Red Emma Hurls Himself Against the Wall and Enjoys It Plenty

ALA Banned Books Week 2007
UC Irvine Read-Out Wednesday, October 3

“I'm going to hurl myself against the wall

'Cause I'd rather feel bad than not feel anything at all.”

Warren Zevon is dead, but he left a lyric for nearly every occasion. He was there in spirit with all the other dead poets and writers—Allen Ginsberg, Kurt Vonnegut and J.D. Salinger (oops, not quite, but he sure is quiet lately)—and I thought I heard him singing the above, which Red Emma has sort of adopted as a personal and political anthem. And here, once again, yet another reason why.

Despite listings in the campus newspaper, the thirty-year-old New University (okay, unreadable, and, besides, nobody reads it—certainly nobody edits it), web and email and newsletter and Much Ado postings and fliers, not a single UCI Senate faculty member, TA, Librarian, or Lecturer came around to support this event organized by the American Library Association in support of solidarity and intellectual freedom. I mention this only because the event was also sponsored by the English Department and the union representing Librarians and Lecturers, so you’d think (were you wall-hurler like me) that maybe some of your colleagues would show, which they did not.

I should say that Red Emma, raised in Sunday School, likes to comfort himself with that New Testament verse about where two or more are gathered, so am I. (Sadly, Jesus didn’t show either.)

Still, I cheered myself at the participation of the new Campus Writing Coordinator, Jonathan Alexander (pictured below standing under the umbrella), who started the 90 minute “read-out” of challenged, banned, censored books with a heroic presentation of Whitman. Sue Cross, a longtime tutor and UPTE organizer, read from Ngugi wa Thiong'o’s Devil on the Cross, which was a great choice because the much-persecuted superstar of African lit runs UCI’s International Center for Writing and Translation, another official sponsor.

Those two good folks went to class and meetings, and so it was the Red Emma up there on his own for awhile adjacent the flagpole, reading out loud the list of 100 top books on the hit list, shit list, whatever it is, compiled by the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Judy Blume is on this list I think 6 times.

You rock, Blumey!

But then the heavens parted on the shit-storm of apathy and indifference and there emerged a lovely young woman named Asia. Unlike the other dopes who just walked by, the noise of the idiot frat boy gangsta rap in their ears, my angel figured out the drill, went through the pile of exemplary bannage I’d assembled near the microphone and the “Free People Read Freely” banner and, delighted, grabbed Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. “My favorite book,” she exclaimed, chortled, gushed. All of those. It was a beautiful thing to witness. “I cried when he died,” she went on.

I surrendered the mic pronto to Asia, who read the first chapter of one of my own absolute favorite novels of all time, both of us laughing at the Jon Jonson and the dirty limerick and the great line about his breath of roses and mustard gas and I looked around and just hoped that she would stay up there and read the whole novel to me, in solidarity with authors and readers and as testimonial to the importance of intellectual freedom. You know, like that.

But she was a Business-Econ major, and had to go to class. My heart was broken, both from joy and discontent, but in a good way. Happily, two of my own Composition students soon arrived, both reading from The Catcher in the Rye, and they were righteous readings indeed and, although I would have done the whole thing by myself anyway, I comforted myself that at least a couple of people got it.

But Lord knows what the New U reporters and photographers there to cover us made of the whole affair. I tried to spin it as the “first-ever” effort and “Next year will be bigger,” but I’m afraid the easy conclusion is the right one in this case: a national event sponsored by multiple organizations on a huge institution of higher learning and eight people show up? And except for the amazing new CWC and my pal Sue, not one actual teacher or other variety of grown-up academic professional? —RE

Andrew Tonkovich