Editorial: Summer Reading

As the weather gets warmer and office workers become less productive, a lovely thing called summer reading starts. Summer reading is a wonderful mix of intellect and guilty pleasure. It makes for richer conversations (instead of summarizing a rerun of a prime-time drama), while at the same time, giving you a reason to hide your book in the sand (Nora Robert readers).

Despite choices in low-brow novels, summer reading is like a diet soda or Lean Cuisine "comfort food," you look proactive just partaking. While you might be caught up in a romance between a victorian housewife and a victorian houseboy, at least you're not reading People or passed out in your neighbor's kiddie-pool. So, fear not, airplane novels are still novels and who else will read Silver Flame?*

Drop off your kids at summer school, leave work early, ignore pending student loans, sunbathe it what you call a swimsuit (but is actually a bra), and pickup a piece of trashy steamy writing at its finest. Honestly, if you haven't read something from the historical romance or romance genre, you need to. Read it aloud on a car trip or to yourself under the covers...

Enjoy!

*Actual title.

A Tree (that unfortunately) Grows in Brooklyn

A recent article published in Uppity Eco Magazine takes aim at Betty Smith's 1943 novel for "glorifying invasive species" and "falsely promoting the novel as eco-focused." Smith, unable to comment due to her 1972 death, is pissed.

The magazine, based out of Berkeley, California, began publishing "awareness-raising" articles about "green literature" in 2006. In the past five years, Uppity Eco has called for a cease-publishing of The Brothers Karamazov, Riverside Shakespeare, Norton's Anthologies, and Little Women for their "excessive use of paper" and "blatant attack on the world's formost oxygen producers."  The latest attack on Smith's novel, however, is part of a new effort to contextualize books in order to hold them accountable to modern environmental-friendly standards.

Hugo Leopold, the magazine's editor, said in a statement on Twitter that "...the magazine does not take issue with literature as a whole, but rather works to remind people (upper-middle class Westcoasters), that the Earth and all Her beauty needs to take priority over mere words on a page..." Leopold's statement was met with opposition from everyone.

The ongoing debate over e-books and "regular" books, however, is not an issue that Uppity Eco or Leopold have taken part in over the last year. The magazine did, however, publish a brief article last month declaring e-books as an "over use of plastic" and recognized an "empty recycled glass jar" as a perfectly good way to keep words together without wasting paper or plastic.

As for Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, it remains unclear if the publisher, Harper, will seek any legal action against Leopold or Uppity Eco regarding libel. In an unofficial rumor heard within the publishing house, there is a possibility that Harper will file a complaint and take Uppity Eco on Judge Judy.

"We shouldn't see trees as potential books," stated Hugo Leopold

The Old Man and the Sea of Jerry Beads

No, this is not Mr. Big from Sex in the City, it is Mr. Sex in Every City, Ernest Hemingway. 

This is first post (and most likely not the last) about Ernest Hemingway, not because he is the best author of the 20th century, but because he was the best at talking about himself. Besides loving himself, Hemingway also loved women...and war. Hemingway chased women, joined any army he could, owned boats and sported a variety of mustaches and intimidating facial hair. Today we have further insight into Hemingway's wild side. 

In a completely bogus 1925 episode of Jerry Springer, "The Lost Generation: I Want Out of this Orgy!" Hemingway turned to his fellow modernist, Ezra Pound, and said, "Man up, Pound! The Eliot and James gravy train stopped five years ago!" In a moment of disbelief, considering Hemingway's previous praise of Pound, the crowd sat in suspended silence until, the wonderfully crazy, Zelda Fitzgerald, took the stage, shoving Jerry to the side, and announced, "Ernest find your own man, I don't want you anywhere near F. Scott!" With a line that would soon become the screen-print that flappers all over Paris sported, Hemingway yelled, "Fitz, your wife is crazy!" (F. Scott never heard this comment as he requested that the prostitute he was screwing backstage continuously yell, "F-ing Scott!")

The episode ended in complete drunkenness (except for Pound, who fled for Italy) and a lecture from Steve Wilkos underneath the Eiffel Tower. 

This historical footage shows that the lives of those considered "lost" is just as screwed up as we would imagine.