Seems it’s not only Meg Rosoff who gets uninvited to schools (last year in Bath, in case you’re wondering). Found a link to an article by James Klise in the Chicago Tribune about being invited to speak in a school and then being uninvited again. He is very understanding, and it is easy to see the librarian’s plight. The thing is, if you are inviting on behalf of someone who might take offense, why not check extra carefully before you end up in a pickle?
Then there was this piece Keith Gray wrote for PEN. As with everything Keith writes, it’s a wonderful and considered keynote address. It’s just a shame that they need to be written at all.
At that point I was thinking there was a lot of coincidental censoring going on. That’s until I discovered it was Banned Books Week. (Is my diminished reading of newspapers beginning to show?) Here is Dead Guy on banned books.
I am obviously against censorship. But then, perhaps writers ought to self-censor certain things before someone has to do it for them? Except in some places it would appear you have the right to do whatever you like.
I’ve got ‘distinguished’ Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgård in mind. He put someone he knew (a little) into one of his books, with name and everything. Also the woman’s four-year-old daughter. He didn’t think terribly highly of either of them, apparently, and felt the need to say so in the book. (Min kamp, since you ask. And yes, it does sound pretty similar to another book title I can think of.)
Personally I can’t help feeling his editor or publisher should have sorted him out. But they do things differently in Scandinavia, and who cares whether they are hurting real people?
It’s a complex issue when it concerns real people, especially children, but the uninviting is bad.
Of course, in the U.S. where banning something holds no real clout as far as publishing it goes, it actually becomes more of an incentive to buy it. If you consider that Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird and many other massively popular books have been banned at some place and time here, it’s really a badge of distinction.
I found when chatting to Mr Decorator about books again, that the one he read and which was intended for his 12-year-old, had a main character whose father picked up a prostitute, who then died mysteriously. I don’t think Mr D minded, but it’s a minefield even giving away or recommending books. Especially if parents muscle in and look. The child can simply leave the book if the content feels wrong for them.
So I almost sympathise with school librarians on occasion. But I know what I read as a child, and what offended me. Generally speaking, the same things still offend me, so had little to do with age.