Foreword
Candide is a book that has been read in many languages throughout the world for well over a century. It was written by the French philosopher and literary genius Voltaire who, it is said, locked himself in a room for three days to write the book in its entirety. The tale follows the far flung adventures of a simple, naive lad named Candide, who is cast out of his quarters and his job for the sin of allowing the beautiful and experienced daughter of his employer to seduce him. He travels far and wide, in and out of the company of his old teacher, Dr. Pangloss, the beautiful seductress, and a host of minor characters. In his travels he bears witness to women joyfully coupling with apes, Popes who spread venereal disease, pirates who turn women's buttocks into flank steaks, and all manner of violence from earthquakes to shipwrecks, from murder to robbery, from kidnapping to mayhem. As we have implied from the worldwide acceptance of Candide, it is a great book, well-paced and well-written, action-packed as any half hour television show of today's times. Filled with violence and sex as it is, Candide is in the final analysis a humorous book which subtly shows that man, at his best, is happiest at home, tending his garden, innocently but firmly believing that he lives in the best of all possible worlds.
These are simple beliefs, ones which can be stated in just a few lines of prose. Those few lines would be read and forgotten, but Voltaire's Candide lives on through the ages to make its point upon countless millions of people.
Crime and Punishment is a book that is much the same. Dostayevsky stated the entire premise of the book in the three words of its title, and yet there is so very much more to the hundreds of pages of prose to more subtly make his point, to examine the true motives behind a criminal act, the real standards of its consequences.
These are works of fiction, meant to entertain as well as to enlighten. Today we read a great deal in psychology books about the reward and punishment system as used in learning institutes, penal institutes, and in everyday life. We read a great deal about it, that is, if we are psychology book fans. Most of us are not. The majority of the reading we do is for pleasure, and any small lesson we might learn from the works of fiction we peruse is some small bonus, not to be refused, nor to be forgotten, either.
This book, Teacher's Spanking Lesson, while not literarily comparable with the genius works of Voltaire or Dostayevsky, is much the same as those books, for it is an entertaining approach to the foibles and fantasies, the pleasures and pains of reward and punishment. Set in a contemporary time, and within a flawed contemporary place, its characters are equally flawed, even as you and I. Those in charge of meting out the rewards and punishments are handicapped by typical twentieth century emotional problems, and those others who are recipients of the pleasures and the deprivations that some psychologists recommend as mass therapy are indeed so strong in this story that they can accept or reject their just desserts at will. The jailors are the prisoners and the prisoners the jailors, with an intermingling of the two, compounded by those nasty little emotional problems we mentioned, that makes the entire situation appear to be totally hopeless for all involved.
Total hopelessness, violence, sex, and a doll-up of humor thrown in--what could make for a better evening's entertainment?
-The Publisher