Pretty be damned -

I tried to upload a pdf of ko ko thett's review of my novella Black Rice as it appeared in M Times - but both times FB rejected as "There is a problem with the image - bad image."

Very funny - M. Times editor had also added as a caption - "Black Rice is sure to provide some delightful images of M."

Sure, delightful dead people.

Not ko ko thett, but the M Times is an e.g. of "sweep it all clean" Burmese writing, "make it all sweet and pretty"

and while we are at it, though the original Life of Pi had detailed descriptions of the mess and smells in the lifeboat after Richard Parker, the tiger, has killed and eaten 3 big animals - technically, the zebra broke its leg in the fall, and was killed and eaten by the hyena, and the orang utan was killed (had its head bitten off) by the tiger, who ate everything -- the movie had a specklessly clean boat.

No way!!

It is like the media never having once shown us the body parts strewn all over the streets after the planes hit the World Trade Towers on 9/11/2001, though taxi drivers etc first on the scene vividly described the carnage.

I thought one of the best moments in Yann Martel's novel was when he described how scared he was on seeing the stump of the dead orang utan's head.

So - my conclusion is despite Little Girl's critique, "Aunty, your writing is always full of dead people," I will continue to write with scenes full of dead bodies, which after all were described to me by friends of friends who saw those things themselves.

Pretty be damned.

kmk
7-25-2013