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. 91: The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

I once dated this guy, Steve. The main thing I remember about him (other than the fact that he was built like a Greek statue) was that he was sweet and shy. We dated for a bit and then the Navy moved him to Florida for flight school and we lost touch.

A couple years later, I had a business meeting in San Diego that I absolutely had had had to attend in person (because my job back then was ridiculous and required me to be in, like, three places at once). To make this particular meeting, I would have had to fly there and back (from Washington DC) on the same day. Gentle Readers, same day flight in-and-outs are very expensive so the ticket was almost $3,000. I told my manager I'd be willing to spend the weekend in San Diego to reduce my airfare if I could stay someplace nice on the beach. He was all "Why are you even asking me?" so I booked myself in the lovely Hotel del Coronado and proceeded to set about unwinding all the stiff muscles in my back.

While unwinding, I took the Hotel's bike tour of the Island. Our group biked past a military installation and I asked the tour guide about it. When he informed me that it was the Naval Air Station, I knew (seriously I knew,) that Steve was on the island. I got back to the hotel, dialed information, asked for his listing in Coronado, and got connected. Conversation went something like this:

Me: "Steve?"
Steve: "Kim?"
Me: "Yeah."
Him: "You're at the Hotel del."
Me: "How do you know that?"
Him: "Caller ID. You hungry?"
Me: "Starved."
Him: "I just got Thai food delivered. I'll pick you up in front of the hotel in 5 minutes."

...and a lovely weekend with the hunky Steve ensued. The point of all this? Steve's favorite book was The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett, which I know because he made me read it.

The Pillars of the Earth is basically about a builder and a monk who collaborate to build a cathedral in England in the Middle Ages. It's pretty damn great! ...and complicated. ...and suspenseful. ...and long, (which you won't even notice. Trust me). ...and banned.

The reasons for its banning include graphic descriptions of sex and violence, particularly against women. A Fairfax County Virginia (and I thought we were getting along so well Virginia) School Board member who voted to restrict the book to 10th-12th grade students called the book's content "obscene and pervasively vulgar". It's been many years since I read it but I don't remember any pervasive vulgarity. It is fairly violent but that's historically accurate to medieval times. It's also fairly sexual but it was never intended to be read by children. That said, I think kids over 14 should be OK reading it.

Read it. It's great.

One late note: Steve, if you're reading this, thanks for the Thai food.

No. 1: Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz

Last summer, my mom and I laughed ourselves silly as an old family friend (Andrea) explained to us why her neighbor didn't like her. Get this - her sister hosted a slumber party for her daughter's girl scout troop (which the neighbor's daughter also attended), and Andrea decided it would be a great idea to scare them. So she acted like a zombie and tried to climb in the window when the girls were all sleeping. (...and no, I am not kidding.) The girls were, like, scared out of their minds. Apparently, there was shrieking and screaming and dogs barking and all kinds of mayhem. I laughed for days every time I thought about it because, who does that? What normal adult sees a group of girl scouts and thinks "Hey, I think I'll scare them!"? I'm counting at least two people: Andrea and Alvin Schwartz.

The Scary Stories series by Alvin Schwartz is subtitled “To Tell in the Dark” but I think a more apt title might be “To Make Your Fellow Campers Wet Their Bunks.” This book is kind of the (big, fat, scary) bomb. It is also the ALA’s No. 1 banned book of the past several years. I was surprised because there isn’t one single gay person in the whole thing. After researching the banning, I think it has more to do with exhausted parents of terrified kids than anything else.

The book itself is scary but somewhat familiar to anyone who sat around a summer campfire telling ghost stories. Schwartz based his Scary Stories series on American folklore and some classic urban legends because let’s face it, Gentle Readers – we don’t have tons of folklore compared to older countries like China. Remember the one about the couple making out on lover’s lane when the radio announces the escape of a one armed madman from the local insane asylum and the couple speeds off and arrives home to find the madman’s bloody hook hanging from their car door!??! It’s in there.

Schwartz also gives tips like “lower your voice so that your listeners have to lean in close to hear you” and “when you get to this point in the story jump out at your listeners and scream “BWWWAAAAAAAAA!!!” Excellent instructions for maximum scare-age, yes? It brings us to our banning. Many of the internet accounts I’ve read say “This book is great but I read three stories to my 4-year old and he wound up sleeping in bed with my wife and me for months afterwards.” Variations include “cried himself to sleep,” “had night terrors,” and “started bed wetting again.” Well, Asshat, maybe you shouldn’t have read ghost stories to your toddler.

Other critics cite cannibalism (in one story a farm boy finds a toe growing in his field and his family cooks it for dinner), murder (severed heads bounce down the chimney), witchcraft, and ghosts (of which there are many) as reasons for banning. Several websites had bigger problems with the illustrations (which I have to admit wigged me out) than the stories themselves.

Here's the bottom line for this one - don't read it aloud to your toddlers but older kids will love it.

No 23: Go Ask Alice by Anonymous

When I was a teenager, my mom was convinced that any song lyric she didn't understand was a reference to drugs. We'd be riding along in the car with the radio playing and mom would turn to my sister and me and say "That's slang for cocaine." My sister and I were all "How on earth do you know that?" and she would nod gravely and say "I just do." Now, my mom is not some drug-using hippie. She's a straight arrow, school teaching, christian, ex-military wife who has never even taken more than the prescribed dosage of an advil. Turns out that she was right about at least one song I remember. I can find no logical reason for my mom's accurate knowledge of drug slang and am therefore assuming that she picked it up from Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (aka Beatrice Sparks).

First published in 1971, Go Ask Alice shows up at number 23 on the ALA's List of 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books. The title is a reference to that horrible Jefferson Airplane song, White Rabbit, which everyone but me seems to love. It is presented as the diary of an actual (anonymous) 15-year old girl who accidentally takes LSD, and begins a descent into the world of drugs, runaways, rape, violence, sex, and sex for drugs (which I think we can all agree is a different category of sex altogether).

Gentle Readers, do I even need to go into why this book is banned? That's what I thought.

There is another controversy altogether surrounding this book (which seems interestingly not to have impacted its banning one way or the other) and that is its veracity as a diary. Go Ask Alice written by an actual, real life, walking, talking, high school attending 15-year old girl? Yeah... not so much. I mean seriously, the book goes into pages of detail about her first drug trip (where she understood Adam & Eve's secret language) and then spends less than two paragraphs talking about a boy she likes. Does that sound like any 15-year old girl you know? Me neither.

Still, I felt sorry for the (made-up) teenage girl. She repeatedly tries to get off drugs only to be left lonely as the druggies torment her and the straight kids want nothing to do with her. "Lonely" and "teenager" are not a good combination.

Instead of banning this book, it would be great to use it as a jumpstarter for a conversation with teenagers about drugs. Granted, it's fairly dramatic (and possibly overblown) but also a cautionary tale of what can go wrong when bad drugs happen to nice kids.

No 67: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.

Slaughterhouse Five appears at number 67 of the American Library Association's list of Most Challenged Books (1990-2000) and holds a special place in my heart. It was assigned summer reading by Miami University (college old and grand) for all entering students my freshman year. I thought it was strange and wonderful. I was, of course, right.

Slaughterhouse Five has been the subject of MANY attempts at censorship since its publication in 1969. In fact, Slaughterhouse was challenged all the way to the US Supreme Court in 1982, (Island Trees School District v. Pico). In case you’re wondering, the Supreme Court upheld the right of students to read it and teachers to teach it. Its critics have called it "dangerous" because of violent, irreverent, profane, sexually explicit and anti-American content.

I could break each of those criticisms down one by one but that might be boring. Here’s the gist of it... Slaughterhouse is set during WWII. The protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is an American POW who survives the bombing of Dresden. That it doesn’t shy away from describing the civilian casualties of the attack (read: Americans who are supposed to be the good guys attacking a city and killing innocent people) has made its critics cranky for years. Toss in Vonnegut’s general irreverence, Sci-Fi themes, swearing soldiers, sex, and bashing of free will and you get a lot of pissed off people.

What can I say? Vonnegut is not for everyone but if you like your reading thought provoking and irreverent, you should check it out. It's worth noting that Slaughterhouse is one of the first literary acknowledgments that the Nazi Holocaust also targeted homosexual men.