Banning Books

This topic comes up every now and again.

Someone somewhere gets the idiotic idea that books need to be banned so that children aren’t harmed by the bad words.

Do any of the people wanting the books to be banned give any thought to the idea that maybe one of those kids can use the book to block a bullet?

The book-ban crowd are usually members of the ‘don’t infringe on my 2nd amendment’ rights crowd.

Protecting the kids from swear words is ludicrous.

They’re going to hear someone say ‘shit’ or ‘damn somewhere along the way.

And not teaching them about slavery? Or racism?

Racism is as American as apple pie.

I have created plenty. Story after story after story.

Some of my characters have been unsavory, to say the least.

Billy Barth was a horrible character in my book ‘Desperation’. He was a rapist and a murderer and he was in the story for a purpose.

I was writing about a good guy who had to survive the worst that life had to offer.

Billy Barth, as the bad guy, didn’t say a single sentence that didn’t include a bad word. The worst of all possible words.

He wasn’t going to say:

“Golly gee.”

An elderly woman, at Barnes & Noble showed me a copy of the book with all the curse words highlighted in yellow.

“This language is not Christian,” she said.

We were the only two there.

“You purchased the book?” I asked.

She nodded.

“Then get the f*ck out,” I whispered.

She was so shocked!

Horrified!!

They burn copies of Huckleberry Finn because Mark Twain was slamming racism by using language to tell the story.

No one truly understands the words that a writer chooses. The curse words aren’t gratuitous. 

I have WAY more bad words in the first drafts.

I want to get the dialogue right and most people color their language with a lot of bad words.

When I’m rewriting I often remove half of the curse words, but being in the head of a bad character lends itself to how he or she speaks.

Imagine if we all spoke as they do on network television or in a dubbed over R-rated movie.

No one ever says, “Forget you!” like they do in the dubbed movie to cover for “F**k you!” as it was in the movie that played in the theater.

Ban the books.

The kids will have access.

They may even want to read them now.

Let them have them in school.

Like I said, maybe the bullet won’t make it all the way through.