By John Jarzemsky
After my last column on required reading (and after leaving my newly purchased copy of Crime and Punishment on a plane), I decided to put my money were my mouth was and picked up a digital copy of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, a novel I had tragically under-read when it was assigned to me in high school. While reading, I found myself wondering about the controversy Golding’s tale generated upon its release. Themes of man’s inherent inclination towards violence, individual welfare versus the common good, and the potential corrupting properties of religion were just beginning to be explored back in 1954, and Lord of the Flies remains one of the most frequently challenged books still taught in classrooms today.
Looking back, one can find a myriad of titles that caused a similar furor upon their release or inclusion in libraries and classrooms. Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Lolita are all prime examples. Up to a certain point in history, it seemed that when novels were deemed shocking or controversial, it was almost always due to the thematic content of the work, and most often for overt political or social themes. The “controversy” that erupted out of a work of art knocked down established social and political mores, and forced the reader to think outside of their own experience.
While the attempted suppression of books is alive and well in the United States (the preferred nomenclature is “challenged books”, seeing as outright bans of material are quite rare), re-reading Golding’s classic made me stop and wonder: when was the last time a book caused such a public stir? I have to remind everyone of the fact that I am not a teacher or a librarian, and thus I am not clued in as to what books have over-protective parents in an uproar these days. I can, however, look back at a few books that garnered the attention of national news outlets recently, and while the controversy surrounding these titles is very real, rarely is it rooted in the potential for social change or radical thought that so many challenged titles of yesteryear were.
Off the top of my head, a few books spring to mind. Most recently: The Da Vinci Code and Twilight. The former seems to prove the old adage “controversy sells” correct, as Dan Brown had sold over 80 million copies of the novel as of 2009. Like many similar instances in the 21st century and beyond, The Da Vinci Code was considered “controversial” because it dared to offer alternative histories to those found in religious texts (a surefire way to get people talking, it seems. See The Satanic Verses and The Last Temptation of Christ). While the book was the toast of the town for a brief period, its star quickly fell, perhaps due to the fact that the film version, starring Tom Hanks, didn’t propel the book into the cult status of Stephanie Meyer’s vampire/werewolf/teen chastity romp.
The Twilight series—which, I must disclose, I haven’t read—has remained in the public consciousness since the first novel’s release in 2005, due in no small part to the runaway success of the films. Opinions about literary merit aside, what can’t be denied is the conversation surrounding Twilight: the argument over what this book says about gender roles and feminism has been going back and forth for some time. However, the paradigm presented by Meyer is decidedly regressive, which has made Twilight something of a unique phenomenon in that it’s been harangued both by conservatives (paranormal, the occult, teen sexuality, violence) and progressives (themes of feminine helplessness, unhealthy models for romantic relationships, etc).
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