You’ve probably read the recent hubbub regarding Alan Gribben, professor of English from Auburn University, and how he has published a sanitized version of “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” that replaces the word “nigger” with “slave.” The “N word” is used more than 200 times throughout “Huck” and Mr. Gribben thought it his duty to rescue “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.”

First of all, no. The history of redacted and Bowdlerized literature has never gone over well and I would expect any professor of English to have enough respect for the original material to teach it as it is. That’s your job. You have an undeniable classic of American literature and the opportunity to instruct students as to how dated and backwards the social mores expressed therein have become. How dare you try to protect me from understanding the depths of our depravity? You should be appalled, as we all should be appalled, by where we once were and how difficult a time it proved to be for our country.

Varnishing historical “rough spots” denies students the understanding of just how far in the wrong we’ve been and decreases their sensitivities to the certainty that we will be wrong again. We learn from the past by confronting it and applying it to the present. Any softening of the past decreases our capacity to learn from it. These are lessons that should sting.

I think Michiko Kakutani, writing for the NYT, nailed it:

Haven’t we learned by now that removing books from the curriculum just deprives children of exposure to classic works of literature? Worse, it relieves teachers of the fundamental responsibility of putting such books in context — of helping students understand that “Huckleberry Finn” actually stands as a powerful indictment of slavery (with Nigger Jim its most noble character), of using its contested language as an opportunity to explore the painful complexities of race relations in this country. To censor or redact books on school reading lists is a form of denial: shutting the door on harsh historical realities — whitewashing them or pretending they do not exist.

How can you not like the Library of America? High-quality hardcover books produced by a non-profit and featuring some of the greatest writers and minds in our country’s history. I’ve been a Library of America fan ever since I was a fledgling literature major in college.

Now, I am happy to report that they’ve gone and set up a blog that I think readers of TPN might appreciate. Given the exquisite material that they have to pull from, I imagine that there is a lifetime of great posts yet to come. The most recent post regarding Walt Whitman and the Meteor of 1860 is a great place to start.

Last week I asked “Will AT&T use their iPad and iPhone data plans to attack net neutrality?” Today, Steve Jobs stood on stage and did exactly as predicted, he showed that Apple will be a preferential media delivery partner of AT&T. This is an opening shot in what I suspect will be the unraveling of net neutrality. When a significant percentage of internet browsing devices are iOS (the new name for Apple’s iPhone OS), the internet will have been co-opted by a device and software maker – scary times indeed.

So what did Steve announce? The new iBooks app on iPad and iPhone will not incur any additional data charges against your plan on either the iPad or iPhone. Your digital books will remain synced and accessible from any Apple device, free of AT&T data limitations. If you use the Kindle app (or any other reading app), tough shnookies. The Kindle app, already playing in an unfair game (in that it has to send people from their iPhone/iPad app over to the browser for purchasing thanks to Apple’s exorbitant in-app shopping experience) now also has to contend against data caps that Apple gets to workaround. Apple and AT&T are moving quickly to lock users onto their ecosystem for all media delivery.

I still love Apple products but this is something to watch closely. At what point will this become anti-competitive monopolistic behavior? When Apple moves movies and music to the cloud and gives themselves the same preferential treatment, people will be talking about this a lot more – I guarantee it.

I’ve had an iPad for a couple of weeks now and I love it. I’m finding new ways each day that it’s insinuating its way into my routines. While it’s an unnecessary device, it’s a seriously enjoyable one and it’s been getting better already thanks to the efforts of talented developers contributing new applications. It’s super enjoyable to lay down on my couch, fire up the Netflix app, and watch a movie. Unfortunately, thanks to AT&T and their monumental bait and switch (removing a 2-month old unlimited data plan), the product’s promise has just taken a sizeable ding.

The unlimited data plan for the iPad was a large factor in my purchase decision and I’m going to keep it for now (AT&T is allowing current users to keep using the plan with no access to tethering), but the death knell has already sounded. The impact of this decision will ripple through to every content service. Any streaming video app developers are now going to have to re-run the numbers on their apps and see if it’s worth developing or maintaining. If I were Netflix, I’d be seriously pissed at AT&T right now.

So here is where I cross the line into idle speculation about what we should all be afraid of – the Apple and AT&T domination of media delivery and the unraveling of net neutrality. It’s no secret that AT&T isn’t a huge fan of net neutrality (and neither is Verizon if you were looking for them to help bail us out of this). They’ve been searching for ways to charge people for the convenience of delivering content on their pipes. Now they have a blunt tool for doing just that. With an unlimited data plan available to any consumer willing to pay $30/month, paying users could stream as much content as they wanted, gated only by the data transmission speeds. That promise is dead after only two months. I’m not surprised at the end result, just the speed of the backtracking.

Imagine the following plausible scenario: the iPad (and iPhone) continues to sell like hotcakes reaching an even more sizable presence in the market. Now imagine that Apple announces a whole host of web-accessible media services for streaming music and video to your iPhones and iPads (and this could happen within the next month or so with iPhone OS 4 about to drop). At that announcement, Apple announces that they’ve worked out a great deal with AT&T where streams from Apple do not impact your monthly data caps. AT&T would of course make this “service” available to companies like Netflix or Skype as well – for a price. The damage will have been done. AT&T will become a toll-booth on the information superhighway, taking money from both content producers and consumers. Welcome to the unraveling of net neutrality!

Far fetched?

I recently discovered the craigmod journal, a smallish set of well-articulated explorations on book design, photography, illustration, and interactive design. Each entry in the craigmod journal is a gem: clear writing, lots of data, thoughtful layout, and beautiful design. It’s a reminder of how wonderful a blog can be when the focus is on quality rather than quantity; depth more than frequency.

His recent post called “Books in the Age of iPad” explores why the iPad opens up new digital forms for readable content that the current crop of Kindles, Nooks and Sony eReaders have been unable to address. This post is what led me to the site and it’s also what kept me there.

While you’re on the site, you may also want to check out the GF-1 Field Test. It’s a critical exploration of a camera as a new user methodically puts it through its paces. I only wish I could get product reviews like this for every major purchase I want to make.

The free Frye: One of my favorite things in town.

I could sing the praises of The Frye Art Museum until the end of time. After all, who can argue with the power of free – especially when you’re talking about a wonderful collection of art and the outstanding rotating exhibitions (see “The Old, Weird America: Folk Themes in Contemporary Art”) that come through the place?

Last weekend I went over to the museum to peruse the smallest exhibit in the museum (because that’s exactly what you can do when price is not a barrier), “Soft Glowing Light: Viewing Art in the Home of Charles and Emma Frye.” I wanted to learn more about the Seattle power couple who started it all, to understand the genesis of their legacy and a bit more about one of my favorite places in Seattle. What I found out surprised me, although in retrospect it shouldn’t have. The Fryes were incredibly prolific in their art collecting, but they were also undeniably generous with their purchases, opening up their personal home gallery to charity functions and special groups with great frequency, long before they were able to establish a free museum for the entirety of the public. Their house gallery, along with the Henry’s across town, were major cultural outposts in Seattle, bringing art to a much broader audience.

The exhibit itself is quite small – I counted 21 photos and a reproduction of a 1917 Society Page from “The Seattle Sunday Times” – but the passion of the Frye’s is undeniably in every photo, art covers every possible inch of the walls in the Frye home gallery – floor to ceiling, wall to wall.

According to the literature describing the exhibit, the Fryes hung and rehung paintings constantly in order to surface new connections between their paintings; one day might show paintings from given artists grouped together and the next day might show them instead grouped by subject matter or style. Like Rob, the main character from “High Fidelity,” you get the sense that the Fryes were constantly revising their own “Top 10″ lists and finding new connections between the paintings they owned, ceaselessly exploring the narratives created between them on their walls. It’s probably a bit like me and the organization of my book shelves. At least the enjoyment of collecting cannot completely elude we plebeians.

According to a blog at the Seattle P-I, Jonathan Borofsky’s “Hammering Man,” beloved art icon owned by the City of Seattle, and the logo-sake of this very blog, has had to have his arm removed for repairs.

The Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs has posted that they believe the sculpture will have his arm reattached and be back to hammering some time in January, once the drive mechanism has been rebuilt in Michigan.

For now, enjoy the welcome respite my friend and take a few thousand swings off. I will toast your speedy recovery over a large Thanksgiving dinner.

Links:

• The article from the SeattlePI “The Big Blog”
• The SeattlePI has a nice photo gallery of the recent operation
• The article from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs “Art Beat”

It’s been a busy few days at TPN and I apologize for the recent lack of postings. Rest assured, there is some good stuff coming for you shortly. So what’s been happening? I’m glad you asked.

As some of you may have read in my twitter feed, I had some issue migrating the blog over to a new hosting provider. While that was happening I couldn’t post anything to the site or it would get out of sync with what had been migrated to the new cloud servers, resulting in having to go back to the beginning and re-migrate. That was a painful process that I am not eager to replicate ever again but the good news is that we’re good to go and working like a champ now.

I also recently asked my friend Mark Albonizio to join me in working on TPN and he agreed! Mark is a creative guy with a background in photojournalism and should be posting his first articles to TPN shortly. Keep your eyes peeled and say “hi” when you see him.

In the near term, you should expect a few more site design changes and the like. Some of you may be excited about those things and some of you just want to read the content. I totally understand. The content shall return to its normal frequency as of now and we have a great local artist interview of Virginia Howlett I hope to post within the next week.

Please keep letting me know if you have any ideas for articles on local creative folks or shows that you think will be interesting. Cheers.

I paid Logo Design Guru to develop a logo for this site. I told them that the site was for “Passionate discussion about the art, literature, technology and culture from the Pacific Northwest.” Knowing that the goal is to build a site that we can all communicate our appreciation for all aspects of artistic endeavor, which of the following do you like the best?

My logo choices

I can only choose 2 for further rework so let me know your favorites and any changes you’d suggest. Thanks so much!

I always think it’s a bit *ahem* manufactured when the Top 100 books of 2009 are announced with 16.66% of the year still left to go, but I guess that’s how you help drum up holiday sales. Anyways, Amazon announced its top 100 Books of the Year today.

The full list is here.

Here are the top 10:

1. “Let the Great World Spin” by Colum McCann
2. “Strength in What Remains” by Tracy Kidder
3. “Wolf Hall” by Hilary Mantel
4. “Brooklyn” by Colm Toibin
5. “Beautiful Creatures” by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl
6. “Crazy for the Storm” by Norman Ollestad
7. “The Girl Who Played with Fire” by Steig Larsson
8. “The City & The City” by China Meiville
9. “Stitches” by David Small
10. “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” by William Kamkwamba

As usual, most of those book are totally unknown to me. The only one I’ve read is “The City & The City” by China Mieville and I’d highly recommend that as a very novel melding of speculative fiction and mystery. In the top 100, the only other book I’ve read (I’m actually about 2/3 of the way into) is “Inherent Vice,” by Thomas Pynchon – but you’d probably expect that of me seeing as how I will buy every Pynchon novel the minute it comes out and swallow the thing down like a python and a small child.

Take a look at the list of Amazon’s Top 100 Books of 2009: Editor Picks
and tell me what I need to read next. What am I missing out on?