Red Sage), Hunter’s Crossing, Nya Rawlyns (Red Sage, Nov 2011), Flashes Through Time edited by Diane Nelson, Spar with the Devil, T.S. Bond (Book One of Portals), The Devil and the Falcon (Book Two of Portals, fall 2011), Acid Jazz Singer, Nya Rawlyns (Book One of the Hunger Hurts series)

Topic: "Violence In Literature, when is enough, enough?" My guest today: Author, Pavarti Tyler

Violence in Literature guest post Pavarti Tyler

There's No Sex in Your Violence - by Pavarti K Tyler

When Suzanna suggested writing a post on violence for her blog event I thought, sure, I can do that. I love me some violence. I mean hell, I've written some of the most detailed, visceral violence out there (just as Steven at SNM horror or my friend Candace who blames me for her recurring nightmares). But is there a point where enough is enough?

I don't believe in censorship. I believe in pushing the boundaries in every way possible. You want cannibal porn? I've written it. You want your favorite characters killed off? I've done it. You want rape, dismemberment and ocular ooze? I'm your girl. Something about it just gets me off.

What I do believe in is the visceral connection between reader and story. When my friend Rachael told me: "Man, you're one fucked up cookie. When can I read more?" I knew I was onto something. The violent, graphic and raw nature of my writing did not turn her away, it pulled her in. When the content of what you are writing is superfluous to the story you are telling it becomes more about shock than connection. That is when it becomes too much.

So there's my line, too much violence happens at the exact moment when the reader is pulled out of the story. This point will be different for each reader and as a writer you have to judge for yourself how far you are willing to push. You may loose some readers. I've had many people pass on reading Consumed By Love, because it is erotic horror. But I'm ok with that. In fact, I'm the first one to tell interested bloggers and friends: "You know its erotic horror and pretty graphic. If you don't want to read it I won't be offended." But never have I doubted the content of my story.

Violence, like sex, is only offensive when someone is offended. Porn is only different from art when someone defines it so. We all love to see the bad boy get the girl. When he holds her hands above her head, making her struggle against him as he moves in for that first stolen kiss the excitement and violence of the moment titillate the reader. Does she continue to struggle? Does she fight back and beat him to a bloody pulp? Does he soften and allow himself to be the good man she deserves? All of these thoughts are what makes that moment so exciting. Where you take it from there is between you and your reader.

Bio: Pavarti K Tyler is an artist, wife, mother and number-cruncher and has been committed to causing trouble since her first moment on this Earth. Her eclectic career has flirted with Broadway, Teaching, Law Firms and the IRS. Currently she is hard at work establishing her Indie Publishing Company Fighting Monkey Press and enthusiastically working with her Author’s Co-op Escapist Press.

Pavarti K Tyler's debut novel Shadow on the Wall is scheduled for release in November 2011. Shadow on the Wall is Book One of The SandStorm Chronicles, the saga of Recai Osman — businessman, philosopher, Muslim and . . . superhero.

You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter or her website.