Without revealing salient details, I just want to mention an odd editorial debate that’s going on with one of the publishers I write for.

In a nutshell, the problem is whether a book should recommend songs (relevant to the destination) that have explicit lyrics.

I honestly can’t believe that it’s even being debated. It feels like some argument that everyone else had fifty years ago, and ended with someone declaring writing was a work of art.

Oh, one detail that I just can’t gloss over: the whole debate started over a song by an 80s hair-metal band…that doesn’t even have obscene lyrics.

So my open question to anyone is: Does this bother you? Or am I crazy?

(My secondary question is: who wrote the essay that ended with the words ‘of art’ to protest an editor’s objection to the word ‘fart’? And was it at the New Yorker? And why isn’t Google helping me out here?)