Search is on for two Tennessee plant workers after 12m litres of sewage leak from holding tank, contaminating local river Two workers are missing after a sewage treatment plant in Tennessee spilled millions of litres of sewage. The Tennessee emergency management agency (Tema) said a holding tank at the plant had given way, leaking sewage into the Little Pigeon river. Up to 12m litres (2.6m gallons) of sewage spilled, according to Tema spokesman Jeremy Heidt. Some of the spill entered the small river that flows through Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge. Both cities are top destinations for tourists visiting the Great Smoky Mountains national park. Eric Brakins, the assistant city manager for Pigeon Forge, said his city was helping to look for the two workers. The cause of the failure has not yet been determined, state officials said. The Mountain Press newspaper in Sevierville reported there had been a mudslide or rockslide in the area after heavy rains. It said the breach was accompanied by what sounded like an explosion and that water began rushing out. “There was a catastrophic failure of a holding tank at the plant,” said Bob Miller, a spokesman for the national park. The national park service has gone to the scene because the sewage flowed into the river, which is on park land. Tisha Calabrese-Benton, spokeswoman for the Tennessee department of environment and conservation, said its officials were on the way to the accident site. People are being warned not to come in contact with the river until more is known about the accident, she said. “Obviously, we are not going to want people to have contact with the water until we know what is going on, until we can sample and determine what cleanup is needed.” United States Waste Pollution guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Total number of victims up to eight as authorities scour several square miles of sand dunes and thick undergrowth Police have returned to an overgrown stretch of land off Long Island a day after three more bodies were found, taking the number of victims of a suspected serial killer in the New York city area to eight. It is a huge crime scene – several square miles of windswept sand dunes and thick undergrowth – that has been scoured several times by police searchers, but more bodies keep turning up. All of the corpses identified so far are young, white women who worked as prostitutes, and police believe they are dealing with a serial killer, or killers. The victims found their clients on Craig’s List or other similar websites and police believe some of them, perhaps all, were killed elsewhere and then dumped on Oak Island, a narrow barrier island an hour’s drive from Manhattan. The grisly harvest of bodies has come in several batches. In December, police began to search for a missing prostitute, Shannan Gilbert, 24. She had fled a client’s beachside house early one morning in May, screaming for help then disappearing into the dunes. They never found her. The client was cleared from being a suspect after police searched his home and vehicle. While looking for Gilbert, they found four bodies hidden in and around Gilgo Beach. All were wrapped in hessian sacks and appeared to have been deposited during the past three years. None were Gilbert. More than three months later and with no one caught for the crimes, police have made yet more grim findings. At the end of last month and about a mile from the original dumping ground, a policeman passing Oak Beach in his patrol car noticed an object. It turned out to be yet another body of a young woman. Immediately a mini-army of police and firefighters, helicopters and dog handling teams, sealed off the huge area with police tape, scouring the tick-infested scrub. They later found three more bodies. The authorities are working 12-hour days, searching the area again and again. None of the new bodies has yet been officially identified, but police are working on the assumption that they fit the pattern of the earlier victims. Investigators are appealing for information from people involved in the local sex trade. “They certainly must have some information. Anything that they may deem to be significant or even insiginificant may be significant to us,” said Thomas Spota, the Suffolk County district attorney. Forensic experts are trying to identify the latest remains and see if they include Gilbert. Her disappearance might harbour key clues. She was last seen running from a client’s house and shouting: “They’re trying to kill me.” She banged on a neighbour’s door but ran off before the police were called. Police spoke to her later on her mobile phone but she was disorientated and told them she was on a different beach. She was never heard of or seen again. The victims identified so far are Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25; Melissa Barthelmy, 24; Megan Waterman, 22; and Amber Lynn Costello, 27. Police insist that they have devoted huge resources and they continue to appeal to the public not to be prejudiced by the fact that at least some of the victims so far have been sex workers. “What activities these victims may have engaged in prior to their murder does not matter. They were young women whose lives were cut tragically short,” said Richard Dormer, Suffolk County’s police commissioner. New York United States Paul Harris guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Click here to view this media You know, there are just some things that look and sound ridiculous, even if you’re obviously opinionated and obviously trying to make a point. This is one of them. John King looks like a fool with his touchy-feely screen while fantasizing about what one billion dollars could do. His reference to one billion dollars goes to the current meme about what the Obama campaign 2012 might end up spending. Of course, he forgets to note a few things, like the absence of corporate cash funneled through anonymous 501(c)(4) associations, and the DNC’s announcement that they won’t accept corporate funds for the convention. I also thought it was interesting that King chose red states’ deficits as his comparison point for what that billion could do. Poor red states. They won’t see much of that money. But you know, one billion dollars is an insane amount of money to have to raise to keep ahead of the TeaBirchers’ funding paths. As I write, I’m busily tracking over $5 million funneled through one public donor-advised fund to right-wing “policy” organizations. So while the Republicos want to make a big stinking deal out of the money spent by Obama’s side of things, just remember they’ll end up spending more between their secret money tunnels, their anonymous corporate donors’ ad buys, and the inevitable stirring-up of the “angry base” by the Tea Party. Reuters has a more cynical take : Aides note the huge number of individual donors who gave to Obama’s campaign — a record 4 million. But only 25 percent of the money came from small donors who gave $200 or less, according to the non-partisan Campaign Finance Institute in Washington. My response: True, but 68% gave $2,300 or less . Not exactly the big money, high-rolling donor base, is it? Reuters continues: Obama will inevitably lose many of the individual donors who backed him four years ago, said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College and expert on campaign fundraising. “That’s something that we’re not going to see this time around, that level of excitement about the Obama candidacy that we saw last time, from people who are not traditional donors or traditional Democratic primary voters,” he said. Maybe. Maybe not. I think these folks are a little bit quick to write off the Democratic base, which may not be starry-eyed about their President but who might be white-hot furious over the Republicans’ overreach since November, 2010. We know what’s at stake here. Whether President Obama has disappointed us or met expectations, he’s a far sight better than the alternative. I don’t know about you, but the idea of President Pawlenty gives me the heebie-jeebies. Vice-President TeaBircher doesn’t do much for me either. Let’s just see how it all rolls out. In the meantime, John King’s fantasy life is really best left off my TV screen.
Continue reading …
Unlikely to ever appear in a giant egg, Adele’s everyday universality has let her talent translate into phenomenal sales Last week Adele’s second album, 21, sold 257,000 copies in the UK , a sales figure that would look incredible as an opening sales week for any album by any global superstar. The fact that the album was celebrating its 10th week at No 1, and that each of the previous nine weeks it had sold over 100,000 copies, makes what Adele has achieved look miraculous. The last female singer to spend that long at No 1 in the UK was Madonna in 1990 with her greatest hits compilation, The Immaculate Collection. For Adele, the success of 21 is part of a perfect storm of talent, timing and a connection that’s transcended gender, age and credibility. But what does it say about the state of the music industry? Does Adele’s success signal a return to the mid-noughties musical depression, when the likes of James Blunt dominated the charts? Her success may well lead to a glut of similar acts aiming for an MOR audience, but that’s more the fault of an industry desperate to recreate any kind of success by creating poor facsimiles until the world shouts “stop now”. What seems to have set Adele apart is her apparent ordinariness, bar that incredible voice. While Gaga parades around in a dress made of meat and Beyoncé orbits a world out of touch to the majority of most human beings, Adele’s chain-smoking, girl-you’d-like-to-go-to-the-pub-with persona stands out. Even for a British act, her unstarriness goes against trend, with fellow Brit school alumnus Jessie J adopting a very American habit of over-emoting, talking about a ” journey ” and making the idea of being a pop star seem fairly arduous. It’s this universality and broad appeal that’s helped her translate talent into sales. While the first single from 21, Rolling in the Deep, appealed to Radio 1 listeners and bloggers with production by Paul Epworth and a remix by Jamie from the xx, the second single, Someone Like You, is a Radio 2 staple, a stripped-back, piano-augmented ballad that silenced the cavernous O2 Arena during this year’s Brit Awards . The broadsheet press can write pages and pages on her safe in the knowledge that there’s enough of a muso connection – Rick Rubin worked on the album, there’s a cover of the Cure, Mumford & Sons were an influence – while the gossip magazines have latched onto the fact that the album is one long break-up record, eager to find the ex. In 1990, Madonna was a global superstar with a back catalogue of era-defining hits to her name. She was untouchable and, tellingly, unknowable. She was (and still is) a megastar, but a megastar of a different age. These days, we want to know a bit more about our artists; that they have relationship problems, walk their dog. Her selling point and appeal is precisely the fact that she exists at the point between everyday ordinariness and pop star. She’s not boring, but at the same time she’s probably unlikely to arrive at the Grammys in a giant egg. Her success is testament to the power of good songs and the fact that if you can create a buzz (as she did in November with a stark reading of Someone Like You on Jools Holland) and harness that buzz through a solid album, then it can still translate to sales. For now, Adele’s success should be celebrated, not least for becoming an unlikely global star on her own terms. The danger is that we’re headed for a glut of fairly “beige” pop, a situation that led to the “birth” of Gaga a few years back. Pop goes in cycles and it feels like we’re headed back towards the very middle of MOR. Adele Pop and rock Celebrity Michael Cragg guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
British Council celebrates 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s orbit of the Earth with an exhibition and statue in the Mall Yuri Gagarin, the son of peasant farmworkers who instantly became the most famous man on Earth when he went into space and orbited the planet 50 years ago, is to be celebrated with a statue on the Mall in London. The British Council announced that it is going to mark the achievements of the great Russian explorer by placing him opposite the statue of a great British explorer, Captain Cook. Andrea Rose, the council’s visual arts director and driving force behind the project, said the cosmonaut’s successful mission in Vostok 1 was “a story that is of importance to all of us”. She added: “The fragility and the daring and the bravery of the missions are something beyond recognition and are reasons why we wanted to celebrate Gagarin as a symbol of aspiration, as well as intellectual curiosity.” Rose said there was an imbalance in western knowledge of space history. We know the story of Apollo and Neil Armstrong but fewer of us now know the incredible story of Gagarin. As well as the statue, the British Council will host an exhibition on his life which will include rare and intimate photographs lent by the Gagarin family as well as artefacts such as an ejector seat and the first space suit, SK-1. The project partly stemmed from Rose’s professional connection with Gagarin’s daughter, Elena Gagarina, director of the Kremlin museums where, next year, a Henry Moore exhibition will be held. Rose had been talking to Gagarina about lending Moore’s double-edged sculpture – which has for the past 40 years been outside the Houses of Parliament – to Russia to display in the Kremlin gardens. Rose then began thinking about what could be brought from Russia as a possible replacement for Moore’s sculpture and so began the hunt for a suitable Gagarin statue. The one chosen is a copy of the Gagarin statue which stands outside the cosmonaut’s former school – Lyubertsy Vocational School No 10. The authorities there were reluctant to give up the original so the Russian space agency offered to have a cast made from the original moulds. It will be installed on the Mall on 14 July for a year. The date and spot were chosen to mark the 50th anniversary of Gagarin’s trip to London where he met the prime minister Harold Macmillan. The statue will be made from zinc alloy and stand on a white Portland stone plinth. “We don’t want kids swinging from the orbit,” said Rose. There are lots of more formal statues of Gagarin but this jaunty one was praised by the cosmonaut’s biographer, Piers Bizony. “It is a reflection of the man,” he said. “Yuri Gagarin was charming, funny, sweet-natured and kind.” The statue is also a way of fostering good relations between the UK and Russia. Vitaly Davydov, state secretary and deputy head of the Russian space agency, said: “Gagarin belongs not only to Russia but to all countries and nations, and it’s important to us that the statue of Yuri Gagarin will be shown in London – one of the world’s most international and intercultural cities – to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first manned spaceflight. “Russia and the UK have much in common, not only as allies during the second world war and victory gained through sacrifice, but as nations which have always been eager to travel to the unknown and to discover new space. Gagarin symbolises this aspiration.” Yuri Gagarin London Russia Space Sculpture Mark Brown guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Foreign minister declares Heather Hodges ‘persona non grata’ after leaked cables signed by her office allege police corruption The US ambassador to Ecuador has been asked to leave the country over leaked diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks that allege police corruption. The foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, told reporters he had not received a satisfactory explanation from the ambassador, Heather Hodges, about cables previously released by WikiLeaks and signed by her office. “Ecuador’s government has decided to consider this woman as a persona non grata … we have asked her to leave the country in the shortest time possible,” he said. Patino said the decision did not mean Ecuador was breaking off relations with the United States. WikiLeaks has caused an international uproar by handing sensitive US diplomatic documents to the media. The US ambassador to Mexico resigned last month after a public spat with President Felipe Calderón. Tensions were fueled by WikiLeaks reports of comments made by the envoy about Mexico’s lack of co-ordination in battling drug cartels. Late last year, Ecuador offered WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the possibility of working and seeking residency in the Andean country. But President Rafael Correa later withdrew the offer saying Assange had broken US laws. Ecuador US foreign policy The US embassy cables US national security WikiLeaks United States guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
PC Simon Harwood says he gave newspaper seller ‘a very poor push’ to move him away from police line during G20 protests The police officer who struck and pushed Ian Tomlinson shortly before he died was “amazed” to see the newspaper vendor fall to the ground after what he termed “a pretty poor push”, an inquest has heard. PC Simon Harwood told the central London jury that he had decided to tackle Tomlinson because he thought he was refusing to move away from a police line during the G20 protests in London in April 2009. “I felt at the time he was obstructing the police line moving forward,” he said. However, asked whether he had believed the 47-year-old posed a threat to either himself or anyone else, Harwood repied: “No, I don’t believe he did.” Harwood said he stepped out from behind a pair of police dog handlers to “engage” Tomlinson after he failed to move away. “I thought it was proportional to do so, because he was still not moving away from the police line,” he said. “I then struck Mr Tomlinson around the upper half of his left leg – to his thigh – with my baton. I didn’t get any immediate reacton from Mr Tomlinson … as [a] reaction, I pushed him in the top part of his right shoulder. I pushed him with my right palm. Once I had pushed Mr Tomlinson across the shoulder, he tended to fall forward and as he fell forwards I was then, was amazed, as he fell forwards, and once he had fallen over [I] was then looking around to make sure of any other threat that may be in front of me as well, and then retraced back behind the dogs.” Asked by Alison Hewitt, counsel for the inquest, why he had been amazed to see Tomlinson fall, Harwood replied: “The push that I had used wasn’t that much force in my mind to have caused that to happen.” Pressed on how much force he had used, Harwood said: “It was reasonable, but it was quite a poor push, from my recollection, it was a very poor push … usually [the blow] will go into the back of someone, but I actually pushed across Mr Tomlinson, it went across his shoulder, rather than into his shoulder … contact was made, but it glanced rather than pushed through. It wasn’t pushed through.” Asked if he agreed with witnesses who said he had fallen hard, the police officer said: “No I was more shocked [by] the fact that he actually fell forward, I couldn’t explain, from my memory whether he fell hard or not.” He told the jury he had moved away from the scene after judging Tomlinson to be OK as he had started to talk and gesticulate to other officers. He then walked away and did not see Tomlinson again. He heard what had happened to Tomlinson about a week later after watching a report on the news. The inquest continues. Ian Tomlinson G20 London Sam Jones Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …
Many military and security personnel join group pushing for peace treaties with Syria, Lebanon and the Palestinians A group of prominent Israelis, including heads of the army and security services, hope to revive the peace initiative by announcing details of possible treaties with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon. The Israeli Peace Initiative, a two-page document, states that Israel will withdraw from the land it occupied in 1967 in both the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and pay compensation to refugees. The document has been given to Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who has said he will read it with interest. The authors of the document, which will be launched at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, say that it is partly inspired by the revolutions that have taken place in the Middle East. It presents an opportunity for Israelis to participate in the “winds of change” blowing through the Middle East, they say. “We looked around at what was happening in neighbouring countries and we said to ourselves, ‘It is about time that the Israeli public raised its voice as well.’ We feel this initiative can bring along many members of the public,” Danny Yatom, the former head of the Israeli external security agency, Mossad, told the New York Times. The group aims to generate public support for a peace agreement that will force the Israeli government to re-engage with the Palestinians, who have suspended meetings in protest at continued settlement building in the West Bank. Palestinians see such building as an attempt to create “facts on the ground” that obstruct negotiations. Yaakov Perry, a former head of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, said he hoped that the plan would galvanise the Israeli government in this time of change around the Middle East. “We are isolated internationally and seen to be against peace,” he told the New York Times. “I hope this will make a small contribution to pushing our prime minister forward. It is about time that Israel initiates something on peace.” The Israeli Peace Initiative recognises the Arab Peace Initiative of 2002, which was sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia, as “a historic effort made by the Arab states to reach a breakthrough and achieve peace on a regional basis”. The Israeli initiative endorses the Arab statement that “a military solution to the conflict will not achieve peace or provide security for the parties”. The initiative lays out the framework for peace agreements between Israel, Syria and the Palestinians. It calls for a sovereign and independent Palestinian state based on the borders between Israel and Jordan in 1967 but modified to ensure territorial contiguity for the Palestinian state. Some settlements would be placed under Israeli control. Compensation would be paid to refugees and their host countries by Israel and the international community, according to the initiative, but the refugees would be able to return only to the Palestinian state, with a few exceptions who would be allowed to return to what is now Israel. The plan also calls for a road link between the West Bank and Gaza, which would cut across Israeli territory but would be under Palestinian control. It also calls for Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights over five years in order to achieve peace with Syria and a peace agreement with Lebanon. Dan Meridor, the deputy prime minister, speaking at an event in Jerusalem, said he had not yet studied the document. “The paradigm is clear, that is a two-state solution, but the other elements should be negotiated, not dictated,” he said. Referring to the uprisings elsewhere in the Middle East, he said: “Some people say that we should wait for the aftershocks to happen, for everything to settle down, but I don’t believe we can wait.” Israel Palestinian territories Syria Lebanon Middle East Conal Urquhart guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …WI’s Judge Prosser goes on Fox begging for votes and blames fellow Justice for making him call her a ‘bitch’
April 5, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Greta Van Susteren last night painted the Wisconsin Supreme Court Judge election today as being “twisted” because of the reaction the state has had to Gov. Scott Walker’s outrageous agenda. In her slanted version of the the election she describes the “Big Union bosses” as the ones spending gobs of money against meek little Prosser — but on the flip side, only “special interest” groups are donating to his side. Can Greta please explain to me why she failed to mention that her heartthrob from Alaska and bigwig electioneer, Sarah Palin, has been tweeting up a ton of support for the reelection of Prosser? Well, Republicans are always the victims on Fox. A one-sided slant as usual. Tea Party groups are also spending a ton of money supporting him. Four conservative groups, including the Tea Party Express, have combined to spend $1.2 million so far on pro-Prosser ads, according to a media-tracking group. — One conservative group, the California-based Tea Party Express, is aiming to spend up to $200,000 on an ad that paints Kloppenburg as unqualified for a judgeship and a puppet of union bosses. JoAnne Kloppenburg declined to go on the show, but let’s face it. Greta knew that she would decline to do an interview with a network that is hostile to her and that Prosser would jump at the chance of getting his free ad space from Fox in hopes of ginning up more support for himself from the Tea Party crowd and throw as much dirt at JoAnne as possible. I think it’s inappropriate and unethical for Fox News to have candidates for public office on the night before an election, because it’s a clear attempt to manipulate the election results. Prosser gets to throw bricks at Kloppenburg for free — including defending himself on accusations that he failed to prosecute a child-abusing priest. The judge says that he was very sensitive to the family over the abuse, but thought the evidence was ambiguous and the two young boys didn’t have the credibility to stand up to a well-established priest. What did he do? He got the priest banished from the area and asked to get him treatment because he never suspected him to be a serial abuser because, get this, back then nobody knew about those things? Huh? Two boys… How many boys have to be abused before they would get prosecuted by Prosser? Greta brought up the dirty story of Prosser calling the Chief Justice of the Wisconsin court a “bitch’ and threatening to “destroy her” . Watch how she phrases the events. Calling the Chief Justice a bitch is not as bad as having somebody snitch on you. ya know. It was all a TRAP to ensnare him! Right. VAN SUSTEREN: Justice Ann Walsh Bradley confirming that a fit of temper that you had by calling her a bitch and wanting to destroy her sent it not just to you, but to others and then she later released it to the newspaper. What in the world is going on in the WI Supreme Court that you’re saying that kind of stuff to each other and snitching on each other and giving emails out and disclosing the private conversations of the State Supreme Court? What is going on? PROSSER: Wow, there’s a lot to try and untangle there. We’re talking about an incident that occurred more than a year ago…( See, there’s a statute of limitation on threatening and calling a female judge a bitch. ) We’re talking about multiple controversies that came to a head at the same time. It was an explosive situation. I said something I should not have said and that I regret and I apologize for, on the other hand ( she really was a bitch and I did need to destroy her ) I want people to know that I simply didn’t go into it, a private conversation and suddenly pop out with this ill advised statement without any provocation ….. VAN SUSTEREN: At that point I think they were trying to trap you. I mean I’m not trying to defend you calling a Supreme Court Justice a bitch, but the fact that they memorialized it meant they were setting the trap on you on that one. PROSSER: They were not only setting the trap, they were massaging the record, changing the record. I have to say it wasn’t good behavior on my part, but, [sigh] this was not all my fault. There was some provocation here. Yeah, just like a mouse looking for some cheese. OK, Greta ruled the nasty name-calling a trap in the first place, and he says Justice Abrahamson deserved it. Good job, Fox News. Greta has figured it all out. She never did get to the part where he said he wanted to destroy her. Does that have a statute of limitations too if he said it way back in 2010?
Continue reading …
James Jones’s novel, bowdlerised for many years, set to appear for the first time as author intended The novel prompted one of the most famous heterosexual sex scenes in film history, with Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr clasping each other passionately on a beach amid the foaming waves. But an uncensored text of James Jones’s 1951 novel From Here to Eternity has revealed that the author originally intended to include frank references to homosexuality considered too scandalous to be published at the time. The novel, Jones’s debut, tells of a group of soldiers stationed on a barracks in Hawaii in 1941, and was loosely based on the author’s own army experiences on the island in the run-up to the second world war. Jones served as a soldier from 1939 to 1945 and was present at both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the battle for Guadalcanal, at which he was injured, and also decorated for his service. In later books, The Thin Red Line and Soon Came Running, Jones went on to explore the experience of combat and the aftermath of war. From Here to Eternity is the story of first sergeant Milt Warden, who has an affair with Karen, the wife of his captain. But the original text of the novel included two scenes which never made it to the published edition, let alone the film. In one, private Angelo Maggio – the soldier played by Frank Sinatra in the 1953 film – confesses to having oral sex with a wealthy man for $5 or $10 that “comes in handy the middle of the month”. In the second scene a military investigation into gay activity is mooted. Jones’s editor at Scribner refused to allow the scenes to be included, and also excised various swear words originally intended to be included in the dialogue. In America at the time the US postal service would not carry material it considered obscene, making it impossible for books the organisation thought offensive to be distributed. Disapproval from the influential Book-of-the-Month Club, a mail order club, also meant the end of a novel’s chances of commercial success. Many authors, including Ernest Hemingway , were therefore forced to tone down their novels’ language and content, on pragmatic rather than moral grounds. Jones’s daughter, novelist Kaylie Jones, said her father fought “bitterly” to keep the novel’s language the way he’d originally intended it , but eventually acceded to his editor’s insistence. Now, 60 years after it was first published, and more than 30 since Jones’s death in 1977, the original version will be produced as an ebook through digital publisher Open Road . Sarah Churchwell, senior lecturer in American literature and culture at the University of East Anglia, welcomed the publication as a reversal of censorship. “Jones was aspiring to realism and verisimilitude and objected to the sanitisation of his novel,” she said. “He was trying to tell the truth about war. In the 1950s the US was telling itself a mythic, grandiose, heroic story about the second world war and GI Joe saving the world. Jones was saying, ‘That wasn’t the war I saw, I want to write something more honest and realistic. Whatever the mid-America myth, one of the things men were doing was giving blow jobs for money.’” Churchill added that it was also important to acknowledge that a story celebrated for inspiring the classic Hollywood beach scene between Lancaster and Kerr was actually envisioned as a novel that acknowledged homosexuality. “It’s an important historical correction, to allow James Jones his rightful place as one of the earliest mainstream US novelists to try to treat homosexuality sympathetically, without judging or pathologising it,” she said. “People don’t think of Jones as an avant-garde writer, but in his way he was. We know about Hemingway and Allen Ginsberg , but we don’t put James Jones into that story and he deserves to be there.” Fiction Censorship Publishing Ebooks Benedicte Page guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …