"From Anna Karenina to Fatal Attraction: Ashley Madison’s new twist on a very old tale"

"The data breach at the Ashley Madison website for people pursuing extramarital affairs is just a new twist on a very old tale. Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary and Lady Chatterley’s Lover may be among the most famous modern works which turn on a character’s adultery but the conflict between individual desire and social responsibility, sexual urges and emotional loyalty, is age-old, a recurring subject in both the Bible and the Classics..."

Adultery has been a fact of life and a recurring theme since Clytemnestra made hay with Aegisthus, while her husband Agamemnon was doing Trojan work elsewhere. What do you mean, you haven’t read Aeschylus’s Oresteia?

Even the Bible is not immune, starting with Abraham himself. Drop the Good Book and as like as not, it will fall open at such juicy passages as David and Bathsheba, or Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, who, failing to to seduce him, falsely accuses him of attempted rape. Another case prompted Jesus to utter the famous judgment: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.

Adultery has also been part of cinema’s stock in trade from its early days. The IMDB database lists 270 French titles alone (who'd have thought it?) with it as a theme, from And God Created Woman (1956) through The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972) to Romance (1999).

Here then is a potted history of adultery on screen and page. (Click here for the list)

NYT: “Trigger Warning”

"Should students about to read “The Great Gatsby” be forewarned about “a variety of scenes that reference gory, abusive and misogynistic violence,” as one Rutgers student proposed? Would any book that addresses racism — like “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” or “Things Fall Apart” — have to be preceded by a note of caution? Do sexual images from Greek mythology need to come with a viewer-beware label?"

An excerpt from a draft guide on "trigger warnings" from Oberlin College in Ohio.

"Colleges across the country this spring have been wrestling with student requests for what are known as “trigger warnings,” explicit alerts that the material they are about to read or see in a classroom might upset them or, as some students assert, cause symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder in victims of rape or in war veterans." (read more)

"What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys..."

"Toronto literature professor and Giller prize-longlisted author David Gilmour has found himself at the eye of a literary storm after declaiming in an interview that he doesn't teach books written by women or Chinese authors, because he's only interested in "serious heterosexual guys".

Gilmour – not to be confused with his namesake Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour – shared his views with Shelf Esteem, a blog by Random House Canada, which offers "a weekly measure of the books on the shelves of writers, editors and other word lovers".

Eyeing the rows of books in his office, Gilmour said: "I'm not interested in teaching books by women. Virginia Woolf is the only writer that interests me as a woman writer, so I do teach one of her short stories. But once again, when I was given this job I said I would only teach the people that I truly, truly love. Unfortunately, none of those happen to be Chinese, or women."

He went on: "What I teach is guys. Serious heterosexual guys. F Scott Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Tolstoy. Real guy-guys. Henry Miller. Philip Roth."

The comments set Twitter atwitter."

A self proclaimed feminist student responds to the controversy.

I am a feminist, a writer, and, most importantly, a woman, who has voluntarily enrolled in David Gilmour’s 300-level course. I write this not as a staunch attack or defense of Professor Gilmour, but because the responses to his troubling interview have been troubling as well; this kind of dialogue, predicated on illogical, emotional responses to contentious issues, can easily snowball into a lynch-mob style reaction. And, from what I can tell, this is exactly what has happened.

For more go here.

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