CREATIVITY QUASHED

The Bowdlerization of Authors’ Work

“I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.  If the book we are reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for?  We need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everything, like a suicide.  A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”  Franz Kafka in a letter to his friend, Oskar Pollak.

I’m a writer, with many published articles and books.  When I began to read about writers being cancelled, I became concerned.  Writing is an act of imagination and creativity; it is supposed to be unbounded.  In fact, one of the secrets of getting going when you start to write is to give yourself permission to write garbage.  It frees you.  Any constraint imposed by others will impede the flow of words, resulting in something prosaic instead of inspired. 

I always thought that part of our freedom as Americans was to select what we wanted from the variety we are exposed to.  One can shun certain TV shows or books because they are lame, boring or yes, offensive.  Others might not share your sensitivity.  But why not allow great writing to be available to those who would enjoy or even love it?

As a child, I was entranced by the book, Little Black Sambo.  If you’re as old as I am, you will remember the story of the little dark-skinned boy, who ate a lot of pancakes and conquered a tiger and turned him into butter.  I was so envious.  Tigers and stacks of pancakes with butter.  What a life!  As I grew up, I learned they had banned this book, along with others which might seem to show Blacks in a bad light.  This was a judgment call, and a bad one.  Huckleberry Finn accurately portrayed racism, but also showed a bond between Jim and Finn.  Real life people are flawed and one way to show these problems is to portray them in fiction.  It is wrong to pretend that the past wasn’t awful.

Politics and Books

At one time, there was a part of the conservative movement focused on banning books.  This was not a great moment in time, but largely they were trying to protect children.  In fact, the best way to protect children is to expose them to the best and worst of books.  My mother got us a copy of Candy.  After reading it (a painful exercise), we told her we thought it was badly written and stupid.  I later found a book called the Well of Loneliness, which involved the relationship between two gay women.  I showed it to my mother; well-written, fascinating and a way to show how gay people were treated in the past, and, in some cases, still are. 

Book banning continues, as does pressure to read certain books to force a point of view.  Pushing books on kids isn’t new, but these books are more harmful, indoctrinating kids into the victim/oppressor mindset.  This hurts both the so-called oppressed as well as the victims.  Books on “anti-racism” and CRT are especially harmful.  These books aren’t useful information for kids; they aim to force a point of view that most parents wouldn’t support.  Worse, we pay for these books with our tax dollars.  The freedom of choice in reading, along with a well-curated library of acknowledged great works, lets children and teens understand the value of reading in their lives.

I worked on Project READ a number of years ago, and helped several children get up to speed on reading.  The books the school pushed were awful, so we sneaked in other books and got the kids hooked.  Great fun!  That’s the goal. If you can’t read well, you won’t advance and succeed. 

Censorship on Steroids

I was shocked when they began pulling books like several Dr. Seuss books.  As a child, they were like traveling to a new world.  No judgment, just information.  So what if a Chinese person was portrayed more like a coolie?  We didn’t know better, nor did we judge.  But the next step was sure to come.  Rewriting books that had already been published.

There are now sensitivity readers being hired to “fix” phraseology in already published books that they find to be offensive.  The first I learned of was Roald Dahl, who made millions of children chortle and smile, as his harsh descriptions perfectly fit the story.  But no, we can’t describe a child as grossly, disgustingly obese, even if he is.  Agatha Christie is also being “examined” for phrases that these select readers don’t like.  Most of the descriptions matter for the story, and, as they have nothing to do with a real person, should be fine. 

Whole books are being censored.  Love him or hate him, Woody Allen has a following.  Hachette refused to publish his memoir because of his marriage to an adopted daughter.  Why not let us decide?  I’m sure there is a market for his work.  J. K. Rowling made the unforgivable mistake of defining a woman as someone born that way with XX chromosomes.  She was dubbed transphobic and untouchable.

Where does this stop?  Who gave these people license to screw with writing?  Readers should make the call, not “sensitivity readers.”  If you have physical books, consider keeping them.  Publishers can’t fix books on your bookshelf.  I’m regretting ***donating so many of my books.  But the ones you have downloaded to a device CAN be altered.  Scary.  Sounds like New-Think.

Pushback is Necessary

Politics pushing the idea that we need to be protected from offense needs to end.  If I hate a book or movie, I stop watching it.  When I find an author who writes garbage (like Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice), I put it down.  I like my beliefs to be challenged by words, but do a good job of it.  Millions of books are published to Amazon every year; most are not good.  We need to be aware of this trend and start challenging publishers.  Hopefully, someone will create a publishing house that vows to only publish good writing, with no one’s sensitivity considered.

This kind of censorship and bowdlerization of books is unacceptable.  Writers and readers deserve better.  In a way, this is a step toward Fahrenheit 451.

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