Blame it on the cucumber

May 8, 2004

Ban me? Not without one hell of a fight. When the moral right in Florida turned on novelist Linda Jaivin, a bitter and at times comic censorship battle ensued.

Last July, an 83-year-old grandmother called Loretta Harrison visited her local library in Marion County, Florida. A brightly covered book with a funny title caught her attention. After reading just a few pages, she filed an objection with the library that the book was "to [sic] obsene [sic] for general reading".

"Like a character in the Tom Clancy novels she enjoys," reported the county newspaper, the Star-Banner, Harrison became "a player in an intrigue", triggering "forces she was hardly aware of" and which were out of her control. The result, the paper wrote, would have an "indelible impact on the library system and the community". Marion County, 480 kilometres north of Miami and home to many horsebreeders, Republicans and retirees, has been embroiled ever since in a bitterly contested battle over censorship, sex and the role of the public library.

The book at the centre of the controversy is my first novel, the comic-erotic Eat Me. In the opening, highly parodic chapter, a woman shopper samples both the produce and the store detective in a late-night supermarket. Published in a dozen countries and almost as many languages, Eat Me was a bestseller in Australia and France, and was a book club selection in Italy and other countries.

It made the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller list as well as those of independent bookshops in the US from Rhode Island to Seattle. Vintage, in Britain, is publishing a special edition of it as one of the 12 books for its Summer Reading promotion this year, alongside Portnoy's Complaint, Fear of Flying, Jeanette Winterson's The Passion and novels by Martin and Kingsley Amis, among others.

In 1997, the internet filtering company CyberPatrol put the entire website of The Booksmith, an independent bookseller in Haight Ashbury, San Francisco, on its CyberNOT list for publishing the cover of my book, a summary of the contents and a description of me reading the first chapter at the shop. The Booksmith launched a courageous (and successful) fight against the ban. But not even then was Eat Me the subject of moral panic such as we've seen in Marion County.

One member of the library committee that considered Harrison's complaint alleged "emotional shock" as a result of reading the novel from cover to cover. In the end, a majority vote deemed that the book would stay on the shelves. It was a brave decision. Fundamental Christianity and patriotism are the dominant religions of Marion County: at last year's Patriotic Celebration in the First Baptist Church, congregants found inspiration in such hymns as Bring This Nation Back to God.

A few years earlier, the library's director, Julie Sieg, ruled against complainants wanting to remove the sex-education book It's Perfectly Normal from the shelves because it told kids that homosexuality and masturbation were just that, perfectly normal. She decided to have a look at Eat Me for herself. The fruity adventures of my heroines were not to her taste. In fact, she gagged on them, decided that Eat Me was "not worth defending", and pulled it off the shelf.

Enter Brian Creekbaum and Mary Lutes. Creekbaum, a Marion County native, had fought several censorship battles over the previous three years, including the one over It's Perfectly Normal. For this, the informal citizens group he chaired received the 2001 Intellectual Freedom Award from the Florida Library Association. Creekbaum has a lazy Southern drawl, an indefatigable devotion to civil liberties, a sharp mind and a dry wit. Referring to one of chapter one's naughtier bits, he wrote to me in an email, "I find it hard to believe the cucumber has nothing to do with this decision."

Dr Lutes is a former chair of the Library Advisory Board (LAB) and a voracious reader who holds a PhD in social science. She told me she found the first chapter of Eat Me a "knee slapper". Lutes and Creekbaum believed the book was absolutely worth fighting for; there were higher principles at stake. Lutes lodged an appeal against the removal.

This put the ball back in the court of the LAB, an appointed citizens' committee. County commissioners got involved. The Star-Banner published articles, editorials and letters on the subject. One of the editors remarked to Creekbaum when they met, of all places, in a grocery shop: "If you were going to censor a book, that would be the book." But the paper came down publicly on the side of the civil libertarians, with such published sentiments as "let freedom ring - loud and clear". The National Coalition Against Censorship weighed in against the ban. The book's opponents grew more hysterical by the day.

I began to look forward to Creekbaum's emails - he sent as many as half a dozen updates in one day. His thumbnail sketches of the characters involved made for riveting reading. There was the foul-mouthed guardian of public morals and another opponent who accused my book of being part of a "jihad" against America's children. A third was nearly arrested for attempting to read the entire first chapter of Eat Me into the public record. Like others in the anti-Eat Me camp, he's done a great job of advertising the book. A right-wing shock jock, who calls it "absolute pornography", even put a link to the chapter on his website.

As a comic novelist, I could not have dreamed up such fabulous characters as the 76-year-old anti-Eat Me LAB member whose public activities included penning letters to the Star-Banner alleging that "the liberal-dominated media has tried to turn the United States into a matriarchy with weak and powerless men dominated by powerful, aggressive women". (He ended with the reassurance: "Relax, men - in the hierarchy of the sexes we will always be on top." His proof? That young women "work their buns off" to fit into bikinis "to attract a bunch of guys with beer guts".)

The dispatches from the Marion County morality wars were as engrossing as the push for censorship was alarming. The library system in Marion County is one of the largest in America, serving 128,000 registered users in 11 locations. And with the rise of the Christian Right nationally, the same table was being set all over America. Four years ago, the American Library Association received 700 letters of complaint for daring even to raise the topic of erotica at its annual conference.

Pro-censorship activists in Marion County and elsewhere were taking cues from the likes of Karen Jo Gounaud of the Virginia-based Family Friendly Libraries (FFL). Fighting unfiltered internet access in her own library, Gounaud warned of "aroused teen patrons dumping their DNA on the library bathroom floor" and, where private booths were provided, "disgusting unsanitary accidents and rug damage". (A national magazine faxed Gounaud a page from a children's book for her comments; her response was, "That is definitely the kind of book that we would ask to be moved." It was Mother Goose.) It's in this context that Janet Jackson's right breast could bring a nation to its knees.

Maybe it's because our first colonialists were convicts and theirs were Puritans, but Australia seems less prone to this particular style of moral panic. I say this despite censorship battles over movies such as Lolita and Baise-Moi, and the rare book, including American Psycho. So far as I'm aware, there have been no challenges to Eat Me's presence in libraries here; it's even on some university reading lists.

I've read the infamous first chapter aloud dozens of times in Australian bookshops, at festivals and in performance spaces, usually with a bowl of fruit, a large cucumber and a small whip as props. It's a send-up, not a sex act, a fact that most Australians seem to have little trouble grasping. I'm not saying civil libertarians don't have to be vigilant: Helen Vnuk's excellent Snatched: Sex and Censorship in Australia (Vintage) is a sobering read. But we're not the US yet.

Six days after the first article on Eat Me appeared in the Star-Banner, a Marion County resident urged the library to dump a children's book called A Stone in My Hand, by Cathryn Clinton. It is set in Gaza City during the 1988 intifada and is narrated by a young Palestinian girl; the complainant alleged it would contribute to anti-Semitism.

On December 2 last year, the LAB voted 9-1 to retain A Stone in My Hand. Then it turned to the question of Eat Me. After a heated debate in which I was called an "intelligent pervert" and my novel "pure pornography", and it was asserted that people who wanted to remove Christian prayer from public schools were the real censors, the LAB voted 7-3 to recommend that Eat Me stay in the collection.

At the end of February, after nearly three months of dithering, Sieg finally put the book back into circulation. It went straight out to the first person on a long waiting list.

A local shock jock warned that on Judgement Day, Jesus would be questioning Sieg about the pornography she'd made available to little children. Of more immediate concern, Conservative county commissioners, assisted by their county administrator, a retired two-star general from the US Marines, launched a push for more political control over the library collection. A self-titled fundamentalist preacher put his hand up to be on the newly reorganised LAB. The meeting to decide the library's fate was scheduled to take place this week.

Last month, the Star-Banner opinion editor, Brad Rogers, clearly over it, wrote of both Eat Me and It's Perfectly Normal: "That two books out of an estimated 400,000 could be directly responsible for the moral destruction of our community is a bit of a reach."

Linda Jaivin's most recent book is The Monkey and the Dragon.

Blame it on the cucumber - Books - www.smh.com.au

NOTE: The Palm Beach County Library does not own a copy of EAT ME. Let 'em eat spinach.

May 6, 2004

Press Release

Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore Hosts Naked Booksigning

Saturday May 22 at 6 pm.

Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore is pleased to announce a booksigning for the serial novel Naked Came the Flamingo at its store in Pineapple Grove in Delray Beach on Saturday May 22, 2004 at 6 pm.

Naked Came the Flamingo is the brainchild of bestselling author Barbara Parker, who saw it as a chance to give some “publishing challenged” authors the opportunity to participate in a serial novel. And along the way, she has discovered some very talented writers.

With the first chapter written by Elaine Viets, Chapter 10 by Barbara Parker, and the Epilogue by PJ Parrish, Naked is a tongue-in-cheek spoof on the Florida hard-boiled detective novel. As Reinhard Motte, MD, Associate Medical Examiner for Miami-Dade County, says in his disclaimer in the front of the book, “If only my actual homicide cases were this much fun!”

Appearing at this booksigning will be Barbara Parker, P.J. Parrish, Britin Haller, Stephanie Levine, Randy Rawls, Joan Mickelson, Victoria Landis, Diane Warner, Joan Bond, Barbara Schading and whichever other Naked authors show up.

Admission is free, refreshments will be served, and the public is invited.

Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore is an independent locally owned community bookstore, specializing in the mystery genre, located at 273 Pineapple Grove Way (NE 2nd Ave). Owned by Joanne Sinchuk, Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore has been in business for seven years.

For further information contact:

Joanne Sinchuk
Phone: 561-279-7790
Fax: 561-279-7759
Email: murdermb@gate.net

May 9, 2004
Watching the Detectives
By BRUCE WEBER

Anyone who wonders why crime stories dominate our popular culture should spend a day with Tim Marcia, Rick Jackson and Dave Lambkin. They're Los Angeles police detectives, members of the department's two-year-old cold-case squad, which is responsible for re-examining unsolved crimes through the lens of the latest forensic advances. A conversation about their work sounds like a pitch meeting for a new ripped-from-the-headlines TV series: ''L.A. Law and Order.'' The stories go on literally for hours, and, well, you couldn't make this stuff up, which is ostensibly why the best-selling crime novelist Michael Connelly is here in the squad room, a stuffy, essentially characterless enclosure with a few desks pushed together. He's just starting a new book, and on this January morning he's foraging for material.

He has a lot to select from. There's the story about the rapist and murderer who, in his portable crime kit, along with several pairs of handcuffs and precut lengths of duct tape, carried a vial of another man's semen, which he sprinkled on the rug of the crime scene to throw off the cops. There's the one about the murder suspect being monitored on a wiretap who revealed -- long before divulging the details of his crime -- that he was a homosexual and, to the great glee of the police officers listening in, that he had a crush on Detective Jackson. And then there's the one about the guy arrested for sexually abusing his daughter. The cops tested his semen, but as Detective Jackson recalls, ''they come back and they say to the guy: 'We got good news and bad news. The bad news is that we made you on the DNA. The good news is that she isn't your daughter.'''

Connelly, 47, listens with gratitude and amazement; he isn't used to this kind of openness. He first got to know the Los Angeles Police Department as a reporter for The Los Angeles Times. He arrived from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to take a job on the police beat in 1987 and stayed until 1994, a span that included the Rodney King beating and the Los Angeles riots and ended just before the O.J. Simpson case got under way. They were years when the department was riddled by scandal, the scrutiny of the press was ever-present and the institutional animosity between the department and the newspaper was intense. ''I can't tell you how many times I'd approach a guy and introduce myself, say I'm Mike Connelly from The L.A. Times, and he'd say, 'Good for you,' and turn away,'' he says.

A compact man with short gray-blond hair and a trimmed beard, Connelly has the solicitous manner of a reporter who knows that today a vein has opened for him and doesn't want to stanch the flow. When he speaks, it's in a soft monotone, and his questions are mostly about the details of police procedure:

''If you have DNA, and you send it through the Department of Justice,'' he asks, ''how long until you get the results?''

''Is it just an urban legend that if you get a bone-marrow transplant, it changes your DNA?''

''Have there been changes in the law regarding wiretaps since 9/11?''

Later, asked what he got from the day's research, Connelly says that the wiretap information was helpful. The detectives had described a communications center where several taps were being monitored at once. It's not the usual image of a wiretap in progress, he says. You know the one: a couple of guys hunched in the back of a van with headphones on. Still, the lion's share of his gleaned information was not in the particulars.

''I don't want to underplay procedure and technology,'' he says, ''but to me what's really important is the emotional stuff.''

He noticed, he says, that each of the three detectives had photos of victims prominently displayed on their desks. ''Early on, one of them said, 'You always have one case you fall in love with,''' he says. ''Most people in life have pictures of kids or wives festooned around their desks. These guys have dead people.''


To inform those without a weakness for detective stories, Michael Connelly is the emerging star of the genre. He routinely sells about 300,000 copies of his books in hardcover and about a million more in paperback. While that doesn't approach the really heavy hitters like John Grisham, whose legal thrillers sell upward of two million hardcovers, Connelly is an avowed favorite of critics and other mystery novelists, who give him credit for elevating, if not transcending, the genre. He has been called the natural heir of the Los Angeles crime family, which begins with Raymond Chandler and descends through the likes of Ross MacDonald, Joseph Wambaugh and James Ellroy. And others have been more complimentary than that.

''In the old mystery tradition, in which a crime is committed at the beginning and solved in the end,'' says George Pelecanos, whose 10th book, ''Hard Revolution,'' was just published, ''he's the best mystery writer in the world, I think.''

Connelly is a student of police procedure -- he keeps a small library of manuals at home -- and he comes equipped with a reporter's eye for detail and, as a setting, a city that is rife with atmosphere. He also has a nose for plot; he knows where the skeletons are buried (the bare bones of an early novel, ''The Concrete Blonde,'' were snitched from a procedure manual), and he has the writerly ingenuity to provide their page-turning, seductive flesh.

But what may distinguish him most is his interest in the psychic toll of police work: not how a cop works on a case, as he puts it, echoing a line of Wambaugh's, ''but how a case works on a cop.'' His admiration for the police officers who manage to do the job right is as viscerally felt as a little boy's. He was first intrigued by the police as a 16-year-old, he says, when he witnessed a carjacking in Fort Lauderdale and spent the night in the police station answering questions about it. ''There was definitely a bit of hero worship in it,'' Connelly says of his decision to write novels about cops, which happened not long afterward, when he was in college.

Since then, he says: ''I've come to respect them more, probably. It's a hard job to do correctly, and when you do, it's not noticed. But if you make a mistake or fall victim to the myriad lures of corruption or the other things that can happen to you, then you get noticed. They accept that, and their acceptance of it is the nobility of the job.''

Connelly has written 14 novels since 1992, 10 of them -- including ''The Narrows,'' just published by Little, Brown -- featuring a Los Angeles police detective named Harry Bosch. And in many ways the Bosch novels amount to a chronicle of life in the Los Angeles Police Department in the post-Rodney King era. In Connelly's unflattering portrayal, it is an angry, paranoid force, hamstrung by bureaucracy and riddled not so much by corruption (though there is some of that) but by petty jealousies, small-mindedness and self-aggrandizement.

In such an environment, Harry Bosch is a rogue cop, and real cops like Tim Marcia, an 18-year veteran, say Connelly gets it almost exactly right. Things are changing under a new police chief, William J. Bratton, Marcia says, but for years too many L.A. cops were preoccupied with not getting in trouble themselves rather than with putting bad guys in jail. Harry, Marcia says, is an idealized version of what you have to be in order to do a good job. ''He's very methodical, and he's never interrupted,'' Marcia says. ''That's the way we would like to work.''

Growling, contemplative and skeptical, a man who suffers fools and authority figures with ill-disguised contempt, Harry is an iconoclastic throwback, the kind of guy whom men test themselves against and who challenges women to make him love them. He smokes, listens to moody jazz; he isn't averse to either drinking or heading into danger alone, and he is constitutionally unable to walk away from an innocent in peril or a criminal who might be getting away with it. In short, he is the old-fashioned sort of detective protagonist about whom Chandler wrote in the famous essay, ''The Simple Art of Murder'': ''He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge.''

Look closer, however, and Harry is a hero for our age. In fact, his tough exterior and noir milieu notwithstanding, he's actually rather soft-boiled. He has a past and a personal life; his mother was a call girl who aspired to higher things; she was murdered when Harry was 11. (Connelly borrowed this detail from the life of James Ellroy.) She gave her son the name Hieronymus, after the 15th- and 16th-century painter whose view of the hellishness on earth becomes a metaphor for the way Harry perceives Los Angeles.

And crucially, unlike just about every other fictional detective, Bosch is aging in real time. He was born in 1950. He served in Vietnam. He has an estranged wife he still loves -- and a young daughter he's just getting to know.

Harry's not a wiseacre, like Robert Parker's Spenser, nor does he have the deep sadness of P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh. He's a brooder, though, a blue-collar philosopher who believes that the empirical evidence tells him evil exists in the world and that it is his mission to confront it.

''The idea of whether there's such a thing as a waiting evil, it's a question I don't know the answer to,'' Connelly says. ''I ask about it, but it's hard to bring it up with a cop. You have to wait for an alone moment, but I've never gotten a good answer from anybody, which is why it comes up over and over in the books.''

Connelly says he built Harry from a number of cops he met while he was a reporter. And parts of himself? Is Harry's heart his heart?

''If that would be the case, I'd be proud of that,'' Connelly says. ''His heart is the heart I'd hope to have on my best day.''

ou might not expect the Los Angeles chief of police to be a Connelly fan, but he is. Chief Bratton, in his second year on the job, says that Harry's problems with department bureaucracy are ''on the money,'' and that Connelly's portrayal of a 9-to-5 culture in the department is, sadly, accurate. ''Harry would welcome the changes we're trying to bring here,'' Bratton says. ''A year ago, you could be the victim of a rape on a Friday, have three uniformed officers take you to the hospital to do all the lab work, but not see a detective until Tuesday morning. So we're getting closer to his work ethic, in the sense that his work is his life.''

Unknown to Bratton, he's playing a part in Harry's life. A couple of books ago, Harry was fed up and left the department. In the last book, ''Lost Light,'' and in ''The Narrows,'' he's working on his own, as a private detective. But Connelly found that he missed having Harry trying to turn the battleship of the department bureaucracy. In ''The Narrows,'' a new police chief announces a policy that will allow officers who took early retirement to return within three years -- a policy that, in real life, has been championed by Bratton -- and in the next book, Harry will return.

This time, however, he won't be working homicide. He's joining the cold-case squad -- the real one was formed just before Bratton took over -- which explains his visit to the squad room.

He has kept in touch with the three detectives, and since January, one thing he has learned, to his delight, is that the investigation of unsolved cases often leads out of town, offering a whole new set of possibilities for Harry. The three detectives are discussing bringing a serial killer in Delaware back to Los Angeles in connection with an old case, Connelly says, ''and I've been asking them things like, 'What do you say to a serial killer on a five-hour flight?'''

The impetus for the cold-case setting ''was the idea that these guys are coming back to cases that are 15, 20 years old and seeing the long-term damage of violence in our society. Harry's used to dealing with people in a state of shock, not with years of letting something this bad settle into their bones.''

One thing the detectives provide in January is a crucial theme -- that recent technology has turned police work upside down. Once it was the job of detectives to identify a suspect and then take fingerprints and blood samples from him to compare with evidence at the scene. Criminalists, that is, forensic experts, played a subservient role. Now, Detective Lambkin says, with the establishment of data banks for fingerprints, ballistics and DNA, ''the criminalists can come to us and say, 'This is your guy.' So you can't do the job anymore like we used to.''

This is especially pertinent to their current assignment, in that the changes have created an almost laughable backlog of work. Astoundingly, there are nearly 11,000 unsolved murders since 1960 on the books in Los Angeles, and the seven detectives on the cold-case squad are sifting through them to decide which ones might benefit from the application of techniques that were unavailable when the crimes were committed.

Connelly asks specifically about the difference between investigating cold cases and fresh ones. The speed necessary in pursuing a fresh case, he is told, means that you don't often form attachments to victims or their families. Cold cases, however, involve an enormous amount of desk work and research, of reading investigation reports and examining old evidence to familiarize yourself with the particulars of a case; murder books -- the notebooks kept by detectives as chronicles of each case -- can be more than 500 pages long. So even before you do any interviews, you know the victim almost intimately.

Detective Marcia tells Connelly a story about his recent visit to an elderly hardware-store owner to inform him that the investigation of his sister's 1969 murder was being reopened. The man broke down in tears. ''We were premature on that one,'' Marcia says, ''because we just got the DNA report back, and we don't have enough evidence to work with. So we just put this man through the ringer again, and even though we gave him hope for the moment, we're going to have to call him back and say we're sorry, but we don't have the evidence to continue. Emotionally, that's tough.''


Connelly came to writing crime novels first by accident and then by design. The son of a real estate developer who moved his family from Philadelphia to Fort Lauderdale when Michael was a boy, he was at the University of Florida, studying building and real estate, when he went to the movies one night and saw Robert Altman's film adaptation of Raymond Chandler's novel ''The Long Goodbye.'' ''That led me to the book, which led me to all of Chandler's books, and something hit me,'' he says. ''I wanted to switch my future and become a writer.''

Of course, other than witnessing a carjacking, he'd had no experience with crime or the cops. It was his father's idea that he become a reporter to learn the territory. So Connelly went to journalism school, where among other things he met his wife, Linda. (They have a daughter, now 7.) And in 1980 he went to work for The Daytona Beach News Journal; in nine months he covered one murder.

He moved back to Fort Lauderdale and spent six years on The Fort Lauderdale News. There he was luckier; in 1986, the city had more murders per capita than any other city in the country, earning it the title ''murder capital of America.''

By the time he moved to The Los Angeles Times in the summer of 1987, he had tried twice to write a novel and hadn't succeeded. But on the day he first set foot in town, he received what amounted to a sign. The headlines that day were about a mammoth bank heist, in which the crooks tunneled into the vault from underground. To this day, the crime has never been solved. But it became the centerpiece of Connelly's first novel, ''The Black Echo.''

He left The Times in 1994, and three years ago, he and his family moved back East, to Tampa. But Los Angeles continues to provide fodder for his fiction, and he visits frequently. All the books are filled with descriptions of contemporary L.A., tidbits from its history, glimpses of its underworld. Many of the plot points were born in the city as well. ''The Narrows'' has its climax during a roaring rainstorm that turns the ordinarily placid Los Angeles River into a furious torrent, an idea Connelly borrowed from a historical incident in which a boy drowned in the river in spite of a massive effort to rescue him.

In his view, however, the greatest influence on his writing occurred before he arrived. He was in Fort Lauderdale, shortly after the city earned its unfortunate sobriquet, and the police department, to earn some counterbalancing publicity, granted a reporter, Connelly, a week's access to the homicide squad.

''And lo and behold, we had three murders, all in the middle of the night,'' Connelly says. ''So I'm filling notebook after notebook, fantastic stuff. But the epiphany came in the last five minutes of that week. I'd noticed at the murder scenes that the sergeant I was staying closest to would at some point go up to the body, take off his glasses and put the earpiece in his mouth. It was always a solemn moment, and I was building all kinds of things into what he was doing. Was he silently promising, 'I will find who did this?' That kind of stuff.

''So then at the end of the week I'm sitting in the squad room doing the final 'thanks a lot,' and he starts remarking that he'd spent three nights without sleep, and he takes off his glasses and drops them on his desk to rub his eyes. And I noticed that the earpiece of his glasses had a deep groove cut into it. And I realized that it was from his teeth, that his teeth are clenched so tight when he's looking at a body that they cut into his glasses. It dawned on me at that moment that that might have been the most important thing I'd seen.

''And that, now, is what my life is, a pursuit of that kind of detail.''




The New York Times > Magazine > Watching the Detectives

Take this quiz: Which book are you?

The Book Quiz, by BluePyramid InterActive

This is how I scored:
(and I use the word loosely...never mind)

>>You're Lolita!
by Vladimir Nabokov

Considered by most to be depraved and immoral, you are obsessed with sex. What really tantalizes you is that which deviates from societal standards in every way, though you admit that this probably isn't the best and you're not sure what causes this desire. Nonetheless, you've done some pretty nefarious things in your life, and probably gotten caught for them. The names have been changed, but the problems are real. Please stay away from children. >>

He was 16, I mean 18, I swear!
Sheesh.

Authors use farts, other irreverent humour to get kids reading

MARTHA IRVINE
Canadian Press

Sunday, May 02, 2004

Author Glenn Murray, a co-writer of the children's book "Walter the Farting Dog" during a book signing in Chicago. (CP/AP - Aynsley Floyd)

CHICAGO (AP) - The content of Glenn Murray's Walter the Farting Dog books may seem quirky and even off-colour to some.

But these days, potty humour is big in the world of popular children's literature - from the Captain Underpants series to such bestselling titles as Zombie Butts from Uranus!

Parents jokingly call the genre the kids' version of pulp fiction - or "poop fiction."

"You gotta give kids something they want to read," says Murray, who lives in Fredericton, N.B., and who firmly believes that his smelly but well-meaning protagonist has become an ambassador for literacy.

It would seem that kids agree, since the genre's books regularly appear on children's bestseller lists.

Derek Morgan, an 11-year-old Chicagoan, recently picked up the second Walter picture book, subtitled Trouble at the Yard Sale.

"If you want to laugh," the fifth-grader said at one of Murray's book store appearances, "read this book."

Kaylee Paul, a six-year-old from Riverside, Calif., has latched onto Captain Underpants, a cross between a cartoon and a chapter book, written by author Dav Pilkey. Her favourite is about the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy.

"I like to read it every day. I really, really do," Kaylee says. She's been inspired to create her own cartoon series - "about a chubby man that farts everywhere he goes," she explains, then giggles.

Kaylee's parents say they originally bought her the Captain Underpants stories because, as an early reader, picture books became too easy. She likes the series so much that now her dad, Stan Paul, sometimes has to tell her "That's enough reading for today."

Editors at Scholastic Inc., which publishes Captain Underpants, say that's the goal - especially when it comes to kids who are "reluctant readers."

"For many, many kids, this is the first book they read that starts them on a path of reading," says Barbara Marcus, president of Scholastic's children's books division.

Librarians call such stories "book hooks," says Barbara Genco, immediate past president of Association of Library Services to Children.

Scholastic also publishes Zombie Butts from Uranus! by Andy Griffiths. It's the sequel to The Day My Butt Went Psycho, a story about a 12-year-old named Zack whose back side is prone to detaching itself, running away and causing trouble.

Gail Glover, a mom from Port Crane, N.Y., bought the latter book for nine-year-old son Robbie, but later wondered if she'd made a mistake.

Among her objections were "descriptions of bodily functions that made my hair curl."

"But of course, they solicited howls of laughter from my son," Glover says, chalking it up to "a rite of passage in the development of his sense of humour."

She notes, however, that her son still likes to read the "classics" - including the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings books, as well as works by authors Roald Dahl and Jack London.

Those are the books he should be reading, say some parents who've persuaded their school libraries to take Captain Underpants and other titles off their shelves. Some educators agree.

"I don't want to be a prude about it," says Sister St. John Delany, a nun who heads the School of Education at New York's Pace University. "I just don't think kids need to be exposed to that kind of language."

Murray - who's worked in the education field as an administrator and consultant - is well aware of the "two camps," those who love Walter and those who turn up their noses.

But the author still hopes his books become a classic of another breed.

The inspiration for Walter came from a story co-author William Kotzwinkle told Murray about a real 150-pound bull mastiff whose troubles with gas came from the beer and doughnuts his owners fed him.

While they wrote the first book more than a decade ago, it took several more years to persuade a publisher to print it.

Now each book carries a simple dedication: "For everyone who's ever felt misjudged or misunderstood."

© The Canadian Press 2004


National Post

Librarians Say No to Occupation!
- a petition calling for an immediate end to the occupation of Iraq.

Now, with the bloody occupation of Iraq continuing, with the farce of a 'transition' to a US puppet-government with no sovereignty poised to operate under military occupation, with the occupation's brutality against the city of Fallujah among many other areas, with the death toll of Iraqis and occupying troops climbing daily, with partisan calls in the US Congress for even more troops being heard as a proposed solution to the problems created by the present 'inadequate' force of occupying troops...

We the undersigned librarians re-affirm the petition 'Librarians Say 'Stop the War Now!' and demand:

End the occupation of Iraq by the coalition armies, foreign corporations and mercenaries!

Bring the troops home! No new troops to Iraq!

Stop the violence of the doomed imperial project in Iraq!

No cultural aid to the occupation.

Librarians around the world once again voice their collective opposition to the militarism and imperialism of the US mission in Iraq. We also affirm that the Iraqi people's fate is in the hands of the Iraqi people themselves and progress ultimately must mean a peaceful, democratic solution based on the national sovereignty of Iraq. Progressive-minded librarians everywhere will support reconstruction of Iraq only if and when occupation and war end.

SIGN THIS PETITION


Librarians for Peace

Check out the incredible new library in Seattle... click on the link then click on the picture to see lots more pictures and read all about it.

The Seattle Times: Pacific Northwest Magazine

Poets 'die younger' than authors

Poets die younger than novelists, playwrights or other writers, a new study in the US suggests.

It may be because poets are tortured or self-destructive, or achieve notoriety younger, James Kaufman of California State University, San Bernardino, said.

Dr Kaufman studied 1,987 dead writers from all over the world over the past centuries, and found poets died "significantly younger".

On average, a poet had a life-expectancy of only 62, he said.

It compared to playwrights' average age 63 years, novelists' 66 years and non-fiction writers' 68 years.

Dr Kaufman, who is part of the Learning Research Institute at the university, also studied mental illness and poets.

'Plath effect'

"What I found was pretty consistent with the death finding actually, female poets were much more likely to suffer from mental illness than any other kind of writer and more likely than other eminent women," he said.

"I've dubbed this the 'Sylvia Plath Effect'," Mr Kaufman said.

Dr Kaufman said there may also have been another explanation for poets' early deaths - their prodigious output usually made them more noticeable.

"Poets produce twice as much of their lifetime output in their twenties as novelists do," he said. "If an unpublished novelist was to die, fewer people would notice.

"A great novelist or non-fiction writer who dies at 28 may not have yet produced her or his magnum opus," Mr Kaufman said.

But he said that poetry is not a hazardous occupation.

"The fact that a Sylvia Plath ... may die young does not necessarily mean an Introduction to Poetry class should carry a warning that poems may be hazardous to one's health."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/arts/3648773.stm

Published: 2004/04/22 09:04:32 GMT

© BBC MMIV


BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts | Poets 'die younger' than authors

WAY TO GO, MARY ANNA!

ARTIFACTS, a novel by Mary Anna Evans, has been named
one of three finalists for the Benjamin Franklin Award
in Mystery/Suspense. The Publishers Marketing
Association has established this prize to honor
excellence in independent publishing. It will be
given at an awards banquet just prior to the June 3
opening of Chicago's Book Expo America. Ms. Evans is
at work on RELICS, the sequel to ARTIFACTS and the
next book in her Faye Longchamp archaeological mystery
series.

Turn over a new leaf with debut authors

JUDY MULLEN
Special to the Herald

Once upon a time, you may have read books by new authors such as Dan Brown, John MacDonald, Sue Grafton, Nora Roberts and John Grisham when they were unknown.

Each year more debut authors are published and some may achieve similar success. In addition to acquiring books by popular authors, the Manatee County Library System searches out new authors and selects the best for our collection. Readers like you will decide if these debut authors become popular.

In "Shadows at the Fair," author Lea Wait (herself a fourth-generation antiques dealer) smoothly combines homicide and antiques. Widow Maggie Summer, an antique print dealer, gets involved in solving the death of a fellow dealer when a friend's nephew is wrongly suspected. A realistic background and fascinating information about antiques and antiques fairs makes this a solid debut for fans of the "cozy" genre of mysteries.

Indian author, Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel focuses on Gogol, the American-born son of an Indian couple. Gogol's unusual name, together with conflicts between his Indian heritage and American lifestyles, are the basis of "The Namesake."

Already well-known as an actor, Harley Jane Kozak has written her first novel, the whimsically titled "Dating Dead Men." This lighthearted mystery concerns Wollie Shelley, her struggling card store, her attempts to date (living) men for a research study, and what goes wrong when she stumbles across a body.

Deanna Kizis, West Coast editor of "Elle" magazine, puts a new spin on the "chick lit" novel, in "How to Meet Cute Boys." Benjamina Franklin is a star L.A. journalist whose dating disasters serve as a regular feature in "Filly" magazine. When she meets the man of her dreams, he turns out to be a lot younger and exhibiting signs of Benjamina's worst nightmare: male commitment phobia. The dating world's highs and lows provide plenty of laughs and tears.

In the intriguingly titled, "Shoveling Smoke," Austin Davis has written a hilarious crime novel set in the tiny East Texas town of Jenks. Houston lawyer, Clay Parker attempts to leave the rat race behind when he moves to Jenks. From the start, he finds it a bumpy road as he tries to prepare for his first case while a cast of quirky characters (corrupt officials, crazed survivalists, incompetent hit man, an emu and a naked county clerk) hinder him from every side and Clay discovers that nothing is what it seems to be.

In Ken Bruen's "The Guards," ousted Irish policeman, Jack Taylor, surprises himself by getting hired by a dazzling woman who has heard Jack is good at finding things. Stark, violent, sharp and funny, "The Guards" gives the reader a close look at the gritty Galway streets, and is a promising new addition to contemporary crime fiction.

Jilliane Hoffman's first novel, "Retribution," relates the events unleashed by the brutal rape of recent law school graduate, Chloe, in 1968. Twelve years later, the case against a vicious serial murderer is being built by a compassionate police (male) officer and an aggressive (female) prosecutor, but the officer is concerned about the urgency of the prosecutor's actions. Plot twists and turns and a breathtaking ending make this a debut novel to remember.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Judy Mullen is a reference librarian at the Central Library.



Bradenton Herald | 04/18/2004 | Turn over a new leaf with debut authors

Sat 17 Apr 2004

Got the write stuff for a Rankin tale?

LYNN DAVIDSON


• TV series lets viewers end tale by crime author

• Other famous writers taking part in interactive show

ASPIRING authors are to be given the chance to write the ending for one of Ian Rankin’s thrillers.

The Edinburgh-based crime writer is taking part in a new interactive BBC series which will see the public asked to write the conclusion of half-finished tales.

Along with the Inspector Rebus creator, well-known writers such as Adrian Mole author Sue Townsend, comic Alexei Sayle and Chocolat author Joanne Harris will be providing short stories for the BBC3 series.

Rankin said today: "I think there is at least a short story in everyone, I’m not sure there is a book in everyone though.

"The intriguing thing about this is that you are given half a story to start with. I have got absolutely no idea how the story I have contributed is going to end.

"I can see about half a dozen ways in which it could end, but I’d be curious to see whether people see them too or if they come up with something totally different which I had not thought of."

Rankin has written a six to eight-page story and describes it as "an intriguing tale of an Edinburgh ne’er-do-well who may, or may not, be using supernatural powers".

The story centres around a "lowlife" and has a criminal element, but Rankin stressed it is also "completely new" and does not feature Rebus. "He is not there, but people could bring him in. That will be interesting too. I’ve tried to keep it as vague as possible," he said.

The novelists’ half-finished stories will be published in a pamphlet which will be distributed across coffee shops, libraries and on the internet next month.

Readers will then have six weeks to try to complete the tales and get their entries judged.

The eight winning stories - which will be judged by a panel including author Muriel Gray and playwright Kwame Kwei-Armah - will be showcased on BBC3 in the autumn.

A selection of entries will also be broadcast on Radio 4.

Rankin added: "As a writer you tend to think of yourself as having a particular style, so it will also be interesting to see whether people try to mimic that style or if they bring their own twist to it, and whether readers can spot the join between the two halves of the story.

"I agreed to do it because I don’t think there are enough outlets for short stories. When I got started it was in short stories. I’m doing this to try and get more people interested in the genre."

Like most authors, he occasionally suffers from writer’s block, which he tackles in two different ways. "I either put the story aside and just hope that inspiration will eventually strike, or I talk it through with people, in the pub over a drink, saying: ‘This is the story...’"

BBC3 controller Stuart Murphy said the channel wanted to uncover the next generation of writing talent across Britain.

He said: "This project is very exciting for anyone who has read a book and thought they could do better.

"With the stories covering a variety of genres there’s something to suit everyone’s style of writing. This series could change the path of some people’s lives."

End of Story... will be launched on BBC3 and BBC2 this weekend.

The eight half-stories will be fully revealed in a launch programme on BBC3 at 9pm on Sunday, followed by an airing on BBC2 at 10pm.

Winners will meet the authors whose work they have completed and may even land a publishing deal.


This article:

http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment.cfm?id=433872004

Ian Rankin & Rebus:

http://news.scotsman.com/topics.cfm?tid=810

Websites:

Ian Rankin (official site)
http://www.ianrankin.net



Scotsman.com News - Entertainment - Got the write stuff for a Rankin tale?

April 15, 2004
Call Me E-Mail: The Novel Unfolds Digitally
By ADAM BAER

A CORPORATE e-mail message goes astray. Two young strangers flirt in cyberspace. They agree to meet. An assault ensues. And a mystery built on digital clues is born.

It's not a plot that breaks new ground. But then, the earnest new "novel" that it fuels, "Intimacies," by Eric Brown, is drawing notice more for its style than for its content.

A former English professor who teaches executives how to write, Mr. Brown, 59, calls "Intimacies" a digital epistolary novel, or DEN, terms that he has trademarked. The plot of "Intimacies" is based on "Pamela," the 18th-century work by Samuel Richardson that is one of Western literature's first epistolary novels. It is the format of Mr. Brown's work rather than its story that makes it postmodern: it is meant to be read with the aid of a software interface designed by Billy McQuown, an employee at Mr. Brown's consulting firm, Communication Associates.

The story unfolds through e-mail messages, instant-message conversations and Web sites, all within a window generated by the DEN software; the program can be downloaded free from Mr. Brown's Web site, www.greatamericannovel.com.

But more intriguing than "Intimacies" itself is Mr. Brown's plan to begin selling a version of the software that he used to write it, one that will help fans of the form execute their own digital epistolary novels.

Of course, writers have long experimented with e-mail narratives; some say that by now it is almost impossible to avoid, given the prevalence of e-mail communication.

"E-mail fictions have been going for at least a decade - it's a pretty primal urge," said Rob Wittig, 48, a writer who began posting fictional messages on electronic bulletin boards in the early 1980's. In 1999 Mr. Wittig created "Friday's Big Meeting" (www.robwit.net/fbm), a story set in a virtual chatroom, as well as "Blue Company 2002" (www.robwit.net/bluecompany2002), arguably the first epistolary e-mail narrative to be written and published for paying e-mail subscribers in real time.

Other examples of what Mr. Wittig called message fictions have ranged in style from "Online Caroline" (www.onlinecaroline.com), a multimedia story that lets users interact with a fictional character by means of timed e-mail messages, her Webcam and her Web site, and SMS cellphone text-messaging and pager-message shorts. Then there is "The Case of the Molndal Murder," a September 2003 project at the Molndal Museum in Sweden, where people using Bluetooth-equipped hand-helds followed a map while their devices received short movies and chunks of text that told a mystery story.

Mr. Wittig, whose current project is a fictional blog, www.robwit.net, said he believed that Mr. Brown's interface for "Intimacies'' and the composition software he plans to market were the first of their kind. The interface, for PC's only, mimics e-mail and instant-messaging programs; the reader opens and reads each character's messages in sequence. A second version due this month will deliver the messages at timed intervals, Mr. Brown said, so that reading them will more closely resemble the experience of receiving e-mail and instant messages.

With the current version of the program, DEN 1.2, the screen is divided into four windows: one for e-mail, one for instant messages, an imitation Web browser and an imitation pager screen. At the top of the main window are tabs that read: "Week One," "Week Two" and so on. Below that menu, in the program's e-mail window, is a list of messages that the reader clicks through in chronological order (though it is possible to backtrack or jump ahead). Sometimes there are other links that summon transcripts of instant-message exchanges, Web pages, or pager messages in the program's other windows.

The composition software that Mr. Brown plans to market, DEN WriterWare, which is expected to cost about $150, resembles the reading application and works much as popular screenwriting programs do. The user creates a cast of characters, then writes the story in e-mail or instant-message installments that can be saved individually. To create ancillary story aids, writers can incorporate virtual snapshots of screen images that are created with a small toolbar or taken from real Web sites. The saved messages can be sorted by sender, time or subject, allowing writers to change the sequence of a story or to write one character's side of the correspondence at a time, a feature that would allow children to write stories together.

Mr. Brown said he was inspired to create "Intimacies" after watching young people use e-mail and instant messaging.

"My younger employees say they don't have time to read books and instead focus on e-mail and Web writing," he said. "There's this huge group of readers in our office - a communications company! - and they're reading snips and pieces. It got me thinking: Why not write stories in this form and in the process give readers a way to write their own?"

The response from young readers who visit Web sites like www.theonion.com, a satirical online newspaper where Mr. Brown advertises, suggests that the form has struck a chord. "I'm not much into staring at a computer screen for any longer than is strictly necessary, since I work in front of one all day, everyday, like most people," said Roberta Gray, a 26-year-old editor at The Sunday Tribune in Dublin. "But I really found 'Intimacies' quite addictive, and ended up reading the whole thing more or less in one sitting."

Alex Michas, the 25-year-old director of business development at Spring Street Networks, a New York Internet personals company, said he found Mr. Brown's concept to be in tune with the times.

"There's a very different rhythm to e-mail and chat - it lets our users reveal a lot about themselves very quickly - and this form of storytelling is similar in that regard," he said. "There aren't too many books that have successfully captured how these interchanges really work."

Although they have attracted a lot of attention, digital epistolary and message fiction like "Intimacies" are not the only electronic forms of literature vying for attention on the Web. A small community of so-called hypertext writers, many of them affiliated with academia, have been publishing more experimental work in online journals like The Iowa Review Web (www.uiowa.edu/~iareview) and BeeHive (beehive.temporalimage.com) for more than a decade. Such writing includes texts with animation and works created by using rules and random processes to generate something different for each reader.

Thom Swiss, editor of The Iowa Review Web and a professor of English at the University of Iowa who focuses on those forms of hypertext, said that to him Mr. Brown's creation seemed mechanical. "While inventive if buggy, I'm not sure how useful it is," he said. "At this stage of its development, it's more of a game and less literature - and not because of the pulp story but because the formal elements of composing the piece are given to you: you just fill in the content."

Still, Mr. Brown's digital novel has drawn praise from some scholars interested in new media, especially those who hope to take e-literature mainstream.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin, a 31-year-old traveling scholar at Brown University and visiting researcher at the University of California at Santa Cruz, said texts that take the form of fictional digital artifacts like e-mail or blogs held promise for a generation that grew up with computers. "I read more on the screen than I do on paper," he said, "and I'm pleased to see people take imaginative writing and put it into the spaces where we do our living."

Mr. Wardrip-Fruin compared "Intimacies" to an epistolary story by one of his students that consisted of e-mail messages with attached photos and diary entries and that was published through a Yahoo e-mail account. He said that such projects, as well as some narrative and life-simulation video games, qualified as literature worthy of attention.

"These are forms of e-writing as surely as experimental hypertext poetry," he said. "We just have to understand that like traditional literature, e-literature has a range of styles, including popular ones."

What will take electronic literature to the next level, Mr. Wardrip-Fruin suggested, are multimedia projects involving so many inventive procedures that they cannot be reproduced or mimicked on paper. "Think of the textual analogue to video games," he said. "You can't really capture the way a video game works by printing it out; that's what will have to happen with electronic literature for it to become popular."

"Intimacies" has achieved a level of popularity: in the four months it has been available online, Mr. Brown said, about 5,000 people - over 10 percent of the visitors to his Web site - have downloaded it, and youth-oriented Web sites like Fark.com have included links to it.

His next step, he said, will be to use e-stories in communications training for executives and to teach writing to schoolchildren who may enjoy computers more than they like reading. He said he was also working on customizing the third version of his software for hand-held organizers and cellphones in the hope of reinvigorating the concept of the e-book.

"The problem with e-books has always been that they use traditional text and layout," Mr. Brown said.

With "Intimacies," the interface had to be developed before the narrative could unfold. "We made it especially to look like the place where people get their most interesting and vital forms of information today," he said. "How else is a modern writer supposed to get involved in his readers' lives?"



The New York Times > Technology > Circuits > Call Me E-Mail: The Novel Unfolds Digitally

Book Groups Less Price-Resistant; Favorites of 2003

Cost is not an obstacle if a reading group has strong interest in a book, according to a recent survey conducted by Reading Group Choices of more than 2,400 book group members. Among other findings, although 58% of all book group selections are in paperback, this year's results showed groups bought hardcover versions of The Da Vinci Code and The Five People You Meet in Heaven rather than wait for their release in trade paperback.

"The surprise of this year's survey results is how the number of hardcover selections have climbed to 42% of the total number of books chosen for book group discussions during 2003," Donna Paz Kaufman, publisher of Reading Group Choices stated. "Nearly a 20% increase over the past year." The online survey was conducted between January and March 2004.

The survey also indicated that backlist titles with visibility can have a long life in the book group market. Pope Joan (1997), The Red Tent (1997) and Girl With a Pearl Earring (1999) have all enjoyed years on the Reading Group Choices Book Group Favorites list.

The survey also provided "a clear indication that most book group members prefer topics that address the literary nature of the book and those that draw out the reader's own personal life experience," reported Kaufman.

Favorite Book Group Choices of 2003 were:

1. The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd (Viking)
2. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown (Doubleday)
3. The Red Tent by Anita Diamant (Picador USA)
4. Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand (Random)
5. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Harcourt)
6. Girl With a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier (Plume)
7. Peace Like a River by Leif Enger (Grove)
8. Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins)
9. The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold (Little, Brown)
10. Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Knopf)
11. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Picador USA)
12. No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (Anchor)
13. Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross (Ballantine)
14. Atonement by Ian McEwan (Anchor)
15. Cold Mountain by Charles Frasier (Vintage)

Reading Group Choices was launched in 1995 to help readers identify and select "discussible" books, simplify the process of facilitating group discussions and keeping them on track, and introduce readers to a variety of appropriate books from a range of publishers. The group's Web site (http://www.readinggroupchoices.com/ ) offers select reading guides that can be printed directly from the site and links to publishers Web sites with resources for book groups.--Kevin Howell

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

April 11, 2004, 11:27AM

SPYWARE: THEY CAME FROM CYBERSPACE
Step 1: Avoid spyware
By DWIGHT SILVERMAN
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle
SPYWARE

THEY CAME FROM CYBERSPACE
• Intro
• Step 1: Avoid spyware
• Step 2: Let Windows remove it
• Step 3: Removal software
• Step 4: Turning off spyware
• Step 5: Removing browser objects
• Types of spyware
• Got spyware?


The best strategy in the fight against spyware is to avoid it altogether. With a little vigilance, common sense and safe-surfing practices, you may never need to follow the steps in the rest of this guide.

• Update software. Keep your operating system and most-used programs updated with the latest patches and fixes. Some spyware programs, like viruses, take advantage of known security flaws in Windows and Internet Explorer.

• Avoid bad online neighborhoods. Just as you wouldn't go walking late at night in a bad part of town, don't go wandering around Web sites with questionable content. Sites that offer pornography, free downloads of copyrighted music and hacked copies of popular software programs are often also distributors of spyware and browser hijackers.

• Just say no. Web sites of all types may try to install plug-ins to your browser. Some are fine, such as Macromedia's popular Shockwave plug-in for view Flash animations. Others, though, can install spyware or hijack your browsers. When a site wants to install software, you'll see a popup called a certificate that will give you some information about the software and who is offering it. If it's a name you know -- such as Microsoft, Macromedia, Apple, etc. -- it's probably safe. But if you don't recognize it, or particularly if the plug-in offers to provide free software, music or porn, then decline.

• Tweak your settings. Your browser's security settings for Internet Explorer should be set to at least medium to prevent automatic launching and installation of Active X and Java programs which are often used to perform actions in a Web browser. In IE, click on Tools, Options, then Security. From here you can adjust your settings. Keep in mind that if you increase security above medium, some Web sites may not work properly.

• Investigate free software. Although there is lots of free software that really is free, a lot of it comes with a catch. Do some research before downloading a program by entering its name into a search engine such as Google along with the words "adware" or "spyware." Carefully read the fine print on the program's source Web site, and if you do install it, pay close attention to the licensing agreement that will appear as art of the installation routine.

Certain kinds of software are more apt to contain spyware or adware than others. For example, peer-to-peer, music-file-sharing programs, such as Kazaa or Grokster, are notorious for components that come along for the ride. In general, any free software that purports to get you something else for free is likely to contain spyware or adware.

Step 2: Let Windows remove it

Some spyware and adware programs do allow computer users to remove them easily. Check in the Add/Remove Programs module in the Windows control panel for the offending item. Try running the uninstall process.

If you don't see it listed there, check in the Windows Program Groups -- Start, Run, Programs -- for a folder related to the program. If there is a corresponding folder, there may be an uninstall icon inside it.

Some spyware uninstallers, though, will only generate error messages. If that's the case -- or if no uninstaller can be found -- you'll need to take more drastic measures.


Step 3: Spyware removal software

Spyware has become such a universal problem that an entire industry has grown up around software designed to remove it. Initially the purview of developers of shareware and freeware, the demand for spyware removal tools has inspired giants such as Symantec and Network Associates to jump into the market.

But the most popular programs -- and often the most effective -- remain those developed and created by programmers as freebies online.

A warning: Spyware removal programs aren't perfect. They won't remove all programs, and using them could cause other programs to stop functioning -- for example, if you remove adware that's required for another program to work. And some of them make changes to key system files, including the Windows Registry. Use at your own risk.

• AdAware -- www.lavasoft.de One of the most popular removal programs, AdAware takes aim both at spyware and browser cookies. It's also one of the simplest to use.

After installing, check for online updates to its database of bad programs and download it if one's available. Follow the prompts to check your computer for spyware and tracking cookies.

When it's completed -- it may take several minutes -- you'll see a list of cookies and possible programs. Right-clicking on any program in the list brings up a menu with lots of options, including the ability to select all the items on the list. Once you've chosen the items to remove, click Next and AdAware will delete them.

If you remove something you later wish you hadn't, AdAware's Quarantine feature lets you restore it.

• Spybot Search & Destroy -- www.safer-networking.org A little harder to use but more thorough, Spybot Search & Destroy is the other leader in spyware removal.

After installing, you can launch Spybot in either advanced or easy mode. Spybot also can download updated information about new spyware programs, so be sure and download its definition files before scanning.

Like AdAware, a scan takes a few minutes and produces a list of suspects. You can click on some items and get more detail about them before deciding whether to delete them.

Spybot also has an Immunize feature, making it impossible for some programs to change them. In Advanced mode, you can delve deep into system settings, including turning off programs that are set to launch at startup.

Here's a tip for both AdAware and Spybot. Restart your computer before running either one, and don't launch any browsers before launching Spybot or AdAware. This prevents programs designed to launch with the browser from loading into Windows' memory and can can keep them from being removed. Failing that, try running both in Windows' Safe Mode (at bootup, just before the Windows startup logo appears, hit the F8 key, and at the menu that appears, choose Safe Mode). This keeps spyware from launching when Windows itself starts up.

• Hijack This! -- www.spywareinfo.com/~merijn/ A program designed to fix browsers whose home pages and settings have been altered or "hijacked," Hijack This! requires some knowledge to be used safely.

After scanning your system, which takes just a few seconds, it shows in a single window a list of items that could be related to browser hijackings.

• CW Shredder -- www.spyware.info.com/~merijn/ Developed by the same author as Hijack This!, CW Shredder removes a very common piece of spyware known as the Coolwebsearch Trojan. It takes advantage of a flaw in a key component of Windows -- Microsoft's version of the Java Virtual Machine -- to install itself via popups often found on porn and illegal software (a.k.a. "warez") sites.

Run CW Shredder after installing, and have it look for updates. Then click the "Fix" button, and the the program will both scan and fix any problems it finds. If your system does not have this kind of spyware, it will give you the good news.

Step 4: Turning off spyware

In those cases where spyware is stubborn, you may be able to prevent it from starting up when Windows launches.

If you are using Windows 98, ME or XP, click on Start, Run, then type MSCONFIG and hit Enter. This will bring up the System Configuration Utility, and from here click the Startup tab.

Here you'll find programs that are activated when Windows boots, and by unchecking the boxes next to them, you can prevent most of them from starting. The list can be mystifying for even experienced computer users, but there's a searchable guide to the most common startup programs at www.sysinfo.org/startuplist.php.

Once you've determined what you need or don't need, you can uncheck the undesirables, then click Apply and OK. Restart your computer.

After the restart, the utility will appear again. You can check to see if any of the items previously unchecked have been rechecked, which some of the nastier spyware programs will do.

(Windows 2000 users will discover that the System Configuration Utility is not available on their PCs. Instead, try using Startup Control Panel, available at www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml.)

Step 5: Removing browser-based spyware

Some spyware components are browser plug-ins, also known as Browser Helper Objects.

You can find Browser Helper Objects, or BHOs, in the Temporary Internet Files area. Click Tools, Options, then Settings on the General tab. From there, click on View Objects.

A folder called Downloaded Program Files will appear, and from here you can identify and possibly delete suspected BHOs. As with the startup items found in the System Configuration Utility, the item names can be cryptic. A list of common BHOs can be found at www.sysinfo.org/bhoinfo.php.

You may find you cannot remove some, because the browser is open and using them. An alternative is to restart the computer, then go to the Internet Options module via the Control Panel. This lets you get to the same menus without opening IE.

You can also get to it by clicking on My Computer, the C: drive, the Windows folder, and then opening the Downloaded Program Files folder.

Finally, if those tricks don't work, try removing the BHOs while in Windows' Safe Mode, again making sure you don't launch Internet Explorer first.

Even these strategies may not work. For advanced help, try some of the tips located at www.spywareinfo.com, or ask the experts that hang out in the forums there.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/tech/2496493

The boisterous world of online literary commentary is many things. But is it criticism?
By James Marcus

Sunday, April 11, 2004; Page BW13

Due to a widely reported technical blooper, the Canadian division of Amazon.com revealed the identities of several thousand of its anonymous reviewers. For just a few days in February, until the company restored their electronic fig leaves, these stealth critics were effectively unmasked. For the most part, of course, this was no big deal. What difference did it make if "a reader from Saskatchewan" turned out to be named Keith -- and actually lived in Hoboken? Surely such minor mendacities could be forgiven. Maybe Keith was just shy, and longed for the Great White North.

Yet there were also some alarming discoveries to be made. A fairly large number of authors had gotten glowing testimonials from friends, husbands, wives, colleagues and paid flacks. A few had "reviewed" their own books. The novelist John Rechy, among those caught in flagrante, pleaded the equivalent of self-defense: He was simply fighting fire with anonymous fire. Other miscreants cited the ancient tradition of self-puffery, practiced by both Walt Whitman (who wrote not one but three unsigned reviews of Leaves of Grass, and quoted them all in the second edition) and Anthony Burgess (who paid for the stunt with his job).

Still others dismissed the idea that there was any conflict of interest to begin with. Lisa Jardine, a British academic heavyweight and occasional paid consultant to Amazon's U.K. site, made no attempt to repair the online giant's critical reputation. Indeed, she suggested that it had no reputation to lose. As she saw it, Amazon was essentially a promotional hog heaven, where any author with a brain in his head would quite naturally shill for his own creations: "There's nothing immoral about it. This is a marketing website."

It's hard not to chuckle over what one company spokesperson called "an unfortunate error." The exposure of such brazen fibbing inspires a certain relish: It's like that moment in "The Wizard of Oz" when the curtain is yanked aside and Frank Morgan is revealed as a fake. Yet the sheer variety of reactions to the glitch -- from outrage to embarrassment to jaded indifference -- suggests that something more is afoot.

Can this latest chapter in Amazon's long, complicated romance with the vox populi tell us something about pitfalls of Internet democracy? Perhaps. At the very least, it's a reminder that art and commerce can make for extremely strange bedfellows.

A little personal history may shed some light. I worked as a senior editor and writer at Amazon from 1996 to 2001. When I first started at the company, it was still a vest-pocket operation with 50 or so employees. Visitors to the site encountered a vast, bare-bones catalogue: We sold more than a million different titles, but offered little information about them beyond the card-catalog level.

To begin addressing this information deficit, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos came up with a two-pronged approach. On one hand, he hired people like me, former journalists and editors -- slowly at first, then in droves. Among our main duties was to write old-fashioned book reviews, complete with byline. Despite the occasional flicker of unease about our role -- were we critics or sales clerks? -- we functioned more or less like traditional reviewers, reading the books and rendering honest judgment, preferably in 250 words or less.

No editorial staff, not even a burgeoning one, could spackle in the giant holes in the catalogue. It would have taken centuries. Luckily, Bezos had already come up with a canny expedient: customer reviews. By the time I came aboard, Amazon was already encouraging visitors to comment on the books they had read. What began as a trickle would turn into a steady stream, then a torrent: Soon there were thousands, then millions of reviews. Who would have thought that the book -- an archaic information product already slated for extinction by various starry-eyed futurists -- could elicit this mighty outpouring of opinion?

Day after day, they kept coming, running the gamut from stylish elegance to stream-of-consciousness blather. At that point, they struck us professionals as something of a sideshow -- a virtual mosh pit where the customers could play by any rules they chose. Most of us came to enjoy the racket, with its noisy assertion of electronic populism.

True, there were some flaws from the very start. A simple piece of software could comb through the incoming reviews to detect specific naughty words and ethnic slurs. Yet a less common obscenity, or even a misspelled one, snuck right in the back door. If a customer came across one of these smears and complained, we usually removed it -- a process that might take weeks, since Amazon's gleaming, high-tech chassis sat atop a Dickensian-era infrastructure. Sometimes, though, we weren't sure how to weigh in. During my first few weeks on the job, a Wiccan from the Midwest took us to task for a nasty customer comment about casting spells. Were witches truly a minority in need of our protection? Only after a heated departmental debate did the comment disappear -- as if by magic.

Then there was the problem of false attribution. When William Shakespeare or Jesus Christ posted a customer review, it was a simple matter to press the Delete button. Famous living celebrities posed a more ticklish dilemma: As I recall, their contributions were verified by e-mail whenever possible. That aside, customers were free to take on any identity they liked. This was the Web, after all, where we were supposed to slip the constraints of the material world and function as pure spirits. If one of these spirits happened to plagiarize most of his customer reviews from the book section at Salon.com -- and then indignantly accuse the magazine of stealing his work when the deed was exposed -- well, purity was a relative thing.

You could argue that these were mere technical difficulties. A teenage programmer with a six-pack of Jolt could probably attend to most of them in the course of a weekend. Yet the snowballing popularity of the whole process forced the editorial staff at Amazon to confront some more pointed questions. What exactly was the relationship between professional reviewers and casual readers? By opening the conversation about books to millions of amateurs, had the Web more or less destroyed the notion of cultural authority? Had the Bastille of elitism finally fallen?

We pondered these questions long and hard. We pondered them even harder once it became clear that the company was casting its lot with the customer reviewers and subtly ushering its editorial staff out the door. When I left Amazon after five years, I thought these matters might no longer bedevil me. Yet they still do -- and in the wake of last month's high-tech pratfall, perhaps I can share some basic conclusions.

For starters: Imagine that you're circulating from room to room at an enormous cocktail party, with millions of guests, eavesdropping. Undoubtedly you will be treated to some gems, some brilliant bits of repartee, the occasional burst of intellectual fireworks. Most of what you hear, however, will be pretty mundane, given the law of averages and the general human tendency to lose track of our thoughts halfway to completing them. Well, the same rule applies to customer reviews, both at Amazon and elsewhere. There's plenty of wheat amid the chaff -- but there's lots of chaff, acres and acres of it, much of it lacking coherence, clarity, charity and punctuation. In a sense, it's now the audience, not the editor, shouldering the burden of culling out the good stuff. Whether this represents a seismic shift in the cultural terrain or merely a fresh division of labor remains to be seen.

If only there were some way to combine the speed and democracy of the Web with the more meditative character of traditional criticism. Oh wait, there already is: blogging. In some cases the convergence is quite literal -- witness the case of Terry Teachout, reviewing for such Bronze Age bastions as the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and Commentary with his left hand while blogging like mad with his right at his site, www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight. But even those bloggers who never venture into print have something in common with their opposite numbers in the traditional media: a name to besmirch, a reputation to smudge. It keeps them honest in a way that anonymous, duck-and-cover reviewing never can. It also encourages a kind of snarky civility, very welcome in our polarized era.

This may change, of course, as the blogosphere moves further into the mainstream. Already there are turf wars, low-level spats. No doubt a pecking order will gradually materialize, since even cyberspace operates according to the familiar logic of Animal Farm: All bloggers are created equal, but some are more equal than others. There will be stars, contract players, boffo traffic numbers. There will be a proliferation of advertising on the most visible sites -- there is already, in fact -- and a defiant tug-of-war between the early bloggers and their entrepreneurial successors.

Perhaps I'm being too cynical. If the blogosphere turns out to be a brave new world after all, where logrolling and cronyism fear to tread, I'll be the first to applaud. In any case, there's no denying that the practice is on the rise: According to a recent study by the Pew Institute, up to five percent of all Internet users have created blogs in the last year alone. We do seem to be on the verge of that radiant future in which everybody, as the saying goes, is a critic.

A confirmed Luddite myself, I confess to viewing this prospect with mixed emotions. I'm grateful to the Internet, I love its Whitmanian capacity to contain multitudes, yet I cringe at the thought of keeping up with it all, the endless tsunami of argument, the compulsion to send our ideas into battle like guided missiles. Too bad: There's no turning back the tide, no depriving the populace of its niftiest microphone ever. Like it or not, we're going to hear America singing, and the really intriguing question is what the chorus will sound like. •

James Marcus is a former senior editor for Amazon.com. He sat on the board of the National Book Critics Circle from 1996 to 2002. His book "Amazonia: Five Years at the Center of the Dot.com Juggernaut" will be published in June.




© 2004 The Washington Post Company


The boisterous world of online literary commentary is many things. But is it criticism? By James Marcus (washingtonpost.com)