dp: Indeed. Last night I checked out Neuromancer, hearing that it was the novel that revitalized science fiction. Warning sign #1: one of the raving quotes on the back cover said, “Psychosexual.” Huh? I decided to give it two pages, just to be fair. Well, on the second page I ran into the f*** word, so it was a pretty easy decision. (And even if there hadn’t been all of that, I still didn’t like his style — I only had to read two paragraphs to know that. I much prefer older books, like H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man which I started reading after that as my recovery process. :))

As for the ScreenItesque site, I think the wiki-style with structured blogging is a good way to go. It’d have to be clear to people that they’re not making moral judgments on the book, but rather making an objective report on what could be objectionable content. It’d be nice to integrate into both Amazon and LibraryThing for reviews and such (and I’m sure there are other book-reviewing sites out there).

Liz and Katherine: My statement was probably a resident of the realm of hyperbole, just visiting for the day, but I’ll give a brief biographical sketch of the man (keeping in mind that he may be exaggerating things here and there). I went to a Utah children’s writers’ panel last year, and one of the questions had to do with objectionable content and such. Several of the writers described books they’d read lately that they felt were good examples of whatever point they were trying to make, and one of them told about a book where the narrator is a fly on the wall watching oral sex go on. (And she seemed to think that was fine!) This is the origin of my comment. I don’t remember the title of the book, and I know I’m making it out to be worse than it is, but I think that it’s going to get that bad within the near future. All of the moral fences have been battered down.

I do have to agree with Liz, however, in wondering what you’ve encountered that could be considered a “how-to guide for oral sex.” I realize modern fiction contains comparatively more questionable content than does a lot of older literature, but I also feel fairly safe in asserting that, in general, most works that have literary merit do not rely on gratuitous use of such content–incidentally, this is how I draw my personal line of appropriateness: if it’s gratuitous, I don’t read it; if it has obvious relevance and importance to the work (and to the contemporary issues and perspectives it’s meant to address), I usually do.

I guess my problem is that there’s no sense of scale in this post, so I’m unsure as to exactly what kind of books you are referring to. Seriously, I’d like some specific examples of what you regard as objectionable fiction.

I could see some benefit in a site that addresses something like this. I don’t think that LibraryThing is the way to go (though I love it and am a paying member), but perhaps a wiki-based format would be useful, or even wiki-style editing mashed up with a structured blogging microformat type of thing for stylistic consistency. Perhaps you could tie it back to Amazon or LibraryThing though for covers and catalogue information. Food for thought…

I’d be remiss to leave the cursing people out of my life. Alas, some of my closest and dearest friends and family have been talented cursers. I guess it just helps to know that real people are speaking those words. And I’m just @#$@$ fine with that. :)