'They Can Never Really Be'

Maybe this is why my current work in progress features anthropomorphized animals. That should keep away the ignorant self-righteousness of the Internet, leastwise until PETA shows up.

And maybe this is why other books I’m writing feature – prepare to be shocked here – white guys. Because – another shock – I’m a white guy myself.

That I’m a white guy is, of course, sinfully problematic in the publishing world, but that’s beside the point; it’s highly unlikely I’ll ever get published anyway because I’m a no-talent hack.

But anyone with a modicum of talent has got to be frightened of stuff like this.

Long story short: An author’s book is pulled from pre-publication because an Internet mob decided its story is ethnically problematic. And nevermind the schadenfreude that the author of this book was part of the same Internet mob that successfully unpublished another writer’s work earlier this year.

From the first linky:

[W]e’ve gotten an increasingly toxic online culture around YA literature, with evermore-baroque standards for who can write about whom under what circumstances. From the outside, this is starting to look like a conversation focused less on literature than obedience.

This, to me, is worse than burning books.



Unpublishers like these demonstrate the worst of groupthink. Their desire for conformity – even rooted in the righteousness of wanting more and better representation of “ownvoices” in literature invites the worst of dysfunctional decision-making, if I may paraphrase Wikipedia.

They’re best epitomized by Beatty, the fire chief from Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, shown here in Francois Truffaut’s treatment of the novel in 1966:

Ah, Montag, I knew it! I knew it. Of course, all this. The existence of a secret library was known in higher places. But there was no way of getting at it. Only once before have I seen so many books in one place. And I was just an ordinary fireman at the time. Wasn’t even qualified to use the flame-thrower. It’s all ours, Montag! Listen to me, Montag. Once, to each fireman, at least once in his career, he just itches to know what these books are all about. He just aches to know. Isn’t that so? Well, take my word for it, Montag. There’s nothing there. The books have nothing to say. Look. These are all novels. All about people who never existed. The people that read them, it makes them unhappy with their own lives, makes them want to live in other ways. They can never really be.

Well, burning the house is one thing. Burning the books is another, isn’t it? Never any good burning everything together. Go on, Montag. All this philosophy. Let’s get rid of it. It’s even worse than the novels. Thinkers. Philosophers. All of them saying exactly the same thing: Only I am right. The others are all idiots. One sentence they tell you man’s destiny is pre-determined, the next they say that he has freedom of choice. It’s just a matter of fashion, that’s all, philosophy. Just like short dresses this year, long dresses next year.

Look! All stories of the dead. Biography, that’s called. And autobiography. My life, my diary, my memoirs, my intimate memoirs. Of course, when they start it out, it was just the urge to write. Then after the second or third book, all they want is to satisfy their own vanity, to stand out from the crowd. To be different. To be able to look down on all the others. Ah. Critics’ prize. Ah, this is a good one. Of course, he had the critics on his side. Lucky fellow, eh? Just tell me this, Montag. At a guess, how many literary awards were made in this country, on an average, each year? Five? Ten? Forty, hmm? No less than one thousand, two hundred. Why, anybody who put pen to paper was bound to win some prize, some day.

Ah. Robinson Crusoe, the negroes didn’t like that, because of his man, Friday. And Nietzsche. Ah, Nietzsche. The Jews didn’t like Nietzsche. Now here’s a book about lung cancer. You see, all the cigarette smokers got into a panic, so for everybody’s peace of mind, we burn it! Ah, now this one must be very profound. The Ethics of Aristotle. Now, anybody that read that must believe he’s a cut above anybody else. See, it’s no good, Montag. We’ve all got to be alike. The only way to be happy is for everyone to be made equal. So, we must burn the books, Montag. All the books.

It's not without irony that Truffaut has Beatty hold up a copy of Mein Kampf here at the end. And not without irony that I reproduce that image here.

I have to credit these folks with something: They started out, probably, with the best intentions. But they’ve let the worst be their spokesbeings. They’re censoring books before they’ve even read them. May as well burn the lot (the books, clearly, not the crazed critics) and be done with the problem.

Writes Jesse Singal (himself now a target of these yahoos) at Tablet:

But while some of the social justice concerns percolating within YA fiction are legitimate, the explosive manner in which they’re expressed within YA Twitter is another story. Posing as urgent interventions to prevent the circulation of harmful tropes, the pile-ons are often based on selective excerpts pulled out of context from the advance copies of books most in the community haven’t read yet. Often, they feature critics operating on the basis of idiosyncratic ideas about the very purpose and nature of fiction itself, elevating tendentious interpretations of the limited snippets available to pass judgement on books before they have been released. To take one example, a viral blog post that sparked a pile-on against a highly anticipated and eventually well-reviewed book, The Black Witch, “consisted largely of pull quotes featuring the book’s racist characters saying or doing racist things,” as Rosenfield explained. Most adult readers across genres understand that representing a morally repugnant position as part of a broader narrative is not the same as endorsing that opinion, but this is the sort of obvious-to-everyone-else point YA Twitter tends to confuse or outright reject.

Burn the books, again I say. It’s easier than dealing with the mob with their electronic pitchforks and torches.