Reality denialists score another win

One of the most exceptional young adult novels of the last decade has become the victim of a fearful, narrow-minded mother, a lazy school board member, and spineless school administrators in Florida:

Author Mark Haddon has said that he is “puzzled and fascinated by the way in which some readers remain untroubled by the content of a novel but deeply offended by the language in which it is described”, after his award-winning book The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was pulled from a summer reading list at a Florida school over parental concerns about swearing. 

Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year which is now also a prize-winning play, The Curious Incident is narrated by a 15-year-old with Asperger’s Syndrome, as he embarks on an investigation into the death of his neighbour’s dog. It had been given as a summer reading assignment to students at Lincoln High School in Tallahassee, Florida. But according to local paper the Tallahassee Democrat, after the school’s head received “concerns over the delivery of the text” in emails and telephone calls from parents, the assignment was cancelled in order to, in the head’s words, “give the opportunity for the parents to parent”. 

One parent [her name is Susan Gee- HBB] told the paper: “I am not interested in having books banned. But to have that language and to take the name of Christ in vain – I don’t go for that. As a Christian, and as a female, I was offended. Kids don’t have to be reading that type of thing and that’s why I was asking for an alternative assignment … I know it’s not realistic to pretend bad words don’t exist, but it is my responsibility as a parent to make sure that my daughter knows what is right or wrong.”

A scholar of literature and religion in the Victorian era, R.H. Hutton, remarked, "The dark places of the earth are happy Christian homes." And so, in large swathes of America, it seems to be. Since the days of Anthony Comstock (1844-1915), who, scholar Jacques Barzun tells us, "decreed that small replicas of the Statue of Liberty showed too much breast" and "protected New York theater-goers from the infection of Shaw's early plays and also readers at the Public Library, which he compelled to lock up Man and Superman", the self-appointed censors always start from the most noble of motives but express them in ever-expanding circles of suppression, a sort of personally-enforced reverse First Amendment.

It is hard to see how one makes sure one's daughter knows right from wrong by forcibly imposing one's personal tastes on the readers of a city. Or, indeed, to serve as a responsible school board member: something Tallahassee board member Alva Striplin dropped the ball on when she declared, in effect, the best reading list for young adults is one that causes no trouble:

"We are simply listening to parents' concerns," Striplin said. "We've got a million books to choose from and this one should not be on the district approval list."

Treating the offensive realities of life as if they do not exist ill-serves a concerned parent's children: it means that some day they will be confronted by all those things they were not during their enforced, head-in-sand childhoods, and they will be ill-equipped to judge or evaluate an appropriate response. 

Sitting down and talking with one's children about things is far more effective. Admittedly, it's tougher, because kids ask challenging questions, and- also- because when it comes to topics like suppressing books, the real issue is usually far less concern about the kids and more about the parents' own issues. Discussing them means having to think about them, and defend them, in a rational way, and just getting that which offends me banned is so much easier. Case closed. No one can read it, so I won't hear about it. It no longer exists. I have built my cordon sanitaire all the more soundly.

Haddon told the Guardian by email that “one irony” about the situation was that Curious Incident is “not just a novel that contains swearing but a novel about swearing”. 

“Christopher is completely unaware of the offence that swearing is intended to cause and therefore it simply washes over him,” said the novelist, adding that while he has received complaints in the past about the novel’s language, “no-one has ever complained that the book is about a mother abandoning her son or that it contains a scene in which a father hits his son”.

That is no small part of what makes A Curious Incident such a remarkable book: here is a kid with a disability, and parents who have no clue, and little more interest, about what to do with him. But the boy, who has remarkable gifts in logical and mathematical reasoning- serenely plows ahead, knowing, in the end, he will pass his exams and go to university. For a typical, angst-ridden teen, it's hard to imagine a more life-affirming message. When I read the book I was stunned by its virtuosity and optimism. It's a pity Susan Gee and Alva Striplin can't see it, too. 

Henry Bemis Books has stocked Mark Haddon's books in the past. We will continue to do so.