"...I have in my hand a piece of paper..."

It's not very often I talk about important topics on this blog; by important, I mean those things that can have a profound effect on people's lives. The Salinger post was rather important, but this one even more so.

Recently, the MP expenses scandal has been the main political story, overshadowing everything else. But, really, this pales in to insignificance when compared with what happened with the European elections last week. 

The BNP won two of the 72 seats in the UK. 

Their leader, Nick Griffin is now in a proper position of power and inlfuence. 

Frankly, given the choice between an expenses fiddling, home-flipping, duck house owning, mortgage free (yet claiming mortgage payments) chancer of an MP or Nick Griffin I'd take the former any day of the week. 

It is truly a sad day for this country that he, and his colleague, were elected to this  proper position of power and inlfuence. But, at the end of the day, as much as we may loathe and hate this, he was elected fairly and squarely and therefore must take up his position in Brussells. 

There are a number of issues at heart here. How on earth did he obtain enough votes to get in to office? The expenses scandal will have played the main part in this, with the Labour party especially suffering. I've heard people they expected the Tories to fiddle their expenses, but expected better from Labour. This rejection of the Labour party (the only party to lose seats) saw UKIP take joint second place with them (13 seats a piece). 

But, as I said before, Griffin has his seat fairly and squarely as a properly elected MEP. The question is what to do about it. I say this is what we do about it;

nothing

We just ignore him. 

Take his press conference in London yesterday. He turned up with his heavies, started making his speech, and in no time at all the protesters arrived and interupted him. He scuttled away, making a hasty exit. Then he was on BBC news decrying that his democratic right to free speech was curtailed by this mob (which, if you believe him - I don't - was organised by the Labour Party). The whole exercise appears to be a big piece of PR puff engineered to allow Griffin to appear as a poor suppressed individual, silenced by the mob. I swear, if you look at the footage on the BBC site of the incident, as the protesters arrive that he smiles a little smile, knowing that things will go as he always intended them to.

Now, imagine the following scenario;

Griffin arrives at the conference and is allowed to make his speech. But there are no protesters. Just one single TV camera, waiting for that moment when the mask slips and the real Griffin shines through. Other than that it's just him and his cronies. He's just stood there preaching to the converted, the handful of his supporters there and his heavies. It doesn't get reported as no-one cares. It passes without a thought.

But... that one camera. Sooner or later he'll slip up and the mask will slip off. Allowed to talk freely, sooner or later he'll give himself enough rope to hang himself. It'll happen. 

Every time he is spoken about gives him publicity. Even this blog post is giving him publicity. And I hate the thought of that. The fact that this individual is even in my thoughts saddens me. The thought that he will be one of this country's representatives in the European Parliament is saddening. But the worst thought of all is that people voted for him in large enough numbers to get him, fairly and squarely, elected to office. 

This is the fist post I have made about him. Wit luck, it will be the last.

"...if you really want to hear about it..."

Okay. Some people have crazy ideas. It happens. But there can be fewer crazier ideas than that of a certain "JD California" (not his real name!). His bright idea was to write a sequel to The Catcher in the Rye...

Now, call me Picky McPicky, the Pickiest Person in Pickyland, winner of the Gold Medal in the Olympics for Pickiness, but if I were ever to be interested in reading a Catcher in the Rye sequel, really, there's only one person I'd want to have written it, and that's JD Salinger. The characters contained within the book are his to do as he pleases. No-one else. 

So, this "JD California's" sequel, entitled "60 Years Later; Coming Through the Rye" again sees Holden Caulfield on the run, only this time it's not from his school. It's from his retirement home, where the setpugenarian Caulfield lives. And there also appears to me some element of meta-fiction in the book, as Salinger appears as a character within it, deciding whether or not to revive Holden's story. Hmm.

The question you have to ask about this book is a very simple, brief one; why? I mean, what is the point of it? Just because he got a publisher for it, what's really the difference between this book and any number of fan fiction Caulfield stories? None at all. As mentioned previously, there's only one person I'd be interested in seeing a Catcher sequel from...

It would appear that I'm in good company in not liking the idea of this book. A certain JD Salinger dislikes the idea also, and has taken legal steps to prevent its publication. I hope he wins. This chancer is standing on the shoulder of a giant; he knows there will be a certain number of people who will buy the book out of sheer curiousity as to what happened to Holden next. But whatever suggestions he posits on the book are irrelevant, and are no more important than my ideas, or your ideas, or anyone else but Salinger's. 

There is talk that Salinger may not be able to block the publication of the book, citing the case of the unauthorised sequel to Gone With the Wind which had a similar lawsuit taken out to prevent its publication by Margaret Mitchell's estate. This lawsuit failed, and the book was published (though, the estate got a cut of royalties). It strikes me that the main difference here is that Salinger is still alive, and therefore could argue that the publication of an unauthorised sequel could harm the market for any sequel he might desire to write. Though, of course, chances of such a sequel are slim.

However, surely the most salient point is that Holden Caulfield is Salinger's character; he owns the copyright in him (and indeed on all of the characters within the book). For someone to be allowed to take characters which belong to someone else, and exploit them in a way that their creator does not intend is clearly wrong. Now, as mentioned earlier fan fiction does exist; but this is small potatoes in comparison. Fan fiction is shared freely between fan communities, and no attempt is made to gain financially. It's a very niche section of any fandom, as there will always be plenty of fans who do not care for it at all. Indeed, I count myself among their number. The release, however, of a published book takes things to a different, higher, level. 

There are some very real issues at stake at the heart of this lawsuit; that of the right of the creator of a work to be able to control how it is exploited. If Salinger loses this case, this is a fundamental blow to the rights of creators of works of art.