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READING SUCKS! DON'T TRY IT!
An Editor's Thoughts on Folks Who Would Ban Books

What does it mean to ban a book?

“Ban” — to prohibit, forbid, to pronounce an ecclesiastical curse upon

“Book” — a written or printed work of fiction or nonfiction, usually on sheets of paper fastened or bound together within covers

Now, I don’t know a whole lot about which books have been “banned” because the thought is beyond alien to me. I had to research if certain books were ever banned or challenged.

I do know with great certainty of one book I have had the privilege to read in its original “banned” form. When I worked in the magical book shop, the first French printed edition of Tropic Of Cancer, by Henry Miller, came into my hands. It was “worthless” as the owner had rebound it, but it was priceless for me to read the very version America had forbidden for almost three decades.

Doing research on banned books I went beyond the lists compiled by the American Library Association. They have put together the top books challenged in the past 18 years, but I want to know about books and authors I read as a child and which have influenced me as a writer.

Charlotte’s Web, the very first book I ever read cover to cover on my own as a 6 year old is among books children have been denied. Yes, please keep me from using my imagination. While Charlotte’s Web did not magically alter my child’s brain with its talking animals and lessons about life, it did lead me to read E.B White’s essays when I was a bit older which did affect me personally and as a writer. Had I never met Wilbur and Charlotte, I might not have been bitten by the reading bug at that precocious age leading me to devour over half of the one room library at my elementary school before I was 10, and I may have skipped White’s other works entirely, which led me to many other essayists and ways of thinking. White to Thoreau was not a big leap for me.

The fact that J.R.R Tolkien and C.S. Lewis have both repeatedly been challenged and restricted doesn’t even warrant discussion. Having been most inspired and educated by reading everything Tolkien ever wrote as a youngster, I list him as one of my top 5 most influential writers. From their connection, I went straight to Lewis’s other works, never to this day having read his children’s series. I can only hope there are children who do graduate from both of their fantasies to their more “grown-up” words and thoughts, if for no other reason than to expand their minds.

What pre-teen girl doesn’t read Judy Bloom? And covertly passed around Wifey? It seems to me as much an American girl’s rite of passage as hanging at the mall and getting pierced ears.

Vonnegut, Fitzgerald and Hemingway would loom large in my reading experience as I left behind “children’s” books for “literature.” The lessons as a human being and writer learned from their banned books are invaluable. Researching which writers of import and talent I may have been denied staggers my mind. The truth is I do not think about censorship when I write or when I suggest books to my teenagers or even my kindergartner. In fact, I have often pushed books on my children that had the most impact on my way of thinking, on my emotional or mental growth.

When Vonnegut died, I checked his books out of the library, reread them and made my oldest daughter read them. I know they didn’t reach her the way they had me when I first was shocked {in an amazing way} by what he did with words in books I COULD get at my high school library. I vividly remember worrying that the librarian would notice I had checked out his books as a 13 year old and would tell me I “wasn’t old enough” to read them. I hurriedly checked out everything written by him before anyone noticed. He freed my mind and my pen as a young writer. If he could write those things, I could write ANYTHING.

When my daughter was in high school, they had to choose a banned book to read and do projects about. Recently, I have tried to discuss the idea with her, but she is much too busy with boyfriends, college and work to stop and talk to me about something that is just a slight blip on her radar. Reading and writing, and what can be written and read, means much less to her than to me. And even though there will always be a list of books challenged in this world, books someone wants to keep someone else’s children from reading, my children will barely realize that. I will never refuse them a book, never allow a book to be denied to them and I will keep giving them books to read that have threatened narrow minded folks.

On November 1st, I will participate in NaNoWriMo. I have no plot or character concept in mind and that had been worrying me. Now I have a goal beyond writing enough words or maintaining a pace for 30 days. I want to write a book worthy of getting someone’s panties in a twist enough to be challenged, enough to threaten small minds into trying to ban my words and worthy of affecting just one other person’s concept of anything. Now, I want to tell people who challenge and decry books to, as Vonnegut would say, “take a flying fuck at the mooooooooooooon.”

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