Having A Good Time with Banned Books
Wedneday is about books. And reading. (And writing). Today, banned books and age-limits...
Yesterday it was my birthday. I hung, as the man sings, one more year on the line. (Actually, it was on Sunday – but you should never let a chance go by to reference a great Paul Simon song).
I was given a book voucher – which has been one of the very best presents to give to me since I was age 10. Music vouchers were big in my teen years too. But when I started working in music stores, and reviewing albums, the vouchers dried up – understandably. The focus then seemed to be entirely on book vouchers, which I have always loved (even though, and especially because, I’ve worked in more book stores than music stores).
We like to think we’re buying the time to read the books – that’s why we buy the books. I thought this on Monday evening as I rushed straight to Unity to cash in the voucher and buy the things I instantly decided I could not live without upon seeing them for the first time then and there. Books that I’ll get to in a week, and a month and a year. Books that I’ll talk about before I’ve read – and hopefully after as well.
One of the books I bought, you’ll see there in the photo, is shrink-wrapped. It’s the one book from that stack that I’ve already read.
American Psycho was released over 30 years ago now. It’s the third book by Bret Easton Ellis and it was the first of his books that I read. He’s got nine to his name, and I’ve read seven of them. I hear his latest is a real return to form, but I’m not sure I’ll get to it. The last one before that (2019’s White – a foray into non-fiction/essays) was a total embarrassment. I feel like I’m done. I struggled with a couple of the others ahead of that, they felt slight, and just tracing around his earlier ideas. But there’s no denying he had a time. And I’d tell (almost) anyone that his first three books are worth reading. And many people would tell me that it’s the next three (The Informers, Glamorama, and Lunar Park) where the real magic occurs; the inventiveness of his language and positioning of himself within the text in a meta/pleased-with-himself way becomes some slinky trademark. I don’t know about that, though Glamorama is the other one of his books that I have not read, and I feel like reading it now is a bit like catching up on The Wire, or Breaking Bad, or The Sopranos if you didn’t at the time. You probably had to be there. (Then).
But anyway, just recently I decided I had to have American Psycho again. A dangerous time to bring it into the house too – as I have an 11-year-old that is a voracious reader and thinks anything popular or known might be for him. I love that Oscar is intrigued by the power of books and I mostly like to think that any book that he wants to read is okay, particularly if we talk about it. But I’ve drawn a line under (or through) American Psycho.
And in fact I don’t really know that I’ll ever read it again, I just decided I wanted to own it. You’ll see from that photo, or you’ll maybe know already, that American Psycho is sealed. That’s how you buy it (in New Zealand and Australia anyway). It carries an R-18 rating. The person at the counter on Monday even asked me for ID. My reply, when asked if I carried proof of age, was “yes – on my face”. She was asking somewhat in jest, she acknowledged. And told me that she’d had to legitimately ask someone for ID for this very title just the other week.
That pleased me.
Even if it was someone else’s 11-year-old asking for it. Though I doubt many 11-year-olds are clamouring for this book.
I told Oscar he could read the book when he is 15. That’s if he (still) wants to. That’s when I read it. My mother drove me into Hastings from Havelock North and bought the shrink-wrapped book for me. The person behind the counter said, “I hope this is for you, and not him", pointing in my direction. My mum, so often my hero (in these situations, especially) said, “How is that your business?”
My mum reckoned words were just words and if I wanted to read something all I had to do was ask. And if I had trouble understanding anything all I had to do was talk about.
I like that. And I’ve (mostly) carried that across into my parenting philosophy.
But American Psycho has some stuff in it that is not okay. And it’s probably even less okay 30 years on from when it stormed into our minds as a risqué, dark satire of times that deserved exactly that sort of satire.
Satire can’t last forever. It crumbles like a sand castle, being a monument only in the time (and tide) of when it is made.
So I’m also pretty sure that when Oscar is 15 he will have moved on from ever caring about a book like American Psycho. I probably also hope he’ll have read something far worse – something far more challenging. Something that better captures the spirit of this age, or satirises it. Or both.
If the current list of banned books is anything to go by, Oscar will have read all of them. Apparently now we’re not worried about glamourised violence as a comment on the bored detachment of yuppie scum. Gender is the enemy. Memoirs around coming out, and being trans, and celebrating non-binary, and surviving sexual assault…these are the problem books? Also, ‘other’ cultures…The Big-Time Othering of Banned Book Lists is a thesis-title waiting to happen surely?
The list is around what’s banned in American schools, admittedly. But it’s a mixture of brand new, bold, beautiful books – often graphic novels – and then old-school classics (Of Mice and Men, To Kill a Mockingbird) that are guilty of using the language of the day (the N-word) and even when holding up a mirror to the society of the time it’s been deemed not okay now. We can’t have commentary on the way we were, unless it reflects how we are now?
The world of cancelled books is a mess. Where cancelled personalities and ideas are decided in the court of Twitter, cancelled books tend to happen as a result of the religious right in America, or at least deeply conservative views.
As I’ve indicated above – I’m a believer that, within reason, words can’t hurt (long term) if you talk about them. Words are undoubtedly weapons, but we need to learn about the power of them. We need to trust that, in the right hands, the powerful story, and/or brilliant writing will guide us, will set us up to make our own decisions around whether it was right, or not, whether it was worth our time, or not.
Obviously, I say this as someone fairly well adjusted – at least in that I’m not about to read a book and then be influenced by it, to the point of trying to reenact it. My biggest problems with books and their influence, is buying a shrink-wrapped copy of something I’ve already read to keep on the shelf intact as some sort of talisman. Or buying German-language editions of Stephen King titles – when I don’t speak or read German. (My bid won by the way, the three books should arrive later this week!)
I’ve also just reserved a bunch of the latest ‘banned’ books from the library. The graphic novel adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale, the graphic memoirs of sexual assault survivors, of people that coped with coming out in their teens, and had new ways of dealing with it, new means of expression; memoirs and YA novels of people discovering themselves in various ways. How and why we would ban any of these books is beyond me. Wanting to read them, and potentially share them with my son, seems like the right idea. He’s already reading graphic novels that tell queer love stories – and loving them! And I am too. He’s turned me onto the Heartstopper series, I’m reading them to keep up with him and we’ll soon watch the TV series together and I think so long as we have books we can share, and talk about, we’ll be more than okay.
Even if that means he has to wait a few years before reading American Psycho.
I’ll gladly go and show my face so he can get his own copy if/when he wants or needs it. That way my shrink-wrapped totem can stay there. With the German books. And my Dutch-language copy of Thinner. And my five copies of Misery…And…um…whatever else I pick up by then as I undoubtedly satirise my own book collection just through the actual collecting.
My dear mum was exactly the same, the teachers in primary school contacted her in a panic about my book review on Flowers in the Attic & she told them I could ask if I had any questions. I’m still a voracious reader to this day and bringing up my 5 year old surrounded by books. I hope we can enjoy sharing our discoveries together the way you & Oscar do.
Very few books I have had to skip entire chapters but American Psycho was one of them, and I read it in my 30s!