Do You Really Want to Read That?

I seem to have missed something very important.

You have noticed that my other pieces this week have been stories about the shenanigans – a wonderful word, I think – in both Canada and the United States with the Speakers of our respective Houses (ours was chosen after a quick vote; the one down south does not really exist yet, and may not exist for quite some time). I commented to a reader of my piece on how the Republican Party seems to be akin to a pack of dogs that are just on the edge of becoming feral. This is fair. My other work involved poetry, a short story, but also, I decided to repost two particular pieces about this week’s other big news: the Nobel Prizes. Physics, Chemistry and Medicine have been covered so far, and this article will be published after the prize for Literature is handed out on Thursday…unless there is another delay as there was in the year that Bob Dylan became a laureate. Anything is possible (Jon Fosse anyone?)

But, as I said, even with all of this writing, and much of my other work for schools both in person and online, I have missed something: Banned Books Week.

I saw a notice online for it and noted the number of books in the photo that have made the list: A Clockwork Orange, 1984, The Diary of Anne Frank, all the Harry Potter books, The Handmaid’s Tale, Fahrenheit 451, The Glass Castle and so forth. I also noted that most of the books were ones that I had already read or had read to me (excluding the Harry Potter ones; still find them unreadable). And when I say read to me, I mean that teachers read them to us. The Diary of Anne Frank is subtitled The Diary of a Young Girl, and too many philistines out there seem to have missed that. She was perfect for a class of grade 5 students who wanted to know more about her plight and what it meant to be Jewish and hiding from the Nazis during World War Two. Why would such a book be banned?

Why would any of the above be banned?

I will not run through all of the arguments in favour of pulling books off of school shelves or making them impossible to find in local stores that are often scared of losing customers and respond to any protest with self-censoring. What seems to be happening most often now is that the books get pulled…and no one really notices. Yes, I know, we live in a culture where the phone screen is king, pulling in all the information about the outside world that people think they need. This is a terrible thing to see happening because it was not foreseen by the same writers who worried about censorship coming from the state or a bureaucracy. This is a self-imposed condition for many people. I once argued with a friend that most people are in a dysfunctional relationship with their smartphones, and the joke seemed right. Now, it seems awful.

The only bright side that I have seen with this lack of readers, or at least low numbers of them, is the access I have found to some wonderful literature in book boxes and second-hand stores. Quebec has set up a Livre-Service series of public book boxes, and my neighbourhood has at least three nearby (one of which always offers the most interesting titles). At home, I have collected a wonderful collection of Penguins in both paperback and hardback, and I am at a loss about what to do with them when I am too old to do more than just let someone else read them to me (I would rather just pass off this mortal coil than to see them in someone else’s hands, but I can change).

And this is why I get angry.

As a child, in Catholic school, it was clear that certain books were more acceptable than others. I have touched on my early reading in other pieces, but I did not mention certain ugly moments that I cannot forget:

1) I am in the schoolyard of my elementary school. Two older kids come over to me (two people I had never really spoken to before) and pose a question:

'What are you reading?'

I was holding a copy of Sue Townsend's The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole, a book that I had actually read multiple times by that point.

'We were supposed to read that in school, but our teacher said that it was too mature for us.'

Now, at that point, I was convinced that I was about to have my book confiscated, or reported, or that I was about to be dragged into some sort of Star Chamber that I had never heard of. Fortunately, the bell rang and the issue was dropped.

2) There were two separate teachers, both admired in my high school, who taught literature, and I was part of the pool of admirers. The problem was that I also heard some of their more interesting pronouncements on literature:

a) 'All female Canadian writers are insane.'

b) 'Any book with bad language in it cannot be literature.'

I noted that one of those teachers mentioned how he had studied law and the other one was a failed author. A lot of painful truths and revelations came out of those lessons.

Now, why do I mention these moments?

I still resent the idea that children, or at least adolescents, are so innocent that they cannot face the reality that surrounds them. I was raised by a father and many relatives who made it impossible for me to believe in the lie of the readers and ideas that my teachers shared with us. And it was clear that we were being pushed away from anything that was real literature.

But I pushed back.

The moment I was allowed to go to a bookstore or library and choose material on my own, I guided myself to the things that teachers and so-called authorities did not want me to read. And I was rewarded for it. My papers were commented on by some of the same people who could not believe the references I made. There would often be some talk about me having assistance on my papers, but one parent-teacher night with my mother killed this idea. It was all on me.

And it still is.

Please go out there and read something that they do not want you to read.

You know who they are, and now you know what those books might be:

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Thank you for reading!

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You can find more poems, stories, and articles by Kendall Defoe on my Vocal profile. I complain, argue, provoke and create...just like everybody else.

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