Warning:
the books mentioned in this article are dangerous and offensive. This blog
takes no responsibility for the corruption of your mind or the damnation of
your soul should you recklessly choose to read any of them.
Children's books
have had the axe taken to them, bigtime, especially in America. Various states
in The Land of the Free have banned Winnie-the
Pooh and Charlotte's Web because talking
animals are considered an “insult to god.” Alice
in Wonderland promotes drug use (must be the caterpillar's hookah … or
maybe the "Drink Me" bottle that made her shrink?) Where the Wild Things Are promotes
witchcraft. The Wizard of Oz is chockful of sexual fantasies (which says more
to me about the banner than about the book) … and so it goes.
Enid Blyton is the
worst offender. Noddy lives with Big-ears! There are Golliwogs in the toybox! The
Faraway Tree series is all right, as
long as we remove the witches and change the children's names: Jo is no name
for a boy, we'll make that Joe. Don't want any whiff of gender confusion, the
Big-ears/Noddy menage is already enough like Brokeback Mountain, thank you very
much. Fanny and Dick had better become
Frannie and Rick, don't want any nudge-nudge giggling in the ranks. And Fatty
will be Freddie from now on, no bullying!
Little Black Sambo? I'm not even going there.
Now that we have
rescued the kiddies from having their minds corrupted, let's turn our attention
to some offensive books for grown-ups:
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is an American classic and an
acknowledged masterpiece. It is also one of the most controversial American
novels and has been banned on and off in various states. What is the main
objection to it? Is it the evils of slavery they object to? No, it's the racial slurs. The S-word is fine,
but we can't have the N-word!
Anyone who has
actually read the book, will know that it is a scathing satire on entrenched 19th
century attitudes, particularly racism. Sadly, the most vociferous book-banners
have seldom read the material that so profoundly offends them.
The Catcher in the Rye (1951) by J.D. Salinger is considered one of the best
novels of the 20th century; it has been translated into practically
every language spoken on the planet and sixty years later it still sells about
half a million copies a year. It has always been controversial: full of
swearing, smoking, drinking, sex, atheism and subversive elements of teenage
angst and rebellion. No wonder it sells
so well!
The scenes of
brutality and sadism in American Psycho
gave rise to wholesale banning of the book, and its author, Bret Easton Ellis,
received a plethora of death threats. What offends me most about it, is the
unabashed product placement and the poor writing.
Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is an immensely popular
bestseller that has been turned into a very successful film starring Ed Norton
and Brad Pitt. It has given rise to demands for banning due to its
"glorification" of violence, and its casual acceptance of
controversial matters like abortion and drug use.
The publication of Fight Club had considerable cultural
impact: a rash of "fight clubs" were started by young men with more
testosterone than common sense, and "the
first rule of Fight Club" entered the lexicon of popular culture: You
Don't Talk About Fight Club. (It is a frequent question at Trivia Nights!)
Today Lady Chatterley's Lover seems pretty
tame: a few four-letter words, a bit of adulterous sex in the potting shed, a
few coy references to "John Thomas" and "Lady Fanny". But
at the time it was incendiary stuff and gave rise to all manner of lawsuits and
questions in Parliament. All in all it's quite a boring book – as we passed an
ill-gotten copy round at my boarding school, it always fell open at the bit in
the potting shed (page 94) because that was all we ever bothered to read.
Thanks to Vladimir
Nabokov's much-reviled and banned novel, "Lolita"
has entered the language as shorthand for a sexually precocious pre-teen. The
paedophile Humbert Humbert marries Charlotte Haze purely to be near her
12-year-old daughter Lolita, with whom he is infatuated. When Charlotte dies,
he takes Lolita on a road trip, so he can be alone with her in motel rooms to
indulge his fantasies – no questions asked. Just to make this article more
interesting, here's the trivia question: How did Lolita's mother die?
- Run over by a car.
- Apparent suicide by overdose.
- Went on the lake in a rowboat with Humbert, never
came back.
No, not telling.
You'll have to risk your immortal soul and read the book.
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is another novel which seems
pretty tame now, for all the fuss it caused in 1856. Emma Bovary, married to a
crashing bore, spiced up her life a bit by having couple of adulterous affairs,
running up a lot of debts and finally committed a rather painful suicide by
arsenic. Despite this severe punishment for her sins, Madame Bovary was still
considered a dangerous book: might give other boring men's wives ideas above
their station!
Not only was there
tremendous outrage and calls for banning when it was first published, but poor
old Flaubert was chucked in the slammer overnight and prosecuted. Luckily he
was acquitted a year later, and with all the publicity, the book was a runaway
best seller.
Portnoy's Complaint, a humourous satirical novel, was not only censured
for its explicit portrayals of teenage Alex Portnoy's frequent masturbation
(using all manner of inventive props, including a catcher's mitt, a milk bottle
and the famous piece of raw liver from the fridge), but it also offended the
Jewish community for its negative depiction of Jewish characters. Alex's mother, Mrs Sophie Portnoy, in a
particulary acerbic portrait of the stereotypical Jewish mother, insisted on
inspecting his bowel movements. She'd stand outside the bathroom
yelling:"Don't flush!" Portnoy
made us cringe, but laugh at the same time … did he really deserve to be banned?
Portnoy having
offended the Jewish community, let us now in the interest of Equal Opportunity,
see how Salman Rushdie offended the Muslim community.
His perceived blasphemy
in The Satanic Verses affronted them to such an
extent that he had to go into hiding. The Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in
1989, declaring him under sentence of death. The fatwa has never actually been
withdrawn, but these days, Rushdie says, its existence is more a formality than
a threat.
Lord Of The Flies, the classic
story by William Golding of schoolboys stranded on an island without adults, is
one of the 20th century's most frequently challenged and banned
books. It paints a disturbing picture of the innate savagery of human nature.
There are no noble impulses: in a short time, the children revert to selfish
and brutish behaviour – survival of the fittest is the name of the game.
"No, you can't have any vegetables. They are only
for grown-ups", is a
sure way of getting the four-year-old to scoff the greens. That's why banned
books are guaranteed good sales and a wide readership!
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