Burning the Books ....

 

There is a memorial in Berlin, recording, very effectively, the Nazi 'burning of the books', the image of which has stuck in my mind over many a year.

It seems, in retrospect, a terrible thing ... but, when one regards the question soberly, in 2026 ... well, I'm bound to admit there ARE some books that deserve to be destroyed. I have just had an encounter with the one which I would put top of my hit list. It does not deserve to have currency.

No, I'm not talking about Mein Kampf or the latest Barbara Taylor Bradford. I'm not talking about any of the guns, guns, cars and sex rubbish-books that somehow still thrive, or even the 'I had sex with a spaceman' stuff. No one (I hope) keeps them on a shelf but the 'imaginative f(r)iction' one.

My pet hate, my liber loathmostus is much more dangerous and frightening than they. Why? Because it is trying to pervert the English language, and force it into a kind of bland and incorrect kind of Amurrican dialect ...   Well, words are my business, my life, and to me this is 'life-threatening'.

Oh, the book in question is entitled The Chicago Manual of Style. Known in my circles and home as The Chicago Manual of Lack of Style. "Die, you creature of filth .." (Elektra 1966)

I have never read this Scheisterwerk. I don't wish to. And I shall continue to write AS I WISH without being 'instructed' by Chicago. But this abomination is a creeping ill. Even the editor (one of them) of my last book in England turned to this devil's dictionary for reference. And I have two works coming out shortly, both of which have suffered under its evil influence.

In the 1960s and 1970s, when I published my first books, we were not subjected to such linguistic tyranny. I remember how my editor laughingly queried my description of Katisha (Mikado) as 'dragonistic'. The neo-adjective was noted delightedly in a couple of reviews. 

I was inclined to errr.. long sentences as a youth. The wondrous Caroline Richmond gently modified them. I had the help of Caroline, blissfully, through my two biggest books, and Illinois wasn't ever mentioned. Oh! the good old days.

But then .. the pc age and censorship (from America) arrived. You can't say 'aggressively Jewish' said Routledge. And well 'nigger minstrel'? Who is trying to change history? The minstrels, black or white, were America's first (and sole) original contribution to the world's musical theatre! 

But back to the burnable book.

What good does it serve? Merely to make everybody just like everybody else? What a ghastly thought. 

In my youth Lady Chatterley's Lover and Another Country were 'banned'. I found both totally harmless. This monstrosity, attempting to impose montony and incorrectitude on the English (yes, English) language, is a threat to freedom of thought and expression ... not to mention good taste ...

BURN IT!