Banned Book Bonanza
In 2025, you can’t afford for your book not to get banned.
I got a call today from an author friend. He’s distraught.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“My books—they haven’t been banned.”
“So—that’s good, isn’t it?”
“Good? No, it’s awful. It’s terrible.”
“How so?”
“I’m ruined. My sales have tanked.”
“I’m confused.”
“Haven’t you noticed? All anybody talks about these days is ‘banned books.’ It’s all the rage. The best bookstores now have special displays of ‘Banned Books.’ To Kill a Mockingbird. Handmaid’s Tale. Maus. Harry Potter. Huckleberry Finn. Gender Queer…If your books aren’t on those displays, nobody pays any attention to you. The online booksellers post lists of ‘banned books.’”
“But those books are still available, right?”
“Not in some school libraries!” he says.
“But—”
Getting a little peevish, my friend interrupts. “You obviously don’t understand what ‘banned’ means, do you?” he says.
“I guess not. I mean it isn’t like they’ve been taken out and put in piles of other verboten books and burned.”
“It’s the same thing!” he says.
Now I really am confused.
“But people can still read those books, right? They can still buy them!”
Now my friend sounds hurt. “Technically, yeah, but I’ve never been in it for the money. I do have a reputation to maintain, though,and that is important to me.”
“I know. That I understand.”
“And I have done everything I can to get banned,” he says. “I put a gay character—a very sympathetic gay character—in my most recent novel, just to get it banned. I wrote a love scene for him. A torrid love scene. And nothing. No one even noticed.”
There’s a pause in the conversation.
“Here’s an idea,” I say. “I have a sister-in-law in Tennessee. Her babysitter is an avid reader. She borrows books from her local library. Maybe—just maybe—we could bribe her to complain about that novel of yours and try to get it removed?”
“That’s not a bad idea. How much do you think it might cost?”
I tell him I’ll look into it.
“Here’s another possibility,” I say. “Maybe, plot-wise, you need to try something different next time.”
“Like what?”
“How about making your hero someone who wants to ban books,” I say.
“Now I’m the one who’s confused.”
“Bear with me. Your hero wants to ban books, but he really means it. He’s banning books not to promote book sales—but for all the wrong reasons!”
“Like he’s a…Nazi?”
“Something like that, yeah. He wants to really ban them. Make them illegal not just to sell, not just to buy, but to own and to read! He wants public gatherings, late at night, in the dark, where people throw the condemned books into a big pile and set ’em on fire.”
“And make s’mores?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not a bad idea, actually: A book about someone who wants to ban books could really get banned!”
“NPR couldn’t wait to book you.”
“This is a good idea, but it means I’d have to make my hero someone I disagree with totally—a really despicable character. Someone who wants to ban books!”
“I thought you said you wanted your books banned.”
There’s another pause in the conversation.
Then my friend says, “Thanks. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I’ll have to get back to you.”
“Not at all,” I say. “Anything for a friend.”
That was 15 minutes ago. Since then, the doorbell rang, and my neighbor—the world’s most conscientious woman—wanted to show me something. “I just got back from Books Plus,” she says.
“You mean the store that sells squishies or plushies, or whatever they call them—you know, those things well-traveled, college-educated young people carry around airports to calm their nerves?”
“Well, they do sell those, yeah.”
“And Harry Potter ‘action figures’?”
“They sell those, too, yeah. And books. But that’s not what I wanted to show you.”
She drops her shopping bags on my floor and proceeds to pull the purchases out, one by one.
There’s a book bag that says, “I read banned books.” ($12) A bookmark, listing banned books. ($4) A tee-shirt that says, “I’m with the banned.” ($11.99) A banned books coffee mug ($20). A pair of socks, with banned books listed on them. ($12), on one of which all the titles are blacked out. Another tee-shirt says, “Bans off our books.” ($23). Still another pair of “read banned books” socks with ominous images of flames leaping from the general area of the toes, ($23).
“These are great,” I say, picking up the bookmark. “Look—there’s Heart of Darkness. Are people reading Conrad these days?”
“Some of his books, yeah.”
“You mean there are some they aren’t reading? Like what?
“I really can’t say.”
“Why not?”
Looking away, she quickly pulls another item from the shopping bag. It’s a onesie, cute as pie. It says, “If I could read, I’d read banned books.”
“That is so adorable,” I say. “And you are so brave.”
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