No. 42: Beloved by Toni Morrison

We thought we'd try something different here at The Daily Banning and play a little Book Jeopardy! Here is our virtual host, Alex Trebek.

Trebek: "Thank you, Daily Banning. I'm happy to be here. Let's get started. Pick a category, Gentle Readers."

Gentle Readers: "We'll take Books Kim Didn't Fully Understand for $200."

Trebek: "The answer is ... Written by a Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, this book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1988."

Gentle Readers: "What is Beloved?"

Queue music of smartness...

Trebek: "That is the correct answer for $200!"

Daily Banning: "Thanks, Alex. You can go now."

Trebek: "But we're not finished with the category."

Daily Banning: "Actually we are. Besides, there is a picture of the book along with its name in the title of this post so our readers probably already knew the answer anyway. Thanks again for stopping by."

That was my attempt at stalling. I'm finding it really difficult to explain this book. I am in no way qualified to analyze its symbolism or messages because, frankly, I didn't really get all of it. Here's what I can tell you: Beloved is a beautifully written story about the effects of slavery on those who survived it. Set at the end of the Civil War, Morrison tells the story of an escaped slave, Sethe, who [Spoiler Alert, stop here if you don't want to know what happens in the story] when caught, chooses to kill her children rather than send them back into slavery. The rage of Sethe's dead child literally rocks the house she lives in, until it takes on physical form and comes back to life to torment her.

At least, that's what I got out of it. I could be wrong as the novel is written in an experimental style in which its pieces are broken apart and the reader is left to reassemble them. I, apparently, am not good at this. There was a whole "he died on his face, she died on her face" and "she wasn't even smiling" section that left me thinking that Morrison was a little crazy. However, the novel is still worth the effort if only to get insights like this:

“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another.”

I am not the only one who thinks this novel is better than average. A survey of writers and literary critics conducted by The New York Times found Beloved to be the best work of American fiction of the past 25 years.

It gets banned because its subject matter is difficult (really difficult) to read. Critics (mostly parents) cite the novel's treatment of bestiality, infanticide, racism, and sex as inappropriate for underage readers. As recently as 2007 and 2008, Beloved was pulled from library shelves in Kentucky, Idaho, and Illinois by concerned parents and school boards.

It helps to remember that Beloved is based on the true story of Margaret Garner. Is the banning of this novel akin to burying the ugly truth of America's involvement in slavery? I'll leave it to you to decide, Gentle Readers.

No. 37: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is the end of all happiness. I used to think that the movie Cold Mountain (which made me want to throw myself off a cliff) was the end of all happiness, but now I know better. Cold Mountain, meet The Handmaid's Tale. You've been dethroned.

Set it a post apocalyptic-ish America (now called Gilead and run by Christian zealots), the world is massively infertile. Women who can still bear children, or "handmaids," are valuable commodities and are given to high ranking couples to produce children for them. The book is narrated by Offred (literally "Of-Fred, or "belonging to Fred"), a handmaid whose pragmatic response to the turmoil in her society is both spooky and compelling. The book is depressing as hell and portions of it are squirm inducing in the extreme. It's also brilliant.

Part of why it's so upsetting is that it's plausible. If the conditions that scary Atwood imagines existed (and we smashed our Constitution into bite sized chunks and fed it to our dogs) The Handmaid's Tale isn't that far fetched.

Critics claim the book is depressing. Yeah, but so is The Scarlet Letter and I had to read that. It's also cited as too sexually explicit for minors. Sex in Gilead isn't fun for anyone, readers or participants. It's only for procreation and the way they do it is the grossest, least sexy, most squick-worthy Ménage à Trois, like, ever. Critics also take issue with the book's treatment of women (whose lives are the suck), Christianity (depicted at its ugly extreme), and believe it or not, Islam (the women are veiled and polygamy is accepted). Gentle Readers, I submit that these very complaints are the point of this book.

Here's the deal, America. The Handmaid's Tale is a cautionary tale about fundamentalist totalitarianism, fascism, backlash against feminism, and all kinds of other nasty things that could happen if we all stopped caring about... basically everything. Should a 12-year old read it? No. Should a 17-year old read it? Sure. It's got mature themes but aren't the late teens the point in life when kids are supposed to start thinking expansively and examine their world? If the answer to that is "No," then stock libraries with nothing but Hello Kitty and I'll go watch TV.

I do have one major complaint about this book (and notice that I'm complaining and not screaming "burn this book" to anyone who will listen). Atwood, a Canadian, set her story in America. In case you didn't know it, those are totally different countries (one in which Atwood lives and the other in which she doesn't). I say, keep your dystopian nightmarish future society vibes in your own country. Seriously. Don't you think we have enough to worry about already? Among the war in Iraq, idiot white supremacists opening fire at the Holocaust museum, the OctoMom and all kinds of other crazy crap we're quite busy. Fending off your mental super whammy, is really not on our national agenda. To balance the cosmic scales, I am going to have to write a scary story and set it in Canada. The things I do for you people.