Sometime last year, I went to see the writer Arthur Nersesian read from his new work at Magers and Quinn bookstore in Uptown, Minneapolis. He’s written a lot of well-received books over the years, but he’s most famous for writing one with a glaring f-bomb in the title. That’s right. The F*ck Up is the book most people know him by.
And, not surprisingly, this book has sold more copies than any other work of his. When I asked him about this after his reading, he was quick to tell me why. “It’s all the title,” he said. His theory was that just holding that book in public made people think they were reading something edgy, rebellious. It made them think they were doing something they weren’t supposed to, which as we all know, is always fun. I told him that I had a book coming out in the next year, and that it was called The House of Tomorrow. “Yeah,” he said, “You might want to consider changing it to The F*cking House of Tomorrow.”
I could see my Amazon ranking climbing already.
Which leads me to something I’ve been thinking about lately. Maybe crazies should start banning more books. Just stay with me here. Not because censorship is awesome. It’s decidedly not (insert your own censorship-related historical tragedy here). But they should start their banning again because, inevitably, more people end up reading banned books. When a book is forbidden, suddenly reading becomes more than just a personal activity. It becomes a statement. A cause. A celebration of truth. It becomes, for lack of a better word, badass. A nerdy booky guy in a coffee shop is transformed into the young Brando. And who doesn’t want to up their rebellious appeal, just by holding a paperback?
Though, when you look through the list of historically banned books, you have to wonder how disappointed teenagers must have been to finally get their hands on a contraband copy of Silas Marner. Or Moll Flanders. Or the Ulysses, for God’s sake (That’s a lot of hard work for very little titillation). But I bet there’s someone out there who discovered a love of literature by first trying to impress someone with their subversive taste in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Yeah babe, you might not be able to handle this one. Pretty heavy stuff, all that rafting and fishing.
These days, book-banners usually target lousy stuff (Down with Gossip Girl!) So, they really aren’t doing anyone any favors. But if they could get it together and start banning some must-reads, then I think the teens of this country might be better read by the end of high school.
But, let’s face it, we’re never going to be able to bend the censoring loonies to our will. So I offer, instead, this plan: we need to start teaching kids at an early age that reading is a subversive act. If you keep telling them it’s good for them, literacy rates and test scores are never going to climb. But if you tell them that books contain all the things that people never discuss in polite society, then you might see some ears perk up. Because the best books tell the truth in a way that would be unacceptable in day-to-day life. That’s a fact. And it took me a surprisingly long time to figure it out. Even books that seem very chaste and well-behaved on the surface, something like The Age of Innocence, can spend pages condemning accepted notions of morality. Wharton was so punk rock, kids!
So if we can’t ban books, we should at least present them for what they are: little packages of shocking truth (at least the best ones). Then maybe we can get some new literary fiction on the bestseller list.
Finally, can someone please nominate my book for banning when it comes out? It doesn’t have too many of the usual hallmarks, but there is some nudity, blasphemy, and a few obscene lyrics. And to help you out, it will also now be called The Lie-To-Your-Parents-And-Smoke-Pot House of Tomorrow! Come and get it, America.
If you’re rebel enough.
P.S. ALA Banned Books Week ‘09 is September 26th – October 3rd. So go to your library and find something shameful!
Oh dear. I was one of those 19 year olds who bought The Fuck Up based on the title. I should say that I picked it up based on the title, read the first chapter in the store, and then bought it. But now when I hear “The Fuck Up” all I can think of is a guy who just vomited an expensive dinner on the sidewalk and is contemplating eating a few chunks.
The other day I told P that you write books and that J helps make them. He was immensely impressed. He can’t wait to read The House of Tomorrow in 10 years when and it’s banned, and he’s a rebellious teen.