Banned

This week past was Banned Book Week.  It is kind of a holiday for me as a writer.  For the past several years I have read a banned or challenged book on or about this time.  Of course, much of what I normally read is banned stuff.

This practice began when my writing partner Elizabeth was still in school.  As she was assigned classics that I'd never read, I tried to keep up, reading them as though I were assigned the books.

Catcher in the Rye, J. D. Salinger's masterpiece, was one such book.  Although it has sat on my shelf for years, I finally got around to reading Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.  Kate Chopin's The Awakening,  John Gardner’s Grendel, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita,  and many others have brought new insights to my inner eyes.

Although I abhor the idea of books being banned, sometimes it performs a very great service.  Banned books garner a great deal of attention and sometimes become bestsellers because of it.  Still, wouldn’t it be better yet if people simply wanted to read?  Read books because they had new, and challenging ideas?

Today the largest banners of books are publishers.  They choose what is “good” on the basis of what will sell.  Authors with nowhere else to turn go to Amazon and other self-publishers, crowding the pages of the internet with books, some of which are very poor.

I understand the need of publishers to earn a profit.  Money makes publishing possible.  If more people read, however, they wouldn’t have to look constantly for the next big hit.  (Not that assured success would stop them in any case.)

Ours is a culture that denigrates reading.  It begins as soon as school does.  Some of my earliest memories are of classmates complaining that they had to read this or that.  Reading isn’t easy, but it has tangible (and intangible) rewards.  Perhaps the greatest compliment is being banned.