Talk:Chris Crutcher
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[edit] Excerpts
The following excerpts come from PABBIS: --SafeLibraries 03:16, 30 August 2006 (UTC)
"Athletic Shorts"
Crutcher, Chris
Dell Publishing
161 pages
Copyright 1989, 1991 - A collection of six short stories - A BRIEF MOMENT IN THE LIFE OF ANGUS BETHUNE - A story about a very fat boy who has been elected, as a joke, as the Senior Winter Ball King. He will have to dance with the Senior Winter Ball Queen who he has been in love with [from a distance] since kindergarten. His mom and dad are divorced. His mom remarried another woman and his dad remarried another man. - “..Angus, the fat kid with perverted parents.. don’t.. spend all my life bitching about being [ugly], or about having parents a shade to the left of the middle on your normal bell-shaped sexual curve.. phantoms of sexual perversity.. point me out for public mockery.” - “Granddad.. took me to San Francisco to see some gay people... it didn’t help much.. my parents.. are with only the person their with, and [San Francisco] was filled with people looking like they were headed for a.. leather swap meet.” - “I don’t care who’s with who or what you do in the sack at night, I screamed [at parents].. Just don’t kiss in front of me!.. I like girls!.. [don’t want to see] boys kissing boys. [or] girls kissing girls!” - Ball Queen tells him that she is bulemic. He says, “I’m a fat kid with faggot parents who’s been in therapy on and off for 18 years.” - Ball Queen asks him to dance more after first dance and her boyfriend gets mad at her. “You bitch!.. You bitch!... You bitch.”
- THE PIN
- “..shitkicker boots..”
- “..great novel of the call girl who could command any price because of the size of her luscious breasts.. would be called ‘The Sale of Two--“
- THE OTHER PIN
- “..I’m in lust.. look at that.. If we had more woman like that in our lives, we wouldn’t be forced to subliminate our sexual desires rolling around on a.. mat with stinking, sweaty bodies of our same sex.”
- Talking about a boy who must wrestle a girl: “..double-breasted.. takedown. If he does it right he’ll end up on the bottom.. if she’s good, relax and enjoy it. If not, carry her all 3 rounds. Get the win and the goodies... get his varsity letter on the same night he loses his virginity..”
- “..grow up to be a lesbian..”
- “..bullshit..”
- GOIN’ FISHIN’
- Boy loses his whole family in boating wreck in which one of his classmates [drunk] smashed their boat. He is in age for 3 years at boy who did it. Boy who did it becomes self destructive and a drug addict living in park.
- “..out of your goddamn mind.”
- “Tough shit... Tough shit... You treated [him] like shit... [he] is shit.. That pussy call you up and tell you.. Your the pussy, L... [your dad would] call game on this cheap bullshit.. asshole..”
- “[we] drank all those beers.. out on the ice.. in your Jeepster.. drunk out of your mind. So were we. ..shithead..”
- TELEPHONE MAN
- Story is about a slow [perhaps retarded] boy who is a racist, which he learned from his father. Lots of racial slurs including spic, beaner, chink and nigger [about 2 dozen times]. Also shit is used twice. A portion of the story is about a toilet incident.
- Boy wants biscuits and strawberry jam which his mom usually makes him. He eats Bisquick raw from box and also strawberry shampoo he finds in bathroom: “..in history when it hit.. rumbling inside of me.. had to get to the bathroom really quick.. feeling like a balloon.. wanted to save my clothes.. pants got stuck around my knees.. butt just turned into a cannon.. shooting biscuit stuff all over the room.. bathroom looked like a whipped Jell-O factory blew up in there.. curled up in the corner bare naked.. couldn’t tell if I was all shot out or.. just building up for more rounds.. already happened twice.. spray painted the bathroom out your butt with strawberry shampoo and Bisquick.” Boy gets him clothes from Lost and Found and he heads home. Gets beat up on the school steps by gang of “China kids” but is saved by a “big nigger” who beats up their leader and tells them not to pick on him. Gets on public bus. “..awful smell, like somebody hung a bunch of strawberries down in the sewer.. I wasn’t all done in that rest room.. getting beat up made me quit paying attention.. gone and messed up the sweats.. out of Lost and Found.. sure the people around me noticed.. looked at me.. [they] got up to stand near the back of the bus.”
- IN THE TIME I GET
- “..chickenshit..”
- Boy whose girlfriend recently died meets boy who is in advanced AIDS.
- “..AIDS isn’t something you just get, like flu. How you get it is the thing. ..homo. ..you stay as far away from faggots as you can.”
- “So what if this guy’s a faggot?”
- “..wondering what Roy Rogers would think of me being alone in a semi-dark bar with a man of questionable sexual preference. ..I’m dying in an ugly way.. ..would help to know.. How you got it,,, I’m gay. I got it by having anal intercourse with another man.. Would you rather I were an IV drug user? I hated to admit it, but yes. ..I’m.. scared.. couldn’t stand them looking at me like I was.. so dirty.”
- “..sliding for the last time into that pitch-black pit.. sucks all your energy dry.. open sores on your body..”
- “Something that made gay people like me? ..latent homosexuality.. are you afraid I’m going to make a move on you? ..I have AIDS.. sexual relations with anyone.. could kill them. I would never do that.”
- “..he might be grooming me to shoot him ..when the time came and he couldn’t stand it anymore. ..Jesus,.. shitty possibilities.” However the gun is really a camera that looks like a gun. “..Jesus Christ, it is.. people using the fact I don’t like to kill things to prove I was a faggot..”
- “..chickenshit..”
- “..[his] nephew is a faggot... faggot.. dumbshit... I warned you.. faggot.. sexual preference.. sexual preference.. stay away from him.. if C thought he was gay, then so did a lot of other guys, and I didn’t need everyone thinking that about me.”
- “AIDS didn’t tarry. ..answering machine.. no mistaking [his] voice. ..He did sound like what you think of as gay.”
- “.. shit in order..”
- He goes to visit him in hospital. Holds his and when asked. His friend comes buy and sees him holding it and “..I jerked my hand free.. but it was too late. C grimaced and shook his head and walked away.”
- “I only learned I was gay a couple of years ago.. now I’m almost gone.”
- D dies of AIDS
- “I told you that D.. was fag. ..had AIDS. ..So what kind of guy hangs out with a homo with AIDS and doesn’t tell his friends. AIDS is serious shit.. I don’t have AIDS..
- Um, point, please??? Not only that, these are all taken out of context, you know. The stories/books are written for people to deal with issues like these. Censorship doesn't help young people deal with what they're exposed to in everyday life already.
Have you even READ any of these?
from Chris himself:
"I have to say I’m unnerved sometimes at the arrogance of groups who ignore the expertise of educators in pushing their agenda. I can’t speak for the authors of the other books in question, but I can say I wrote [these books] with the idea of addressing questions of teenage friendship, racial issues, loss, and human responsibility. The language used in the story is the language used by teenagers. The issues they face are issues faced by teenagers. My belief is that when kids read contemporary stories about characters they can relate to, they become more discerning and better educated, and more sensitive to the plights of their peers. The idea that we can educate better through ignorance makes me shake my head.
But what I really want to address is the damage the censors do to their own relationships with their kids and to the school-student relationships in those few times when they are successful in removing a book from the shelves. You will find very few adolescents unable to handle the controversial material presented in most adolescent literature. You will find very few who don’t hear - in spades - walking through the halls, the words they read in any of those books. They’ve all confronted some version of the issues presented, or have friends confronting those issues. When we tell teenagers we don’t want them reading a story about them, told in its native tongue, we are saying we don’t trust them to handle it and we don’t trust ourselves to carry on a reasonable conversation with them. We tell them there is safety in ignorance. And when a crisis comes, we have taken ourselves off the short list of people to turn to.
Though I maintain a strong philosophy of intellectual freedom, more of my passion for this argument comes from my work as a therapist. Day after day I hear kids say they can’t tell their parents what they’re telling me for fear of the response. They worry about being disowned. They worry about punishment. But the biggest and most common worry is that of disappointment. “I can’t talk with my parents because I can’t stand their disappointment when I make a mistake. My parents are afraid to hear about my life.”
We telegraph our fear to kids by avoiding certain subjects. We set up what they will not tell us or what they will lie about. Good stories have the capability of bridging that gap. While teenagers may not find the courage to talk about their own lives, they can summon it in a minute to talk about fictional characters’ lives, and if we’re willing to engage them, the next natural step is to edge toward talking about the real thing. If a teenager hears his or her mother railing on about the evils of a story including teenage pregnancy, or eating disorders, or sexual behavior, what are they going to do if and when they get caught in the middle of one of those issues in their own lives? They certainly aren’t going to the person who can’t even stand to have the issue talked about in a work of fiction. You don’t protect your children with censorship. You diminish them, and you weaken your relationship.
If you could hear what I hear.
One last thing I believe should be considered by anyone passing judgment on these books. Don’t be fooled by the way the censors try to capture the language. I’ve been to a number of web sites, and I’ve heard their complaints first hand. They state their case using terms like “vulgar” and “ inappropriate” and “trash” and “evil.” They claim to know what is developmentally appropriate, ignoring what licensed child developmentalists say. If they can get you to accept their terms as descriptions of these books, they give themselves a significant edge in the discussion. I haven’t read all the books on the list, but those are not accurate terms for the ones I have read. It is dishonest to argue in that fashion and I encourage anyone who engages them to call it what it is." Bouncehoper 03:26, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
