In the old days, when men were allowed to have many wives, a middle-aged Man had one wife that was old and one that was young; each loved him very much, and desired to see him like herself. Now the man’s hair was turning grey, which the young Wife did not like, as it made him look too old for her husband. So every night she used to comb his hair and pick out the white ones. But the elder Wife saw her husband growing grey with great pleasure, for she did not like to be mistaken for his mother. So every morning she used to arrange his hair and pick out as many of the black ones as she could. The consequence was the Man soon found himself entirely bald.
Yield to all and you will soon have nothing to yield.
(of Aesop)
I have a bunch of old books I’ve been curating for many years now that I just can’t seem to give away. Tsundoku is the Japanese word for it, I’m told (though check me on it, because my Japanese vocabulary won’t fill a thimble)–the books you acquire that go unread for lack of time; the stacks becoming larger and more unwieldy–this is a disease in itself.
The problem with voracious readers is paradoxical: you simply become thirstier the more you read. A reader is never quite satisfied.
We wade through millions of words, thousands of stories. We have removed the lights in our kids’ bedrooms and closets because we must force sleep upon them.
Once again, it is banned books week, the week most celebrated by the keepers of libraries in the United States.
I marvel every year when my local library notifies me via email of this monumental week. They are proud of their pillars–freedom of censorship, liberty for all, loaning to the public.
I sort of have an ongoing beef with such stalwarts. They are a troublesome lot.
My current library notifies me (discreetly, at the bottom of the receipt) of the total monetary value of books checked out–it is always in the hundreds of dollars. Should I not return the books on time, should my child accidentally destroy one…Well, you can check out up to 100 books at a time, but just remember we will own you if you do.
I’ve read Mark Twain and Ruth Reichl both this month. They are two masters of story, blending and bending biography and fiction into a distilled, single, clear voice.
Twain is dead, but his voice still rings unapologetic, mocking what is generally accepted without question by an undiscerning public. The joke was always on them; their opinions fair game for ridicule. He didn’t publish his final autobiography until he was in the grave a hundred years, no doubt the words were too honest for his contemporaries.
Reichl majors in food memoir, sort of a later M.K. Fisher, but I am mostly struck by her observations on social norms in the sixties and seventies. She tells of a college roommate, Serafina, who is from Guyana, with whom a friendship immediately develops, and the two bond over coconut bread and roti. Eventually ‘Fina’ dramatically discovers her parents adopted her at a young age, and she is not of Guyana, but Detroit. Her roommate then begins to ignore Reichl, choosing instead to associate with black power movement, refusing to be seen with Reichl, a white, Jewish New Yorker.
I read another book this week, one for writers and aspiring poets. Two hundred pages in, I had to close it, because it suggested a new author always submit their work to an editor who might read it for “sensitivity”–to make sure no one who reads it is unintentionally offended. Not so one’s conscience isn’t offended (for often it is not–think of all the harlequin paperbacks!), but so that one’s mind isn’t triggered to think objectively.
I don’t like this at all–I appreciate being able to think for myself. Aren’t we all capable of reading and coming to our own conclusions? Is Mark Twain incredibly racist because he writes speech as it sounds, or was he trying to capture dialogue to preserve its integrity? Was Ruth Reichl truly being discriminated against as a white woman in the seventies, or was she just spinning a yarn? I’d like to read and discover it for myself. After all, librarians love juxtaposition and different viewpoints…right?
What is unthinkable is there are people, human beings, who think they are guardians of un-censorship, liberty, and free thought. They put on community “one-read” events, they hold book award competitions. But it must first pass their security screening before they put it on their shelves.
Imagine the idea–that fine expression and the art of honest writing must first pass through the sensitivity police before the guardians determine it uncensorable! It is the bald man wondering where all his hair went–yielding to all until nothing is left.
Cheers to libraries, for at the moment they still hold books.
Pray for the librarians, who try to pluck out gray hairs but are making us balder by the minute.
Read all you can, especially the books that make you think. Yield only when your parents make you go to bed, or when the lights go out.
Who knows when they will become antiquated, the so-called censored books that won’t even be around for Banned Books Week.
Read more in celebration of Banned Books Week!
