What is the Point of Banning Books?
Florida book bans, judging Y/N by its cover, and other news
“Biggest” News in Books: Nonsense Book Banning
Last month, the controversy surrounding sensitivity edits to Roald Dahl’s backlist was a top of the news story in the book world. Since then, R.L. Stein, author of the Goosebumps series, has said that his books were changed in similar ways to Dahl’s, but without his permission. However, while we grapple over sensitivity as censorship in one universe, in the next universe over we have good old fashioned we-don’t-like-this blacklisting. Last week, a Florida school district banned Jodi Picoult, Toni Morrison, and James Patterson, among many, many others for their supposedly explicit content. These bans are legitimately big news, headlines about books that are part of the national conversation. But, honestly, there’s not much interesting to say about these rolling book bans or the tangential fights over what gets taught in schools that have been going on for decades in Texas and Florida.
Book banning, especially in the US, strikes me as a little 1940s and quaint. It’s hard to even accept the premise, but even if we do, and say that a book could be too graphic or morally corrupting for kids, there’s basically no way that reading any book—no matter how “bad” it is—can be as damaging as giving tweens access to the internet. Kids get a cellphone at the average age of 11-and-a-half, around the time they are at a 4-6th grade reading level. They have access to far worse ideas and images before they could even potentially read anything of an equivalent graphic or harmful nature in a book.
Of course, these bans, like every other political stunt coming out of Florida, have nothing to do with any sort of logic, or children, or books really. As it says in the mission statement of Dear Head of Mine, books do not occupy the center of culture, but they still do hold a powerful historic and symbolic meaning. Banning books, like citing books as inspiration for some political stance (The Constitution, The Bible, The Fountainhead), offers a moral and intellectual weightiness that policing video and music does not (to be fair, music did have its big censorship moment in the 90s). Banning books is a signifier and even if it isn’t a particularly effective means of suppressing ideas in the digital age, the action certainly packs a strong political message and indicates some terrifying things to follow. It’s why for all of the silliness in practicality of banning books in 2023, it is a more than worthy fight to push back against them.
There are a couple of traps that are easy to fall into when politics is such a two-sided affair. The first is talking about the two of the sides, which are opposite, as if they are equal. Even the word polarizing, which is often thrown around to describe our times, constantly implies this equivalency. While both the Roald Dahl retroactive editing and the Florida book bans exist on the continuum of censorship—or, as I like to picture it, right next to each other on either side of a full circle—obviously banning books outright for what they contain is a far more aggressive and blatant form of censorship. Banning books is unequivocally worse and a much more concerning bellwether. Though they are similar, they are not equal.
The second trap in the land of two-side politics, is that for the people uninterested in joining one of the two sides—and there are still many of us—the Roald Dahl form of censorship will always be infinitely more interesting to talk about than the Florida form. One is complex and debatable: do the benefits of tweaking one or two mean-spirited words outweigh honoring an author’s intent and original thoughts? While what’s happening in Florida is just a brute force kind of censorship intended to blatantly target certain groups of people. It’s the kind of behavior that is obviously bad and that someone is doing because they have the clear agenda of gaining attention and power. The other thing book banners have going for them is a very clear signaling that they won’t change their views or be convinced by logic or popular opinion (see above re: dangers of books vs. smartphones). It’s much easier as a serious writer or news organization to throw your hands up when it comes to book bans and cover the Dahl controversy instead, given by the very nature of the Dahl controversy you have people on the other side of it willing to debate and consider changing. Unfortunately, this all adds up to much more resistance on something that is mildly bad and less resistance on something that is certifiably bad.
Nicely Done Judy Blume
Judging a Book by its Cover: Y/N by Esther Yi
In which we guess what a newly released book is about just by looking at the cover
The Cover
The Guesses
Genre: Obviously with a black and white cover, like a black and white movie, you have to assume this is artsy. But there is another clue that says to me this might even be on the far spectrum of a literary novel. Namely the title: Y/N. That’s a slash in the title, a non-letter character, the three-alarm bell announcement of Literature. And it is not even your basic non-letter character like an ampersand. This has to be not just a literary novel, but some serious art stuff, experimental even.
Plot: There’s a major funhouse mirror thing going on here with the cover art: the two women, maybe a reflection, on this grainy stage. And isn’t Y/N a computer prompt of some sort? Clearly, we’re looking at a deeply psychological 1st person techno literary mystery. One where our protagonist goes real dark night of the soul and gets extremely entangled in some web conspiracy—when in doubt always answer “N”. Truly though, there is nothing to go off of here, I have no idea what this book could possibly be about.
Setting: I don’t think the cover art actually is going to have anything to do with the setting, it seems like one of those feelings covers (see: “funhouse mirror” and “dark night of the soul” above) rather than a novel that is set in Italy and shows you a vista of Italy. I’m going to say that this is set in a second-tier popular kind of city, one that’s a little off the beaten path to match our main character’s offbeat attitude.
Tone: Very interior and isolated, but wryly funny amidst the darkness.
Cast of Characters: First-person narrator, a woman in her 30s, who takes us on a journey where the other characters mostly show up for brief spells, with like one or two other stalwart characters to ground the protagonist and bring them back to the main plot. Our narrator is going to have some publishing-esque job, writer, or copywriter, or technical writer, or writer’s writer.
The Grading
First the real Description:
“Surreal, hilarious, and shrewdly poignant--a novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction.”
Genre: I’m not sure if I could have done better if I had read the description. The last line of the description says this novel has the “sinewy absurdism of Thomas Pynchon” and it’s prose “unsettles the boundary.” That’s some experimental artsy stuff, especially if it’s unsettling boundaries. Score: 2/2!
Plot: Wow “deeply psychological 1st person techno literary mystery.” Is pretty much: “A novel about a Korean American woman living in Berlin whose obsession with a K-pop idol sends her to Seoul on a journey of literary self-destruction…Then Moon suddenly retires, vanishing from the public eye. As Y/N flies from Berlin to Seoul to be with Moon, our narrator, too, journeys to Korea in search of the object of her love.” That’s exactly a deeply psychological tech (the narrator writes fan fiction, Y/N stands for “fill in your name” not yes/no) literary mystery. I should pick some lottery numbers this week. Score: 2/2
Setting: This novel takes place in Berlin and Seoul, two large cities that are surely great but definitely on the B and not the A list when it comes to popular imagination. We’re not talking top-line literary city locations like New York, Tokyo, Buenos Aires, Paris. Score: 2/2
Tone: I guessed: “Very interior and isolated, but wryly funny amidst the darkness.” The first five pages I read in the available preview are entirely the narrators stalkerish and obsessive thoughts about a fictitious Korean boy band and one of its singers. Interacting with no other people = interior and isolated. Boy band = wryly funny. Stalking = darkness. Score: 2/2
Cast of Characters: It’s impossible to know without reading the entire book how accurate this is, but seeing as I got the perspective and the plot down pat, I’m going to say that this journey is filled with a rolling cast and someone the main character calls back home or has some ongoing interactions with, maybe through the fan fiction site. The second line of the description is “The desultory copywriting work…” and I guessed the protagonist would be a copywriter, which when you add all these guesses up is frankly quite spooky. Score: 2/2
Final Score: 10/10
Kudos to the author, art department, publisher and everyone else involved in getting a title and cover that conveys exactly what this is on sight without putting a Korean boy band on the cover with a bullseye over the lead singer. I was fully prepared to make fun of myself for how wildly off base I was, but here we are, a perfect score (that I gave myself). This win is dedicated to the cover designer.
Back Matter: Links and Other Happenings
Speaking of how infinitely more dangerous casual surfing of the Internet is for kids than reading books could ever be. Chris Pine recommends a lot of classic boy books about war. A cool interview by Rebecca Makkai. The most creative piece of sponcon ever written? Oprah picks her 100th book. Taylor Swift kicked off her tour with a 3+ hour show and this one music tour is likely to mint her half a billion dollars.