In a commentary posted yesterday, Los Angeles Times books editor David Ulin asks an interesting question: What is the conversation we should be having during Banned Books Week, which ends this Saturday. Are we to grouse about people who would axe access to great literature like Huckleberry Finn, or are we to explore broader questions, such as how we can defend one book and not defend all books?

I was thinking about this recently while reading Irvine Welsh’s new novel, “Crime,” which deals with a ring of pedophiles. It’s a squeamish, tricky read, and yet, like other writers who deal with transgressive or repugnant material, Welsh has a larger moral vision: His story is not about sex but sensibility, an investigation into the twisted landscape of the soul. There are those who’d argue that the subject he explores in “Crime” is not just provocative but detrimental, something we’d be better off without.

I couldn’t agree less; the more troublesome a piece of writing, the more we need to take it into account.

Read the rest of Ulin’s piece here. What do you think? Should any books be banned? If so where and from whom? What should be the standard and who would govern it?

The New York Sun published its final edition today. The six-year-old, conservative-minded newspaper had been unsuccessful in finding new financial backers. On the newspaper’s website, Editor Seth Lipsky wrote:

I tend to be an optimist and held out hope for a favorable outcome as late as mid-afternoon today. But among other problems that we faced was the fact that this month, not to mention this week, has been one of the worst in a century in which to be trying to raise capital, and in the end we were out not only of money but time.

John McCain and Barack Obama are hoping to save the bailout legislation—with an idea of their own. To assuage the concerns of taxpayers across the country over the fat bill, they are suggesting that the government up insurance of bank deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, giving more financial stability to consumers.

While financial markets are at stake, so is the presidency. All eyes are on the crisis, and how these fellows handle themselves in the midst of fiery situations.

Meanwhile, the candidates aren’t exactly engaging in bipartisan politics, as both campaigns rolled out fresh advertisements tying the other to the Wall Street crisis:

Obama campaign’s “Same Path” ad

RNC’s “Worse” ad

UPDATE (3:49 p.m.): The AP reports: “Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. asks for temporary hike in $100,000 cap on insured deposits.”

Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a. Instapundit) posted with permission an interesting email from one of his readers who works in a major newsroom:

“Off the record, every suspicion you have about MSM being in the tank for O is true. We have a team of 4 people going thru dumpsters in Alaska and 4 in arizona. Not a single one looking into Acorn, Ayers or Freddiemae. Editor refuses to publish anything that would jeopardize election for O, and betting you dollars to donuts same is true at NYT, others. People cheer when CNN or NBC run another Palin-mocking but raising any reasonable inquiry into obama is derided or flat out ignored. The fix is in, and its working.”

On Saturday Emily posted about “Pulpit Freedom Sunday,” and today Cal Thomas writes that the pastors who participated may have some higher obstacles to overcome before they tear down the church-state wall:

The first obstacle is what Scripture teaches about a Christian’s relationship to the state. In one of the best-known passages, Paul the Apostle writes, “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established” (Romans 13:1). Is defying the law, no matter what political motivations were behind it, submitting to such authority, or opposing it?

Obstacle number two has to do with the reason people attend worship services. It is not, or should not be, in order to pledge allegiance to a party, candidate, or earthly agenda. One can spend inordinate amounts of time on that subject simply by watching cable TV, or listening to talk radio, or reading the newspapers. No matter how hard they try to protect the Gospel from corruption, ministers who focus on politics and politicians as a means of redemption must minimize their ultimate calling and message. The road to redemption does not run through Washington, D.C. Politicians can’t redeem themselves from the temptations of Washington. What makes anyone think they can redeem the rest of us?

Read his entire column here.

Voters—more Democrats, than Republicans, by the sounds of things—are casting their absentee ballots starting today in Ohio, a swing state. Many are registering and voting on the same day thanks to a new disputed law that the Ohio Supreme Court and two separate federal judges OK’d yesterday. The race for the presidency begins!

But being the commander-in-chief sucks the zest out of anyone, no matter how much John McCain and Barack Obama want the job. In President Bush’s address from the White House this morning, he sounded downright tired and defeated. Very un-Bush-like.

Next month, Bristol Palin, the pregnant daughter of Republican vice president candidate Sarah Palin, turns 18, sparking speculation there could be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding between the mother-to-be and her 18-year-old fiance Levi Johnston. “It would be fantastic,” said a John McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”

But such a plan—if it even exists—would likely backfire, too. And the heated criticism wouldn’t come just from liberals, but also from conservatives who zealously guard the sanctity of marriage and might question the motives behind such a shotgun wedding. Another McCain source, however, offered reassurances that “Sarah Palin would never use her daughter in this way. No matter when the marriage occurs, it would be a matter of family urgency—not political urgency. I’ve heard nothing which would paint a picture otherwise.”

WARNING: The linked essay uses graphic and mature sexual language.  The short answer to that question is an obvious Yes, as Ross Douthat points out in The Atlantic Monthly.

The most stringent take on this matter comes, of course, from Jesus of Nazareth: “I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” But even among Christians, this teaching tends to be grouped with the Gospel injunctions about turning the other cheek and giving would-be robbers your possessions—as a guideline for saintliness, useful to Francis of Assisi and the Desert Fathers but less helpful to ordinary sinners trying to figure out what counts as a breach of marital trust.

Douthat’s essay in such a secular magazine is a point of light in a culture that wants to treat pornography as an awkward, but somewhat necessary thing, at least for men.  If Christ was telling the truth, if lusting is adultery, then churches should be doing something about it.  Most aren’t.

One perspective, broadly construed, treats porn as a harmless habit, near-universal among men, and at worst a little silly. This is the viewpoint that’s transformed adult-industry icons like Jenna Jameson and Ron Jeremy from targets of opprobrium into C-list celebrities. It’s what inspires fledgling stars to gin up sex tapes in the hope of boosting their careers.

Consider the way likable characters talk about porn in Judd Appatow’s ubiquitious comedies like Superbad and Knocked Up, which are really quite funny mainstream comedies.  The world seems to believe infidelity is a bad thing, so the more we link it with pornography, perhaps the more the we will see that for what it is, too.

Those who can’t do, teach is the aphorism that makes MFAs and PhDs wince and get all defensive, and Those who write, teach is the title of this essay from the Times magazine about how that might be true for writers.  The operative question here is simply this: are writers less productive when they are also teachers?  This is an important question for the literature of our nation and culture, given the fact that most writers are also teachers.  And if it’s true that they don’t write as well when they teach, then maybe our national literature is suffering in some immeasurably destitute way. 

It’s fine for writing teachers to talk in self-help jargon about how their lives require “balance” and “shifting gears” between teaching and writing, but below that civil language lurks the uncomfortable fact that the creation of literature requires a degree of monomania, and that it is, at least in part, an irrational enterprise. It’s hard to throw your whole self into something when that self has another job.

For five years, I have had a very mediocre creative writing PhD from a forgettable regional university.  For 30 of those months, I have been a teacher, for the other 30 of those months, I have been something else, and throughout it all, I have been a writer.  When it’s all said and done, I have to say that I’ve written better things as a non-teacher than a teacher.  What does this mean?  Nothing, other than the phrase “summers off” may not be as delightful as it sounds.

If the world is going to end soon, I have wasted a lot of time.

If the world system is even now collapsing in slow motion, and life as we know it is over, I am feeling very stupid that I spent so much time worrying about whether I’m going to grow old alone. Or whether I’ll be able to keep writing blog posts at this pace. Or whether the bulbs we accidentally plowed under this summer will germinate in April. Or whether my hair is going to keep falling out. Or whether I’ll bomb at the retreats I’m scheduled to speak at this fall.

What was that story in the Bible about the guy who had so much surplus that he lost sleep worrying about what to do with it all, and spent his energies building barns and planning his retirement—only to die that night?

I wonder how the politicians who lied their way into office will feel, rationalizing that they needed to do that in order to rise to the position where they could do some genuine good for society.

“I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy” (The World’s Last Night and Other Essays).