Jacqueline Wilson has fallen foul of the Blue Pencil Brigade (formerly the Blue Rinse and Green Ink Brigade). Her new book, My Sister Jodie, was withdrawn last month by Random House after a complaint about the word "twit" being spelled with an "a".
The word has been used uncontroversially by Malcolm Lowry, John Updike, Philip Roth and Ralph Fiennes – admittedly not in children's literature – but just as a low, sweary insult. Something I believe many young persons today are rather adept at.
In whom we trustAnd Random House are caught up in another row. I'd never heard of the Langum Charitable Trust, a small American prize set up to "make the rich history of America from the colonial period to the present accessible to the educated general public" with a $1,000 award. I certainly have now, as they have blacklisted Random House and will not consider any of their books for the prize, accusing the publisher of "cowardly self-censorship". Their ire has been roused by Random's decision not to publish The Jewel Of Medina by Sherry Jones, a fiction about Aisha, the wife of the Prophet Muhammad after having paid $100,000 for it. The decision was made after a complaint by Professor Denise Spellberg, who called the work "soft-core pornography" and made her concerns public on a website. I'm sure we could all judge for ourselves if it is a good novel or not, but plucky little Langum has done a fine service – and raised its own profile considerably.
Secrets of the master writerBrowsing the Scottish Book Trust's website, I was intrigued to find Irvine Welsh's Top Tips, to coincide with their Days Like This initiative with the BBC. Among the pearls of wisdom are "Style is not important", "Tell your story to a friend and ask them to scribble it" and "Please don't use offensive language". So that's how Bedroom Secrets Of The Master Chefs came about!
The place to beWigtown Book Festival is fast approaching, and I've been delighted by the "site specific" events: Sara Maitland talks about silence in Cruggleton Church; while Gregor Townsend discusses his memoirs in Bladnoch distillery… And in a late addition to the programme, Alvin Hall from BBC's Your Money Or Your Life will be taking part in the Credit Crunch debate. I hope there's not a whip-round for his fee.
Don't make pig's ear of poetryYet more censorship news: Britain's biggest exam board has asked schools to destroy a poetry anthology because a poem, 'Education For Leisure' by Scots-born Carol Anne Duffy, is about knives. Note to exam board: please look up and define the following terms – dramatic monologue, irony and internal critique. I wholeheartedly commend the AQA. After all, when my class studied Lord Of The Flies we all went on a pig-killing spree, when we did Catcher In The Rye we all holed up in a hotel boozing for the weekend, and when we read King Lear we went insane and tore our father's eyes out.
The full article contains 518 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
