The senseless, tragic rape of Charles Bukowski’s ghost by John Martin’s Black Sparrow Press (2 Viewers)
- Thread starter mjp
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the bored BSP-typist runs out of business now as there's a new Martinization-app that automatically does the work.
It's called 'clean reader'.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoo...reader-the-new-do-it-yourself-censorship-app/
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...clean-up-bad-language-in-ebooks-10131321.html
It's called 'clean reader'.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoo...reader-the-new-do-it-yourself-censorship-app/
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s...clean-up-bad-language-in-ebooks-10131321.html
PhillyDave
“The essential doesn't change.” Beckett
i saw the 'clean reader' thing. Fucking insanely stupid. if your reading needs to be cleaned you shouldn't be reading it.
In "squeaky clean" mode, "breast" becomes "chest." Maybe they can install way back mode, so blacks and women can't vote, and Liberace just hasn't met the right gal. Same mentality.
Bukfan
"The law is wrong; I am right"
Now they don't have to burn or ban books anymore, at least not e-books. Soon we´ll have a Clean Reader version 2 that will delete any hints of sex, words like "gay" and "liberal", etc., and that's just the beginning. "Offensive" e-books will soon contain mostly blank pages after the Clean Reader have deleted all of the offensive writings. Maybe we better stick to our Bukowski paper books, just as a precaution. :p
it's idiotic and kinda scary. what are the chances the "inventors" from idaho are good god-fearing christians...
from one of the articles -
Joanne Harris, the writer of Chocolat, wrote a blog entitled “Saying ‘Fuck You’ to Clean Reader”, arguing: “The fact is that these ‘acceptable alternatives’ are all taken from modern American slang, and not only do some of them make no sense in the context of English literature, they are likely to be far more intrusive (and potentially, more offensive) than the word they are meant to replace.”
Her main worry about the app, she added, was “One of censorship.”
“To tamper with what is written – however much we may dislike certain words and phrases – is to embrace censorship. It starts with blanking out a few words. It goes on to drape table legs and stick fig leaves onto statues. It progresses to denouncing gay or Jewish artists as “degenerate”. It ends with burning libraries and erasing whole civilizations from history.”
from one of the articles -
Joanne Harris, the writer of Chocolat, wrote a blog entitled “Saying ‘Fuck You’ to Clean Reader”, arguing: “The fact is that these ‘acceptable alternatives’ are all taken from modern American slang, and not only do some of them make no sense in the context of English literature, they are likely to be far more intrusive (and potentially, more offensive) than the word they are meant to replace.”
Her main worry about the app, she added, was “One of censorship.”
“To tamper with what is written – however much we may dislike certain words and phrases – is to embrace censorship. It starts with blanking out a few words. It goes on to drape table legs and stick fig leaves onto statues. It progresses to denouncing gay or Jewish artists as “degenerate”. It ends with burning libraries and erasing whole civilizations from history.”
MJP, kind of curious about this: has anyone looked at the posthumous collection of John Fante's stories published by BSP, published and MS versions? I mean, Martin might have had less reason to take pruning shears to Fante's language than to Buk's - but maybe he sprinkled a few adverbs. The crucial point is that all of the Fante texts were previously unpublished, posthumously collected, so ripe for Martinizing. Any thoughts?
I'm curious to know what you all have done with your posthumous Buk poetry books. Have you thrown them away, purged them from your collections? I have taken my off my Buk shelf and put them in a box in a closet... but I have a hard time chucking them, for unknown reasons - maybe just a gut feeling, somehow that I shouldn't or that I might miss them later. I wish the full manuscripts were out, it would make the decision easier.
Pogue Mahone
Officials say drugs may have played a part
I wish I had kept them all just to compare them to the originals. Maybe I'll buy them back from the secondary market. Finding the unedited stuff in the magazines has become an obsession. It feels good to expose the failed English teacher for who he is. His contributions are senseless, no matter what his intentions. Looking forward to reading the new City Lights book.
They're (all) still on my shelf.
When there's no rain, hail is just fine :fog: - as they say in these parts.
They were never on my shelf. When I started to dig into Bukowski's poetry, guys like MJP and Roni had already begun to record the butchering of the posthumous collections. So I decided to go without those ones.
Sometimes it's an advantage to be a newbie. You can take a pass on stuff that is known to be covered with slime.
True. I like to do that too, every now and then. That'd be the only reason to keep them. In fact, I did this last night. Read a poem called The Hollywood Hustle. And the slimed version has a particularly absurd change at the end. You want to laugh (or cry), check this out.
The authentic version:
https://web.archive.org/web/2020/ht...75-01-07-the_hollywood_hustle.jpg&workid=3199
The slimed version:
https://books.google.com/books?id=d...v=onepage&q=hollywood hustle bukowski&f=false
I mean, WTF? The changes kill it.
The authentic version:
https://web.archive.org/web/2020/ht...75-01-07-the_hollywood_hustle.jpg&workid=3199
The slimed version:
https://books.google.com/books?id=d...v=onepage&q=hollywood hustle bukowski&f=false
I mean, WTF? The changes kill it.
The genesis of clean reader...
[This video is unavailable.]
Seriously though, things like clean reader is a slippery slope towards a frightening fascistic culture of censorship that if allowed to take hold and become the norm would have grave ramifications for freedom of expression. It would be a destroyer of art, and a rampant breeder of mediocrity.
Let art be. We don't want artless holier than thou mediocre meddlers ruining all the good stuff, all the cool stuff. Fuck that. A censored society scares the shit out of me.
[This video is unavailable.]
Seriously though, things like clean reader is a slippery slope towards a frightening fascistic culture of censorship that if allowed to take hold and become the norm would have grave ramifications for freedom of expression. It would be a destroyer of art, and a rampant breeder of mediocrity.
Let art be. We don't want artless holier than thou mediocre meddlers ruining all the good stuff, all the cool stuff. Fuck that. A censored society scares the shit out of me.
PhillyDave
“The essential doesn't change.” Beckett
Fuckin' A Faramir!
mjp
Founding member
Slow down, hombre.
Some voluntary app that changes curse words to things that everyone knows are just replacements for curse words (what's the difference?) is not censorship, and it isn't a step down a road toward censorship. It's just simpletons doing what simpletons have always done. I have a copy of It Catches My Heart In Its Hands where every instance of the word fuck is crossed out with a pen. That book is more than 50 years old.
If you want to get wound up about something, get wound up over the moronifying of textbooks, which are quite a non-voluntary thing.
I hope you're right about that. The scary thing is that there seems to be a market for that app, who are those people, and more importantly what's wrong with them?.
It's funny that the fuck hunter gave enough of a fuck that he/she had to cross out the word from an entire book. I wonder if he/she got anything out of the book, maybe they just skim read scanning for the awful F word. Maybe they had some kind of mission from god to strike the word from every book they found. It's very odd behaviour.
The textbook thing sounds like the dumbing down of education that's been going on for a while. I've read that American kids from the 1900's we're smarter than the kids of today.
Anyway, John Martin, I like my art warts and all, exactly as the artist intended, unmolested by a third party. Where does he get the balls? The very idea is sickening.
Skygazer
And in the end...
Fuck knows how they would get along reading Irvine Welsh or James Kelman and will they take their app to a Harold Pinter or David Mamet play like Glengarry Glen Ross or "Death of a Fucking Salesman" as it's called. It's the same well intentioned people from Idaho ( that being a state of mind not just an American location) that keep the ALA busy at Banned Books week, if you look up their Classics that have been challenged, it would break your fucking heart, truly! We all laugh at the ridiculousness of watching tv and hearing the bleeper in overdrive, it fools no one, but I am not so sure this clean reader thing is as innocuous. But, whilst waiting for the insert profanities app; which is surely on the way, I purchased this, A faithful and yet modern update of Shelley's Frankenstein, Here's a snippet:
"And did the man whom you pursued travel in the same fucking fashion?"
"Fuck yes":wb:
mjp
Founding member
Nice Idaho Mormons, keeping the world safe from words.
Skygazer
And in the end...
Just the sweary ones and Flanders isn't the worst person in the world really (I think less of Inktera) and should they have an epiphany at least the original work of the writer was still there.Question is who is doing the Martin/Bukowski Restore App with permanent option.
Skygazer
And in the end...
:)Course I'm not joking, Nedward Flanders is a babe, under that green jumper lies a rippling torso of steel. Even has his own tribute band - Ned Zeppelin (three cds and a world tour).
The Clean App; as hilarious as a Swearing App would be. But you get radio and explicit versions of music. Taking home a book and scoring out every word that begins with the letter P is crazy, you own the book - not the words - but if they want to do that in the privacy of their own home on a tablet, is it really so bad? The company who developed it and have now cut and run deserve the scorn and clearly it's an App that none but a few want. Different kettle of fish to the subject of this thread, I think.
The Clean App; as hilarious as a Swearing App would be. But you get radio and explicit versions of music. Taking home a book and scoring out every word that begins with the letter P is crazy, you own the book - not the words - but if they want to do that in the privacy of their own home on a tablet, is it really so bad? The company who developed it and have now cut and run deserve the scorn and clearly it's an App that none but a few want. Different kettle of fish to the subject of this thread, I think.
mjp
Founding member
Scorn for what? Being a business and doing what businesses do? As a business do you have to share the beliefs of everyone you work for or serve?
I would think it's not uncommon to get involved in something and think, "Well, this is weird, but whatever, it's just a job." and then change your "whatever" opinion when everybody says, "This is awful, what the hell were you thinking?" Would you rather they stand behind the idiots who paid them to build it and go down in flames with them? What would be the point of that? For an app that less than a thousand people use? You should be praising them for having common sense, something most businesses lack.
What this all boils down to is religious fundamentalists trying to bend the evil world to fit in to their point of view. If you think there's nothing wrong with that, imagine taking it to the extreme and rather than just altering the entertainment of the secular world, the fundamentalist start killing the writers who they consider to be sinners or contrary to their beliefs - oh wait, they already do that in some parts of the world, don't they.
Businesses really only believe in one thing, profits.
They wouldn't have done the market research because of the ridiculousness of the app. "say, how would you like an app to go on your e reader that replaces all the swear words with nice clean ones that don't offend a handful of people living in the bible belt?"
"Hahahahahahahahaaaaa! That's a good one! Hahahahaaaaa! *slaps thighs then wipes a tear away, walks off still chortling*
"I don't think this is going to take off".
I can see some religious fundamentalist reading some hardcore thriller in bed one night about the criminal underworld, and just after reading yet another brutally violent part where the poor guy who ratted out the head honcho screamed a few choice words as he was getting his fingers sawn off or something, closing their book, sighing, looking off into the distance with a knitted brow, then his wife saying "what's wrong dear?"
"Oh gosh, there is just sooo much swearing in this book!".
I wonder what the late great Frank Zappa would have thought of clean reader, haha.
They wouldn't have done the market research because of the ridiculousness of the app. "say, how would you like an app to go on your e reader that replaces all the swear words with nice clean ones that don't offend a handful of people living in the bible belt?"
"Hahahahahahahahaaaaa! That's a good one! Hahahahaaaaa! *slaps thighs then wipes a tear away, walks off still chortling*
"I don't think this is going to take off".
I can see some religious fundamentalist reading some hardcore thriller in bed one night about the criminal underworld, and just after reading yet another brutally violent part where the poor guy who ratted out the head honcho screamed a few choice words as he was getting his fingers sawn off or something, closing their book, sighing, looking off into the distance with a knitted brow, then his wife saying "what's wrong dear?"
"Oh gosh, there is just sooo much swearing in this book!".
I wonder what the late great Frank Zappa would have thought of clean reader, haha.
Would it be possible to have a book or a zine out of some of Buk's original work (especially the most distorted stuff) before any changes were made by editors? I'd love to get hold of a zine or a book of Buk's poems as they were written, before any changes were made by publishers.
PhillyDave
“The essential doesn't change.” Beckett
Zobraks is a machine. Don't fuck with
the machine.
the machine.
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mjp
Founding member
The Crunch was published in Love is a Dog From Hell and then in What Matter Most, and they are different versions. Both are different from the original small press publication.
https://web.archive.org/web/2020/https://bukowski.net/poems/crunches.php
There are a couple other poems that Martin re-published in posthumous books (I don't know what they are offhand), maybe because he didn't realize he'd published them when Bukowski was alive. Or he just didn't care. Or he preferred his own versions.
https://web.archive.org/web/2020/https://bukowski.net/poems/crunches.php
There are a couple other poems that Martin re-published in posthumous books (I don't know what they are offhand), maybe because he didn't realize he'd published them when Bukowski was alive. Or he just didn't care. Or he preferred his own versions.
What a great idea.
The point being that if the poems are not being published as they were originally typed by Buk, if major changes were made by editors, then can they be considered genuine Buk poems?
This could have legal implications for, not only the Buk estate, but for publishers in general.
There may be a loophole here.
Well, I must say that's it's tremendous to see another attorney here in our midst. I look forward to discussing casework and legal precedent with you @BukFan Brad.
It's wonderful to see you intelligently pose a question they've been asking around here for almost 10 years. Your legal training has, of course, qualified you to pose it in a sound and refreshing manner that none of these non-lawyers could ever manage. Kudos, my esteemed colleague, kudos.
Being an attorney, what is the legal position?
