Reading Copy

Some of the prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay will publish a book of poetry in August, reports today’s Wall Street Journal on its front page.

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The Guardian has some interesting comment about Salman Rushie, The Satanic Verses and the right to offend.

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The AP reports on a deeply worrying story about how prisons are removing many books from prison libraries.

The removal of the books is occurring nationwide, part of a long-delayed, post-Sept. 11 federal directive intended to prevent radical religious texts, specifically Islamic ones, from falling into the hands of violent inmates.

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Later on today, AbeBooks will place an interview with Mark Ames, the author of Going Postal, on the site. However, readers of Reading Copy get to see it first. Read on….

Mark Ames is the author of Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion: From Reagan’s Workplaces to Clinton’s Columbine and Beyond, which has been thrust into the headlines following the events at the Virginia Tech campus earlier this month. Sadly, this book will become topical every time there is another large-scale massacre in an American school, college or workplace.

The Californian-born author, who is based in Moscow where he runs a satirical English language newspaper called eXile, puts forward the theory that the mass killings seen in offices and schools are not the work of deranged ‘wacko’ individuals but people who are victims of the social and economic conditions (such as Reaganomics) they are subjected to. Often surprising and always challenging, Going Postal draws deep comparisons with the events during the age of slavery in the United States. Going Postal was published in 2005 in the USA and has recently been released in the UK too.

Abe - Going Postal outlines a theory that the ‘rage killings’ in America’s schools and workplaces are more than just the work of unhinged lunatics. You say that social and political conditions are a key factor – can you explain this theory?

MA - Everyone keeps crying “Why?” after each rage massacre. For 20 years now they’ve been repeating this “why” as if they plan to really answer it. My question is, “Why the hell are you still asking why?” We know from FBI and Secret Service studies that there is no way to profile rage murderers in workplaces or schools. That’s because every type of person has carried them out. We also know that this type of crime has a specific time and place, a specific context: mid-1980s America. So I propose we profile the socio-economic conditions, and what changed in 1980s America, as a possible cause. Then it becomes fairly obvious. Since the Reagan Revolution, life has become quantifiably worse for most Americans – more work, less pay, far less leisure time, less security, exponentially greater stress, a massive shift of wealth from the middle-class to the very top layer of the plutocracy, all whitewashed by a culture that celebrates these violent appropriations as if it’s all just swell, and only losers complain. Just to give one telling statistic: in 1978, CEOs of large US corporations made on average 30 times their workers’ salaries; by 2001, CEOs made 571 times their average workers’ salaries. American workers work 184 hours more per year than 30 years ago, but they earn almost the exact same in real terms, with far fewer benefits. Management consciously instills fear and stress into their workforce in order to squeeze more and more for less. Obviously this creates an unbearable situation. And unbearable situations sometimes lead to violent reactions. This type of crime began in the mid-1980s in the workplace, that is just as the Reagan Revolution’s effects first started taking place, and has spread ever since. The same dynamic of increased stress and rage worked its way down to the schoolyard, where they prepare you for a life in the workplace, with the same tragic results.

Abe - Have you been accused of making excuses for inexcusable crimes?

MA - Yes. There’s been an enormous amount of resistance and anger to my book’s thesis. I just saw a blogger who posted a death threat against me for supposedly justifying the Virginia Tech massacre. The infamous bully from Columbine who tormented the two killers before their rampage emailed a death threat to me and my family earlier this year. A writer for The Observer (newspaper in the UK), Ed Vulliamy, accused me of being immoral and “post-modern” which he contrasted to his own genuine tears which he shed for the victims, as if that alone was an argument. Most of the resistance to my book is expressed like Vulliamy’s: Going Postal offends me, therefore it’s immoral, and if it’s immoral it can’t be valid. End of argument. A lot of other people, however, have told me that the book is so obvious and significant that they sort of made it their mission to get as many people as possible to read it.

Abe - Surely rage, in different forms, has always existed but today it’s possible to kill a lot of people very quickly thanks to the weaponry available. America is unlikely to change its gun laws so do you see a continuation of mass killings in schools, workplaces and colleges?

MA - Rage hasn’t always existed in its current toxic American form, I completely disagree. Rage and anger dominate talk shows, movies, pop culture, media, politics, Internet forums, etc., much more than just 20 years ago. What has always existed in America is easily-accessible weaponry, which is why you can’t finger guns as the underlying cause for these murders. So again, I ask, what changed in the mid-1980s to give rise to this crime? Or rather, why is there so much resistance to even considering the possibility that this new violent crime has a socio-economic context? The reason for the resistance is that it hits too close to home. It means admitting that most of us are suckers and slaves for allowing all of this incredible transfer of wealth and leisure over the past 30 years without fighting back. It means admitting that we live worse today than we did 30 years ago, and that those who have fought back might have logic to their violence. So long as the culture still refuses to question the socio-economic transformation over the past 30 years, so long as it officially continues to celebrate it as “inevitable” and strengthen these awful trends, rampage massacres will continue.

Abe - Do you believe the mass media fundamentally misunderstand rage killers?

MA - The mass media sees its role as something like a giant Hallmark card. Even the Russian media isn’t as idiotically censored as America’s when it comes to covering its tragedies, and Russia has real censorship. Over and over, the American media vilifies the murderer(s) in cartoonish ways, and plays up the afflicted community’s alleged “binding together.” In reality, nearly all rampage massacres are followed by some of the ugliest community behavior imaginable, revealing a society that is grotesquely cold and driven by petty malice. Many schools where rage massacres took place, including Columbine, have had threats and shootings in the years since. What’s interesting is how much censored sympathy exists for the rage murderers both in the workplace and in schools. If the media explored this sympathy and the complaints from survivors about how they were abandoned in the aftermath by their communities, they’d start to understand why rage murders happen.

Abe - Are rage killers always men? Is this a male phenomenon?

MA - No. There is a commonly-held misconception debunked by numerous studies, including the US Secret Service, that the killers are white male loner-losers. More often than not they are men and they are white, but a great number have been African-American, Asian American (such as Cho Seung-Hui), Latino, even Native American. There have been women rage murderers both in the workplace and in schools, including a woman who massacred six at a post office near Santa Barbara, and a woman who killed her plant manager at a battery factory in Vermont. In schools there have been girls who either carried out shootings or were involved in big Columbine-style shooting plots. Just last week a 15-year-old girl was arrested in New Jersey for threatening to shoot up her school. In any event, most violent crime of any sort is carried out by men.

Abe - Have your opinions been in demand since the Virginia Tech massacre?

MA - Yes, I’ve had more radio interviews and requests to do more articles. I have, coincidentally, a piece about the ‘going postal’ crime in the current issue of American Playboy. Incredibly Playboy took my article off their site after Virginia Tech because their web people complained that it seemed “exploitative.” That tells you a lot about American culture’s giant head-in-the-sand act, when Playboy is afraid of being exploitative by publishing an article which attempts to explain the crime. Just show ‘em more tits and ass, and hopefully rage murders will go away!

Abe - Why are you happier working in Moscow rather than Manhattan?

MA - It’s getting harder to work in Moscow in the current political climate, but I’d be happier pretty much anywhere, even some godforsaken shit-hole like Tomsk-7, rather than in Manhattan. Like a friend of mine says, Manhattanites are the new hicks of America. They’re incredibly hokey and they’re charmed by their own hokeyness. I find the place utterly oppressive. If you’re interested in a life dedicated to discovering “undiscovered” ethnic restaurants while chatting about golf and indie rock bands, then Manhattan’s the place for you. As for me, if I move home, it’ll likely be to Los Angeles. It’s the most aggressively-vile place in America, and somehow I find that less frightening than Manhattan.

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The New York Times has got its hands on a copy of At The Center of the Storm by ex-CIA director George Tenet - it’s not released until Monday. The book apparently reveals how George Bush took America to war with Iraq without any “serious debate” as to whether Saddam Hussein was a serious threat to the USA or just another bar-room bully in terms of international politics.

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The Associate Press is reporting that author David Halberstam died yesterday in a car accident.  Halberstam was on his way to an interview when the crash occurred.

Halberstam began his writing career as a journalist but in 1967 he left daily journalism and began writing books.  His topics varied from politics to sports to civil rights.  In 2002, he was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in nonfiction for his bestseller, War in a Time of Peace.

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It turns out Life of Pi author Yann Martel is deciding to champion arts funding in Canada in his own way.  He has begun sending one book every two weeks to the Prime Minister, Stephen Harper.  A list of the books sent, the letters he sends, and any replies from the Prime Minister are going to be posted on his website WhatisStephenHarperReading.com

The story was revealed in The Globe and Mail over the weekend.

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After we created our science fiction themed Not-Book, which is based on George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-four, I’ve been more aware of the little places Orwell references pop up in everyday life. This article about the amount of camera surveillance around Orwell’s London house was staggering. But then London does have the reputation of having the most monitored population in the world.

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Growing up we had a lot of the Richard Scarry books. The illustrations were charming, as was the accompanying text (though at the time I am sure I didn’t consider it charming, just funny). My favourite was the worm - with the hat and one shoe.

Sadly, some of this charm has been lost when making things more “up to date” with the 1991 release of The Best Word Book Ever book. The changes have been documented on Flickr here.

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With the recent declaration of “Carbon Neutral” as the Oxford Word of the Year, Exxon admitting climate change is real, the British Columbia government announcing a reasonably aggressive plan to address climate change, and the unexpected popularity (success) of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth it would seem that the time for ‘green’ has come.

So here are 10 titles to help celebrate the new shade (this isn’t a top 10, or the best all-time books, just a 10 interesting and thought-provoking books):

1. Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century - Alex Steffan
2. Weather Makers - Tim Flannery
3. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things - William McDonough & Michael Braungart (Author)
4. The Ecology of Commerce - Paul Hawken
5. Massive Change - Bruce Mau
6. The Revenge of Gaia - James Lovelock
7. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change - Elizabeth Kolbert
8. Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning - George Monbiot
9. The End of Nature - Bill Mckibben
10. The Lorax - Dr. Seuss

I am about halfway through the list (The Lorax was easy), while some of the others are proving a heavier read.

Please add your favourites…

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George Bush has just recommended a book. It’s called Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths by Bruce Feiler. He says:

“It’s a really interesting book that studies the prophet Abraham from the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim perspective. And the lesson is, is that if you–you can look at Abraham as a unifying factor. In other words, all three of our–all three of those religions started from the same source, which means it’s possible to reconcile differences. And I was impressed by his writing. I really enjoyed the amount of study he did on the subject. And I appreciated his lessons that sometimes as each religion appropriated Abraham to suit their own needs, but, ultimately, we could view Abraham as a way to find a common God.”

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Since we’re a roll with the sf&f posts these days … I found this link while we were working on developing the new “rooms” (science fiction and fantasy - in case you missed them).

Over at the Fantastic Metropolis site they have put together a list of 50 science fiction and fantasy books one should read if a socialist. It’s an interesting list for those but I’ve only read a handful of them (does that make me a poor socialist or poor sf&f reader?)

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Barack Obama’s book signings continue to be the hottest political ticket in the US. Yesterday, New Hampshire…

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Released yesterday and already on its second print run, The Iraq Study Group Report: The Way Forward has not only garnered heaps of media attention, but also stronger than anticipated sales with many bookstores running out of stock. Publishers Lunch reported this morning that in Washington DC shipping problems aggregated this issue causing the media to scour the city in search of elusive copies to film or photograph.

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With the United States mid-term elections in full swing, we’ve taken a look at the value of literature written by some political big hitters and leading presidential ‘candidates’ that are in action today:

Hillary Clinton - she could become the first American female president. For $1198.12, you could pick up an autographed edition of Living History.

Edward Kennedy - JFK’s younger brother is looking for his eighth full term Senate placement. For $489.69, you could have Decisions For A Decade.

Arnold Schwarzenegger - the ‘Governator’ is looking for another term at California’s helm. For $387.75, you could have a signed copy of Arnold’s Bodyshaping for Women.

George Pataki - will the New York governor make a presidential run in 2008? If he does then picking up his autobiography for $175 seems like good value right now.

Of course, there’s still a few copies remaining of George Bush’s new book, Whoops. I Was Wrong – a bargain at only $2.17.

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