3 things

1. Harper Lee, racist

Sometimes I read things and I just like to assume it's a joke. In this case, I'm hoping it's a joke on the part of the person who sent the letter. Really, really hoping.

Assuming it's not a joke, this is an interesting way to consider the topic of literacy. Is being literate simply the ability to read and write? Or does it involve actually being about to understand more than the most basic and literal meanings of words? I'm not saying you have to be able to understand Gravity's Rainbow, I'm just thinking that literacy isn't entirely useful if you think 1984 is just a sci-fi story or think that To Kill a Mockingbird is racist.

2. And speaking of 1984 ...

Note to high school writers: Don't read Chuck Palahniuk, Bret Easton Ellis, or even Stephen King. Or, if you must, please make sure they have no influence on anything you ever want to turn in for class. Unless you want to end up like this, apparently.

Why this story really strikes me beyond all that silly civil liberties nonsense ...

When I was a freshman in high school I wrote a novel, the first of several I wrote during those years. (I haven't finished a single one since.) It was bad in a lot of ways and I'd really rather not go into the plot, but one of the key scenes in the book was when, during the homecoming dance in my school cafeteria, a deranged student blew up the building, killing nearly everyone inside.

At the time, it didn't much occur to me that I could get myself in a lot of trouble if the wrong people found the book. Actually, a lot of people around the school read it and at least one copy was passed from student-to-student quite indiscriminantly. I knew I didn't want a teacher to read it, but I don't suppose I expected to get in much trouble if one ever did. But five years later, two deranged kids walked into their high school and started shooting. They also had every intention of setting off bombs that would have killed or seriously injured hundreds of people in the cafeteria. When I heard about Columbine my first thought was of friends of mine who were students there and if they were OK; my second thought was about that old story I'd written.

Maybe part of my lack of worry about the story at the time was that the whole thing was treated as a distaster. The person responsible was very clearly a villain in every way. The descriptions of what happened were of acts of heroism by survivors and tender scenes recounting those who died. Anyway, that was my intention, I don't know that I was a good enough writer to fully convey the emotion. But nonetheless, it wasn't cruel or vindictive or scary. It was a scene of tragedy.

Still, if someone had found it and I had been expelled it wouldn't be hard for the media to have simply portrayed me as the kid who wrote a book about blowing up his school. Hell, I'd even tried to figure out what supports you;d have to crumble to bring the roof down and what kinds of explosives might do the trick.

To me, the story the kid in Minnesota wrote sounds like something that was aiming at comedy. But the one about shooting the teacher does sound threatening and I'm certainly not going to blame the teacher for reporting that she felt threatened. But how did we skip all the steps where the kid and his parents were contacted by (a) the school or (b) law enforcement to talk about the problem? Then again, in this day and age, maybe the kid's lucky he got out at all.

3. Oh, and this is awesome.

I sometimes think that, if Murray is pretty much Garfield, then Mason is a lot like Bucky. (In which case Murray is also rather like Satchel, sadly).