Archive for February, 2007


Last Hardy Player pays homage

At age 101, “the only surviving member of Thomas Hardy’s theatrical group,” the Hardy Players, will recite the poet’s work as part of an event called Dorset Voices.

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Book-banning cries get weirder

The FBI has been forwarded a “Values in Education” complaint that assigning books by Wright, Morrison and Vonnegut violates laws against distribution of porn to minors.

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How an obscene work becomes a classic

Looking back on the Madame Bovary trial, and the banning of Lolita, Ulysses, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, it’s easy to feel superior to the philistines who didn’t recognize these literary works as high art. (Flaubert disséquant Madame Bovary caricature, at right, found here.) But Elizabeth Ladenson argues in Dirt for Art’s Sake that each age, including ours, is censorious in . . .

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