Banned Book Week

As the author of six novels (none published) Banned Book Week, which begins tomorrow, always has a special appeal.  People have been writing for over four thousand years, and it might seem that there’s little left to say that won’t offend someone.  So I celebrated Banned Book Week with abandon.

There’s no official “western canon” of banned books.  Suffice it to say that if you have a favorite, it’s probably on somebody’s list.  Although we gladly watch televisions shows frothing over with sex and violence, if you try to put it in a book, someone will object.  Loudly.

Many cultural heroes, of the literary sort, have spent a stint or two on the banned book lists.  We feel that our children shouldn’t read such things.  They might act out the violence or adult situations and who’s going to clean up after all that?  It is easier to prevent them reading.

I recall RIF.  Reading Is Fundamental.  It was a program in full swing when I was young, and perhaps it influenced my decision to stay inside behind books instead of going out and learning to be cool.  The places I went!  The events I witnessed!  And they didn’t inspire me to murder or incest.

Writing is my way of giving back.  Of course, it is easier to give back if you can find a willing publisher, but still.  My faulty memories and perverse imagination take me beyond the bounds of the known universe.  I fancy someday being published (I do love fantasy!) and becoming the author of a banned book.

My Medusa novel would surely, were it ever published, make such an infamous list.  Raucous, racy, and libertarian in spirit, it says what we’ve all been thinking—we have to be who we are!  Writers in our pasty skin and our tanned beach beauties of which we dream.  We have voices, and the best way to get them heard is to have them banned.

Most of the fiction I read falls into the banned category.  It seems there are only two: banned or bland.  Let’s go for the banned books this week, my small coterie of readers.  And while the protest signs come out, we’ll be safely hidden away with our favorite bit of wickedness.