Just came across this article on Yahoo!:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071107/ap_on_re_us/book_battle
Turns out that my favorite book of all time — "The Prince of Tides" — is about to be banned from a high school in West Virginia because two uptight parents decided the graphic rape scene in it was "obscene and offensive" for the fragile eyes of their children. As such, they want it pulled, along with Pat Conroy's follow-up novel "Beach Music," from the shelves of the high school library.
Here's why this has me so upset (among many reasons). Of course, there is the whole book-banning thing which is so 1950s and wrong and awful. But it's not just that. It's something much more personal to me.
One of the biggest reasons I became a writer is because I read "The Prince of Tides" the summer I turned 17. I was about to be a Senior in high school and we were on vacation in Trinity Alps, CA.
A buddy handed me the book and told me to read several pages. As boys will be, of course, it was the aforementioned rape scene. It was terrifying to read, as anyone who has read it knows. But I was completely captivated by the language and prose Conroy used.
So much so that I asked to borrow the book and started at the beginning. What followed was the most profound literary experience I had had before, or have had since. I got completely swept away in the story and it inspired me to write like no other book has. I have several writers who have influenced my style, but none more so than Pat Conroy.
Several years later, I was lucky enough to have lunch with Mr. Conroy during his "Beach Music" book tour. I was fresh out of college and hung on to his every word. When we parted ways, I simple shook his hand and thanked him for everything. I didn't know in what capacity I would be writing, but I knew that I would be a writer, in large part because of him.
The idea that parents would still rally to essentially "burn" books in this day and age is overwhelmingly terrifying. Isn't the whole point to get them to read more and explore different worlds and discover the joy of literature? Isn't that why they learn to write and read and express themselves?
These are probably the same parents who let them watch violence and sex on TV and in the movies and think nothing of it. But to have them read of such a thing? Oh, the horrors!
All I know is that my direction in life was completely influence by the fact that I was introduced to "The Prince of Tides" at age 16 and couldn't put it down. I learned more about writing from that book than in all my years of studying this craft.
Who knows where I'd be today without it. Though I can tell you exactly where I am because of it.
There's no easy way to wrap up this post without ranting more, so I'll just leave with some good news from the article and Mr. Conroy himself:
Because the two books were temporarily banned "every kid in that county will read them, every single one of them. Because book banners are invariably idiots," Conroy wrote in the letter published Oct. 24 in The Charleston Gazette. "They don't know how the world works — but writers and English teachers do."