Old Book, Old Problem
Monday, June 26th, 2006I’m Feeling: Good
I’m Listening To: The clicking of mice and tapping of keyboards as I substitute for a co-worker’s computer fundamentals class.
I recently re-read a book I read in high school, entitled Into Thin Air, by Jon Krakauer.
The book is a detailed, first-person account of the disaster on Mt. Everest in 1996. The book was assigned to all SLUH students and staff to read over the summer. It’s a decent, and really, pretty fascinating read. There are a lot of interesting aspects to what happened on that mountain that year. And while as many people died as did, it’s not a totally depressing read.
As the book was written by a journalist, and he wanted to relate situations, occurrences, and conversations as accurately as possible, I do kind of wonder at the fact that it was assigned to students at a Catholic high school. The book uses the “f-word” a bunch of times, all in quoting conversation, which, I suppose isn’t such a critically huge deal. There are some allusions to some somewhat illicit relationships both on and off the mountain, which again raise an eyebrow. I’m probably being a little over-the-top here, but it does bug me a little that nobody could find a book that tells a good story and challenges the intellect, but doesn’t require foul language to do it.
I’m also being a bit hypocritical here, as I will often ignore obvious problems with movies in light of them being good artistic statements. A good example of this is Reservoir Dogs, a movie I liked a lot, but which is pretty much built on language and violence. Another obvious one is Boogie Nights, a movie I saw before I became a Christian, which I’ll likely never see again, but which, if pressed, I have to admit was a pretty excellent film, artistically/dramatically speaking. I feel like I’m rambling, so I’m going to bail out on this one. Have a good one, all.
