Adonis Diaries

Dry bones of abridged book versions; (August 16, 2009)

Fifty years ago, Ray Bradbury had this outlandish notion:

1. that the visual memories of what we had read are stored intact;

2. that a technique will be developed to retrieve the contents of books that we have read.

Thus, the intellectuals who fled from the cities to the countryside, wandering like hobos along the old railroad track that is no longer used, have each of them memorized special book or sections of books waiting for the current Dark Age to be over: the one party rule burned the original manuscripts and saved the tasteless abridged versions.

This new version has a coda by the author, which focus on the new realities in book publishing where the publishers are taking liberty to self-censuring sections and paragraphs that are deemed hurtful to the powerful minorities so that they might sell better and avoid group harassments.

For example, the supporters of dwarf, orangutan, dolphin, nuclear non-proliferation, environmentalist, Neo-Luddite, Unitarian, Irish, Italian, octogenarian, Buddhist, Zionist, Women’s Lib, and so forth want to impose and interfere with aesthetics. Consequently, books that focus mainly on a single gender or race or a nationality or use detailed descriptions on the diversity in culture and life style are vigourously classified as non-publishable.

Most of books are revisited and abridged for high school readers, a tampering that render the style of the books alike; thus, you discover that Mark Twain reads like Poe who reads like Shakespeare who reads like Dostoevsky.

Digressions which are the sunshine, the life, and the soul of reading are scraped in these abridged versions.

Consequently, if we take out the philosophic digressions of Dantes and Milton, then what stays are dry bones.

It is no wonder why every organized minority has as a priority to own its publishing business; it is no wonder that I feel the US novels are all the same in style and composition and thus are no longer exciting if we are seeking variety, innovation, and contradiction.