Posts Tagged ‘banned books’

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Banned Books: The Perks of Being a Wallflower/I talk too much about myself

October 9th, 2010 by pladd

Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Challenged at: West Bend, Wisconsin Community Memorial Library
At the same time as: Baby Be-Bop, Geography Club
For: “being obscene or child pornography” in the YA section
(Maybe Not So) Honorable Mention Challengings At: Portage, Indiana High Schools; Wyoming, Ohio High Schools; William Byrd and Hidden Valley Highschools of Roanoke, Virginia; probably others

You can read more about the school challenges here, and probably elsewhere, but since I am an Apprentice Librarian in a public library, I want to talk about West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries again. I feel like we bonded a little during my play-by-play notes from earlier this week. So here are some things I think probably upset them about this book:

1. Charlie’s best friend is gay
2. Charlie sometimes drinks
3. Charlie smokes (sometimes pot)
4. Charlie one time tried LSD, but decides never to do it again
5. Charlie’s friends have sex sometimes
6. Charlie gets halfway between second and third base

Which of these things would shock and appall a high school student? Which of them would they not have experience with, either personally or peripherally through just being in highschool? Maybe the LSD (maybe) depending on their highschool or group of friends.

I think this might be the first time I’ve read a young adult novel (especially one published by MTV!) that I honestly wish I had discovered while I was actually a young adult. And you know what? It has nothing to do with anything on that list up there, because that’s not what this book is about. Sorry, West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, but I’m afraid you’re still looking at the forest and seeing only trees, or the book and seeing only drug-and-sex references. I’m a big believer in The Right Book for the Right Person at the Right Time; I think time is the part that gets left out or misunderstood. Since I did not have the West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries to protect me, there were plenty of times when I was in elementary or middle school that I read books that were, I can freely admit now, way too old for me. Shockingly, I did not become a drug addict or a predator or suffer trauma. Most of the time, the things I weren’t ready for went right over my head. Or I stopped reading the book because it was boring since that didn’t interest me. Once you’re old enough to be curious, to ask questions, then you’re old enough to know some answers.

Anyway, with most YA novels, I recognize that high school Patricia would not have liked them, or thought they were beneath her (she was all about reading the collected works of Charles Dickens), but I think she would have gotten something out of this one (and, no, not the DL on LSD). The book is an epistolary novel of letters Charlie writes to an anonymous person he doesn’t really know chronicling his first year in high school. Charlie has an amazing insight into the world and is clearly incredibly intelligent, although he often is unsure of what to do in social situations. For most of the book, he leads a very passive existence, letting other people tell him how to act or what he should do or how to define his relationships. I think (despite her complaining that it’s not “real literature”) High School Patricia also really needed to learn that lesson. And, secretly, she knew it too, which is why she sometimes tried so hard to seem otherwise. I’m pretty sure I did not realize who I am AND decide to try to wear that unselfconsciously until freshmen or sophomore year of college. Maybe closer to sophomore year. I think that happens to a lot of teenagers, especially when they’re trying so hard to fit in with a certain group or be like some kind of mental image that they have a hard time figuring out who they actually are underneath, even when they want to. Which sucks, because people can be such jerks to you when you’re stuck being passive, like they’re allowed to take advantage of you or project whatever they want onto you since you appear to be almost blank, at least from the surface. Even sadder is that I bet some people never have a Summer-Before-Sophomore-Year fight with themselves and try to get over it. Some people are stuck in that blank, passive, fragile existence forever.</after-school special confessions time>

So, yeah, I kind of wish High School Patricia had read this book, although there’s no guarantee that she would recognize its message in herself, or if she was even ready to admit her own problems yet. I do know she would have scoffed at Charlie’s assessment of The Fountainhead which she hated, but probably agreed with him about To Kill a Mockingbird. It probably would have helped that both she and Charlie liked reading “serious” literature, though probably for different reasons.

In conclusion, this book made me think a lot, which is always good for anyone, even if it is about things that I would prefer to forget, like how I have not always been this awesome. Or at least, not as obviously.

Whenever I’m down on High School Patricia, though, I feel the need to also mention:

Published novel, what up?

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Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: Geography Club by Brent Hartinger

October 8th, 2010 by pladd

Title: Geography Club
Author: Brent Hartinger
Challenged at: West Bend, Wisconsin Community Library
For: “being obscene or child pornography” in a section designated for young adults

West Bend was also the community going after Baby Be-Bop, so it is possible that their definition of “pornography” is “mentioning gay people”. The West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries campaigned for about four months to have sexually explicit materials from the young adult section moved to the adult section and labelled “as containing sexual material”. On the one hand, labeling all the books that mention sex WOULD make their circulation suddenly go through the roof, but on the other hand, anyone picking up Geography Club because of its supposed sexiness is going to be extremely disappointed. The first person narrator only gets a few kisses over the course of the book, and anyone else who goes farther only mentions it rather obliquely. It sounds more to me like West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries is actually trying to “protect” teens from positive images of gay people in the misguided belief that not reading Geography Club will keep them safely heterosexual, or at least safely in the closet and depressed. Great job, West Bend, that’s pretty much the opposite of what we need.

Russel thinks he’s the only gay person at his school, and spends his days feeling horribly alone and terrified that at any time his secret might be somehow revealed, bringing with it social ostracism and possible violence. Then he meets another gay teen in a chat room from his home town, and they agree to meet. Russel is shocked when it turns out to be Kevin, super jock star of the baseball team! Soon after he discovers other gay or lesbian teens keeping their own secrets–including one of his best friends–and they decide to form an after-school club to discuss their commonalities and just hang out with people who know their secret. Because they don’t want any unwanted public attention, they decide to name the club “Geography Club” because it’s the most boring thing they can think of to keep other people away.

I found this book difficult to get into, maybe because the language used seemed kind of unrealistic for teens and the situations were a little too “now you are being treated the way you treated others; learn a lesson!” Also, I’m kind of surprised that West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries only objects to the fact that gay people exist in this book, because there are all kinds of unsafe behaviors going on that I find way more troubling. Like meeting someone from the Internet in a dark, scary park in the middle of the night. Or meeting your secret girlfriend in an abandon warehouse downtown.

Clearly this is just another book being attacked for portraying gay people in a positive way (or a normal way), which is incredibly depressing. I can get a little angry about it, but mostly I just feel sorry for people who think this way. It must be so hard to live in a world with so many troubling absolutes. In one of my classes we learned that the brain finds anything that doesn’t fit into an already-held world-view extremely difficult to process, and even emotionally upsetting, which is why sometimes it’s so hard to teach kids things. Once they assimilate the new information and adjust their preconceived notions accordingly, they’re okay and ready for the next assault of information. I think that’s what it must feel like, an assault, to these people who view the world as so black and white. Reality is constantly challenging their preconceived notions, and it must be emotional turmoil to constantly have to shut that out and not assimilate and adapt.

To prove my point, here are my play-by-play notes on the book. Obv spoiler alert, so don’t read if you are ever planning on reading Geography Club yourself and want to still be surprised by all the… two surprising events:
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Posted in Banned Books |

Challenging Books: Not my BFF but not my arch nemesis

October 3rd, 2010 by pladd

Banned Books Week has got me thinking a lot about the process of challenging books, and I thought I should probably clarify something.

Challenging books does not make me angry by itself. Even when they’re challenged for what I perceive as silly reasons. When books actually get banned, especially for what I perceive as silly reasons… that’s when I get a little upset.

In library school, we’re often told that “you should welcome challenges because it begins a meaningful dialog about the collection, collection development, and the purpose of a library”. I think my professors are envisioning me giving an offended patron a meaningful short-course in the basic tenants of library science and Freedom to Read1 and they will walk away more enlightened and ready to donate money to the exciting and dynamic field of library science. In my imagination, the conversation would probably go more like this:

Patron: This book is going to turn our children into RAPISTS!
Me: I’m so sorry; why do you feel that way?
Patron: The back of the book says it’s about GAY PEOPLE
Me: Well, if you’d like to formally challenge it for removal or reclassification, we have a process and these forms you can fill out, although you will have to actually read the book
Patron: (throws book at me)
Me: Let me explain our collection development policy…
Patron: (bites me)
Me: (turns into a homophobe-pire)

I don’t know which of us is more delusional, but I do know that a healthy discussion about collection development is not going to sway most people from their angry rants against the dictionary or whatever.

I actually do agree with my professors that challenges aren’t all bad. For instance, I like the fact that someone cares so much about the library and what we do there to get really mad about it. That’s way better than the passive indifference we get from a good percentage of the population. I also think anything that gets people to read books more, and talk about books more is cool, and challenging a book will certainly do that. Also, sometimes books really do need to be challenged. Here is an illustrative example, this time from real life:

Once upon a time, I was working at a library which shall remain nameless. While shelving children’s nonfiction one Sunday before we opened, I came across this in the poetry section:

The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories by Tim Burton

Immediately I thought, “Wow, I didn’t know Tim Burton had written a book of poetry for children”. Since it looked kind of like Edward Gorey, I took it back to the desk with me to glance through. The first thing I noticed was the titular poem “The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy“, ends with the father eating his own son to cure his impotence. I was really unsure if this should be shelved next to Shel Silverstein, and personally did not ever want to have to explain impotence to a six-year-old. A glance at other libraries nearby confirmed that most of them had shelved it in the teen or adult sections; probably it was only mistakenly placed in children’s because it had illustrations and the poem titles seemed unoffensively juvenile.

Librarians aren’t perfect. It’s not like we know all there is to know about books, or that we don’t make mistakes sometimes. Usually when I ask librarians about problems with challenged books, their few stories are similar to this one, more about reclassification than outright banning, and most of the time the concerns are entirely justified.

So challenges themselves, I don’t really view negatively. It’s more when one person or a group of people think they should be able to set morality standards for everyone that I get slightly miffed.

1 People in library school and beyond are always citing their Freedom to Read as a constitutional right, but I remember 10th grade Civics, and it’s really not. I think usually they try to squish it in there with freedom of speech and freedom of the press, but that is only the same thing if you squint, you guys.

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Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier

September 28th, 2010 by pladd

Title: League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier
Author: Alan Moore; illustrated by Kevin O’Neill
Not to be Confused With: the movie spin off
Challenged At: Jessamine County Public Library, Nicolasville, Kentucky
Along with four other works for: “offend[ing] me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion”

I saved this one for Banned Book Week because it definitely has the most dramatic challenging of any this year as evidenced by the fact that I knew all about it before I started this project. The ALA 2010 Banned Book List has this to say about it:

A petition with 950 signatures was presented to the board to overturn its collection policy. The petition specifically asked for the removal of four works on the grounds that “they offended me in that they depict sexual acts and/or describe such acts in a way that in my opinion are contrary to the Jessamine County public opinion” of what should be in a public, taxpayer-supported collection. The petition concluded the works constituted a public safety issue in that they encourage sexual predators… the graphic novel eventually got two employees fired for breaching library policies, the library director was threatened with physical harm, and the book was recataloged, along with other graphic novels with mature trends, to a separate but unrestricted graphic novels section of the library.

But the best part of the story, the part I knew about previously is that, “got two employees fired” part. Basically, about two years ago Sharon Cook, a library assistant, found League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier on the shelves and freaked out because there are drawings of naked ladies in it plus some strange 1984-propaganda-pornography that is supposed to be taken as a joke. After having her challenge denied, she decided to check it out and never return it for about six months, renewing it over and over so that it would never be on the shelves. Then someone put it on hold and, looking up the patron, Cook discovered it was an 11-year-old girl! After consulting with two colleagues, Beth Boisvert and Cook decided to cancel the girl’s hold and continue what they were doing. Nice. You can read a detailed article about the incident here and elsewhere, but here are my favorite parts of the Lexington Herald-Leader piece:
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Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: Only In Your Dreams, a Gossip Girl Novel

September 28th, 2010 by pladd

Title: Only In Your Dreams
Author: Cecily Von Ziegesar
Not to be Confused With: A-List Series, Luxe Series, The Clique Series, or any other series where rich bratty teenagers have rich bratty drama
Challenged In: Leesburg, Florida
At: the Leesburg Public Library
For: sexual innuendo, drug references, and other adult topics

I’m not ashamed to admit that I read almost the entire Gossip Girl series during the heady summer of 2007 when I was bored at the library. When you’re going to be frequently interrupted for questions on how to use the computers and where Clifford is, you need something where you can figure out the plot just from reading the chapter titles. By now most people have at least heard of the television series of the same name, although they took certain liberties with various characters (not that I care, I’m just noting). My personal favorite is Vanessa Abrams. In the books, you can tell she’s a funky alternative chick because she has a shaved head. In the TV series, you can tell she’s alternative because she’s vaguely Hispanic:

Really letting her freak flag fly

Only In Your Dreams is set in the middle of the summer after the main gang’s senior year in high school. Natch it is just as full of underage drinking, drug use, and extravagant shopping as the other books in the series. Along with twelve other “provocative” books for teens, Only in Your Dreams was challenged by “community and church leaders”, and the city commissioners decided to separate books based on age group. Only in Your Dreams and other books for high school students have been removed to a special section “in the library stairwell.”

The fact that they have been banished to a library stairwell is my favorite part of this story. I wonder if the twelve other provocative books were also in the Gossip Girl series, because I was surprised upon rereading this one that it didn’t have anything more scandalous than some underage drinking and some people who fail at getting laid. I was expecting it to at least be the one where Dan briefly thinks he’s gay because he drunkenly kissed another boy, or one of the ones where, you know, someone actually has sex. Oh well.

Since this week actually is National Banned Books Week, I’ve decided to take a more comprehensive approach in my analysis. Here follows a dramatic play-by-play of the book, containing spoilers. So if, for some reason, you ever want to read the entire Gossip Girl series in order, maybe quit halfway through.

Chapter 1: The Honeymooners
Blair is in London visiting her boyfriend, Lord Marcus, but he is making her stay in a fancy hotel instead of his mansion. She is depressed that he won’t have sex with her already. He claims to have a surprise for her, but it turns out to be his cousin. Blair is not amused.

Chapter 2: One is the Loneliest Number
Nate has to work for his lax coach doing manual labor because he was caught stealing his coach’s Viagra. He is whiny about it, but consoles himself with weed and ogling the coach’s questionably-hot wife.

Chapter 3: V’s Date with Destiny
Vanessa interviews for a job with Ken Mogul, a film director who is doing a Breakfast at Tiffany‘s remake this summer, even though the movie=Big Budget Teen RomCom and Vanessa=alternative indie auteur. Ken’s apartment is decorated with naked pictures of himself. He insists that he needs Vanessa’s “vision”. Vanessa says she’ll think about it, pretending that it is going to be some big dramatic choice.

Chapter 4: S moves Out
Serena is playing Holly Golightly in the movie remake and Ken has told her to move to a dingy, unairconditioned apartment to channel the spirit of Audrey Hepburn. Serena somehow gets lost walking from the sidewalk to the front door, but is saved by her neighbor, Jason, a “gorgeously tall” guy in a “dorky office ensemble”.

Chapter 5: D learns the art of Customer Service
Dan’s summer job is to be pretentious to customers at a bookstore. He pretends to be a tortured artist in his inner monologue.

Chapter 6: Helmets are almost as important as condoms
Nate is riding his bike while high and decides to swear off girls for the summer right before falling on his face in front of a townie named Tawny who the narration wants me to think is trashy, but who probably only looks/dresses like a normal person, rather than an insanely wealthy model.

Chapter 7: Love Don’t Live Here Anymore
Vanessa’s big sister is home from Europe where she was touring with her band. She’s brought back some guy named Piotr, which sounds like a perfume that would make me ill. She kicks Vanessa out of the apartment because Piotr needs her bedroom for a studio. Since that is what happens in real life.

Chapter 8: S is for Spirituality among other things
Vanessa calls Dan all weepy and Dan says she can move in with him (and his dad?). Dan feels manly at being able to help his normally tough girlfriend. Then a girl named Bree asks Dan to find some books her yogi recommended to her and Dan “watched her small, round butt, which closely resembled two scoops of French vanilla ice cream”. Dan pretends to have read Siddhartha to impress Ice Cream Butt Girl.

Chapter 9: the family that plays together stays together
Lord Marcus’ annoying cousin, Camilla, wins croquet a million times in a row and Blair is drunk and unhappy about it. Lord Marcus and Camilla are flirty, and Blair tries to kill her with her eyes.
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Posted in Banned Books |

Banned Books: The Egypt Game

September 17th, 2010 by pladd

By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be in Florida! I blame my busy schedule of packing/putting my affairs in order/scolding Steven not to starve to death for the fact that I totally misread the latest book I read for my Banned Books Project. I know I said I was going to concentrate first on books banned in public libraries, and this one was challenged in a school, but I’m sure you’ll forgive me. Especially if I bring you back a manatee!

I miss covers like this; it made it way easier to pretend I'd read things

Title: The Egypt Game
Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Not to be Confused With: To Kill a Mockingbird
Challenged in: Southern Hills Elementary School, Wichita Falls, TX
For: depicting Egyptian worship rituals

A quote from the offended father: “I’m not going to stop until it’s banned from the school district. I will not quiet down. I will not back down. I don’t believe any student should be subjected to anything that has to do with evil gods or black magic.”

This book is basically To Kill a Mockingbird without any of the racial themes. A group of kids that share an obsession with Ancient Egypt accidentally-on-purpose sneak into Boo Radley’s Creepy Old Antiques Dealer’s back lot to create an elaborate imagination game about living in Ancient Egypt. This even included trips to the library (!) to learn about Ancient Egypt, making their own costumes out of found materials, and creating a secret hieroglyphics language. Creepy Boo Radley Antique’s Dealer even leaves them soap dolls answers to questions they ask “the oracle of Egypt”. THEN SUDDENLY when two of the children return to “Egpyt” at night to find a lost math book, they are ATTACKED by Bob Ewell the town drunk the mentally ill cousin of the variety store owner, who has already kidnapped and murdered two neighborhood children over the years. Luckily, Boo Antiques Dealer stabs him calls for help.

This book was first published in 1966 and won a Newberry Honor award. The language is at times slightly dated, and the children seem to be constantly playing with fire. I don’t know if that was what All the Cool Kids were doing back in the 60s or what, but to me that seems more a cause for concern than the “evil rituals” described. Most of the “rituals” the children come up with are fairly basic, some based on real Egyptian practices, but most made up with the aid of junk they find in the neighborhood and their own imaginations. The only time the children actually start to believe any of their pretend game is when one of the questions they ask the “Oracle” (a stuffed owl), actually gets answered, by someone other than the boy playing the “high priest”. Even then, while spooked, they do not immediately attribute this to a real-life Ancient Egyptian god, and there are enough clues for astute children to be able to see it as the work of Boo Radley Antiques Dealer before he reveals himself in the end.

Since this book was on a school reading list, I can envision filling out worksheet after worksheet about the Power of Imagination and maybe even Stranger Danger, but not so much Ancient Egyptian Gods and You: How to Turn Away from Christianity. I wonder if The Lightning Thief is also unacceptable under these circumstances because, not only does it discuss Ancient Greek religion in detail, it also asserts that it was real, something The Egypt Game never does. In either case, I feel like there are worse interests than Ancient Religions. Like drugs. Or PLAYING WITH FIRE. That is where the kids in The Egypt Game really get me. Their made up rituals often feature an unsupervised sacred fire inside an old mixing bowl. The text never mentions how they start it; I’m assuming Boyscout Training Gone Wrong.

Now that I mention it, that would be an amazing graphic novel, boyscouts using their training for EVIL instead of GOOD. They’re always prepared…. FOR CRIME.

While searching for The Egypt Game‘s wikipedia page to get info on the 1997 sequel, The Gypsy Game, I stumbled across this delightful website which has a detailed summary and awesome analysis. Didn’t realize before reading it that I may also be going to hell because, not going to lie, I spent most of my childhood pretending I had magical powers and served The Goddess just like Alanna from Tamora Pierce’s even more evil books. She seduced me with her girl-empowering stories of adventure and friendship. IF ONLY I HAD KNOWN

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Posted in Banned Books, Book Reviews |

Banned Books 2010: Living Dead Girl

September 10th, 2010 by pladd

Definite points for cover design

Title: Living Dead Girl
Author: Elizabeth Scott
Not to be confused with: the Rob Zombie song of the same name.
Challenged in: Effingham, Illinois at the Helen Matthes Library, 2009
For: graphic content, unsatisfactory ending
Status: Retained despite challenges

I’d heard of this book before, from librarians talking on a YALSA listserv about how much it disturbed them, so I can’t say I’m surprised it’s on this list. If librarians have trouble with a book emotionally or psychologically, it’s probably that the general public also will. I think challenges aren’t always negative for the library, since it does show that people care and allows for a conversation about books and why books are chosen for the library. I’m happy that this book was retained even though I also found it very, very disturbing, the kind of book that puts images in your mind that will probably never be erased. And, yes, that’s not happy or enjoyable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth having in the library. Books aren’t just for entertainment. Here’s a brief plot description:

The story is told in a sparse, stream-of-consciousness from the point of view of Alice, or at least a girl who thinks of herself as Alice. Alice is not her real name, and there was at least one Alice before her. She was abducted at the age of 10 by Ray, a clever and abusive pedophile who claims that if she ever escapes or disobeys him, he will kill her parents. Now Alice is 15 and knows she is getting too old for Ray, that he’ll kill her soon and find another girl. And she can’t wait. Death is the only thing she looks forward to now. But then Ray recruits her to find her own replacement, which seems to shake her world view and her implacable desire to die.

The descriptions of Ray’s abuse, though brief and often described obliquely, are haunting. More so, Alice’s attitude towards her situation, the way she has all but given up her own identity, the way she has internalized many of Ray’s behaviors. This is not the way we want to see ourselves. We want to believe that, were we in that situation, we would fight back, orchestrate some kind of dramatic rescue, protect innocent children from being abused as we had. But Alice most often responds in the way we would actually act in such a situation: with only survival in mind. She willingly, almost eagerly accepts her role, coolly calculating which children will be the easiest to abduct, which will most satisfy Ray’s perverted desires. She acknowledges that it’s not the “right” thing to do, but admits that she will do anything to be free of Ray, even if that includes dying or hurting someone else.

So, yes, I wouldn’t recommend this book to younger teens or anyone so sensitive and impressionable that it would immobilize them through fear or depression. Some people really can’t take reading this kind of book, but I think it’s message is an important one for anyone who can stomach it. And, yes, the ending is not filled with hope. Though her situation changes, Alice doesn’t live happily ever after. And I think that’s important too.

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Posted in Banned Books, Book Reviews |

Banned Books 2010: Baby Be-Bop

August 31st, 2010 by pladd

To kick off my exciting new hobby, I decided to read the book whose entry on the ALA Challenged Book List confused me the most. Here it is in full:

Baby Be-Bop by Francesca Lia Block
Harper Collins
Four Wisconsin men belonging to the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU) sought $30,000 apiece for emotional distress they suffered from the West Bend, Wis. Community Memorial Library (2009) for displaying a copy of the book. The claim states that “specific words used in the book are derogatory and slanderous to all males” and “the words can permeate violence and put one’s life in possible jeopardy, adults and children alike.” The CCLU called for the public burning of this title. Four months later, the library board unanimously voted 9-0 to maintain, “without removing, relocating, labeling, or otherwise restricting access,” this and other books challenged in the young adult section at the West Bend Community Memorial Library.

Here were the two parts that stood out to me the first time I saw this:

$30,000 apiece
public burning

$30,000?? Because the book was on display?? I can hear what you’re thinking. “What ‘specific words’? What can be worth $30,000 just if you happen to glance at it??? This book has got to be straight smut. That deserves to be publicly burned, like a witch or a Beatles record.”

Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you my friend. The words

$30,000 apiece

and

public burning

totally got my hopes up. This book did maybe not deserve either of these. Here is the basic plot, although, as a very lyrical novella, the word “plot” is used loosely:

Dirk McDonald knows that he’s gay. He’s known since he was young, when the carefree grandmother who raised him tells him it’s just a phase. He has a crush on his best friend Pup, but their relationship ends when Pup starts to date girls to hide his growing attraction to Dirk. “I love you, Dirk, but I can’t handle it.” Dirk lashes out, hiding his fear at himself and the seemingly cruel world around him by building himself an armor of punk rock persona and losing himself in music and violent dancing. Then one night after he tells some skinheads what he thinks about their swastika tattoos, he gets beaten up. Thus begins the much weirder second part of the book, where, in a weird dream/coma state Dirk’s great grandmother appears and tells him her story, and the story of his grandmother, and of his parents, two beat poets who “let go of life” one night in a car accident. Then at the end of the dream a genie appears and tells him about a man named Duck who, we’re supposed to presume, is his future love interest and reason to cling to life.

Aaaand that plot description was about five times racier than the book actually is. It’s only about 100 pages, and most of that is lyrical description. He doesn’t even say the word “gay” until he admits it to a ghost/hallucination of his father on page 86. There’s no sex, certainly nothing described graphically. Dirk mostly contents himself with yearningly thinking about kissing or just not being alone all the time. The word “faggot” is used a few times, mostly by the skinheads who beat him into unconsciousness. So I can’t really decide what “specific words” are “slanderous to all males”, especially if the people objecting and demanding $30,000 for emotional damage didn’t read the book carefully but only glanced through it since it was on display. Unless ladybugs and butterflies are slanderous to all men, because there WAS an awful lot of bug metaphors. Oh, and symbolic dancing. And beat poetry. So, yeah, public burning totes justified.

Seriously, I can’t even really find any “juicy parts” to quote. Unless you count this passage from the beginning, which is something he imagines while playing with his toy trains:

“He was on a train with the fathers–all naked and cookie-colored and laughing. There under the blasts of warm water spurting from the walls as the train moved slick through the land. All the bunching calf muscles dripping water and biceps full of power comforted Dirk. He tried to see his own father’s face but there was always too much steam.”

Later, he dreams of the same train, but instead of water coming out of the shower heads, it’s deadly, deadly gas. There’s a light sprinkling of anti-Nazism running through the book which seems slightly strange just because it remains unelaborated upon. I liked the language of this book. I was able to read it in about an hour, and it was almost like reading poetry. I was afraid it was going to be an angsty typical teen-problem novel, and, although the themes were similar, it had a very light touch, the exact opposite of the usual heavy-handed teen problem fare.

The worst I can say about it is the cover’s kind of blah:

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Posted in Banned Books, Book Reviews |

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