Why are we still burning books? Credit: Neil Jacobs/Getty
Romance author Elin Hilderbrand was hauled over the coals for including an Anne Frank joke in her recently published novel Golden Girl; a teenage girl compares her bedroom for the summer, located in an attic, to the exile of hiding and exclusion Anne Frank and her family had to endure during the Second World War.
Now, humour operates in lots of ways (I can’t believe I’m writing this, but here we are), one of which is through something called hyperbole, from the Greek, meaning: get a grip. This joke is funny because of the contrast between this teenage girl’s minor inconvenience and the horrors suffered by Anne Frank and her family. There’s also a kind of meta-funniness going on too, I think — the joke seems to invoke the way we cope with the unthinkable horror of the Holocaust by making silly jokes about attics and Anne Frank. The word “we” in that sentence is problematic, probably, because I am not Jewish but, well, I think Anne Frank’s work belongs to the world — and for the sin of that thought, I shall begin preparing my own hide-away.
I wonder if a way to deal with the endless contretemps around problematic language in literature at the moment is to offer the reader two versions of the work they wish to read. The first is the draft produced by the writer with nothing on her mind but the business of getting a good story onto the page. The second is the version put through the filter of sensitivity readers who will remove anything that could possibly be interpreted by any group as a slight. That way, I think, everyone wins: those who believe literature should deal with how people really are — problematic, offensive, foul-mouthed — can read about that and revel in their damnation; and those who think literature should show us the higher ideals through characters who never make dodgy jokes can have their safe clean fun too – although, we can never be too sure of this safety since, according to Publisher’s Weekly, this book had been vetted by sensitivity readers and still the joke made it through.
This dual-edition model has the advantage of creating employment for the hordes of people who wish to work in publishing — and the work itself is likely to be satisfying for graduates trained to locate insensitivities in the texts they encounter. Obviously, it will cost the publishers money, but they are mostly celebrating record profits at the moment so they can afford it — and I suspect they will be extremely grateful to throw some money at the problem of these endless social media blow-ups. Indeed it will probably prove less costly in the long run than having to deal with the reduced efficacy of the PR departments who are surely in some kind of group therapy at the moment (I really hope the companies are paying for this because publishing salaries do not stretch so far as to cover the cost of the kind of mental robustness needed in the frontline of these wars).
The alternative, I guess, is that all we are allowed to read will be campus novels about young people with lovely politics arguing sexily before falling into bed with one another. I have no problem with such novels — but I’m not sure if that’s all I want to read. It seems to me that we are dealing with a gap between how people behave in “the real world” and how people in cultural institutions like publishing houses wish they would behave. Anyone who has ever worked in a bar or a McDonald’s or a factory or even a school or hospital will have heard language that would make the most hardened sensitivity reader faint clean anyway. Which means it’s great that we have so few literary novels depicting those kind of environments nowadays — I mean, can you imagine?
Anyway, it doesn’t matter because the joke has been scrubbed out. The author has asked her publisher to remove it from the text of the novel for future printings and from all existing digital versions. So we all win — earlier, problematic versions of the text will likely circulate on eBay for those who think they can handle it, and everyone else will get a safe reading experience. All we need now is for publishers to provide that option to readers from the start, which has the additional advantage of giving us insight into how many unclean readers are out there, and — if these readers mostly purchase their books online — a handy way to keep track of them and their dirty reading habits.
I am honing in, perhaps unfairly, on a particularly egregious example here: I know that as I write, any number of books with any number of dodgy jokes are going to press, brought into being by a solid understanding of the difference between author and character which seems to have failed Hilderbrand’s readers so fatally. Of course we know they understand this very well, but this is not about protecting readers from offence. It is really about incentives and how the discovery of offence in texts is richly rewarded by a social media where attention — of any kind, even for being wilfully, deliberately stupid — is the only currency.
But it is the fact that it is such a trivial joke in such a “trivial” genre that should concern us here. “Trivial” genres are the ones read by most people (though we in fiction publishing must always remember that most people do not read our books at all). Most of the fiction market is commercial and of that, at least 50% of it is digital — often low-priced ebooks depicting characters in settings many people enjoy reading about: schools, hospitals, police stations, helicopters, skyscrapers, Nantucket; that combination of ordinary life enhanced by high drama, romance or crime that has been the bread-and-butter of publishing for as long as anyone can remember.
But now, even here, in the books that never win prestigious prizes, with authors who sell by the bucketload but are never heard of by readers who carry New Yorker tote bags and are sniffy about Amazon — myself first among them, I admit — even here, if we are to be guided by the Hilderbrand example, it is no longer permissible to depict people talking as they actually talk. Be honest: how inclusive was your language the last time you had sex with a millionaire on a helicopter?
I know that in similar incidents there has been unease at publishing houses about text changes brought about due to social media pressure. And I understand here that it was the author’s decision: the upheaval, the anxiety, the potential damage to her brand just wasn’t worth it. This put me in mind of “Art’s Troubles”, a beautiful essay by Anthony Julius in the recent issue of Liberties, exploring the question of who, in this censorious age of ours, will stand up for the arts?
He astutely comments that the writer/artist will not do so: she is too busy making art, even if the art she is making — commercial romance novels — is usually ignored by the kind of people who read lofty essays in literary journals. As (some) publishing workers do read or at least pretend to have read these essays, I beg them to read Julius’s one and to consider as a slogan – for we all seem so very fond of slogans, all of a sudden, though sloganeering is the very antithesis of art-making – the following:
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SubscribeWell we never thought 10 years ago when social media let us stay in touch with friends around the world or with those we didn’t see much that it would metastasise into such a destructive monster. But then if self- righteousness (aka virtue signalling) is elevated to being a positive character quality it shows we have learned nothing from oppressive religious history. Since modern politics and humility are opposite magnetic poles political secularism has to rule and force its self-righteous values on everyone. I’m glad UnHerd gives a voice to real human values. And thanks for a laugh, Niamh.
One of the most awful actions of editorial interference happened to Kate Elysia. The UK author wrote a memoir about her experience of grooming gangs. She described the actions against her as ‘racist’. The editors were not happy (she’s white) and told her to remove it. Yes, the publishers at Ebury, Penguin thought it would be wise to police a rape survivor on her perspective.
In Australia, a kind of ‘celeb’ called Pete Evans got his books withdrawn and dropped by Macmillian. All for the crime of posting a meme. Was it funny? Never got it. But because it had some faint relation to the Christchurch shooter, that was enough for Macmillian to act all high and mighty.
It’s not like sensitivity readers are well-versed in history. In fact, many of them are historically illiteratre. When Blood Heir was promoted, they were quick to blame the Asian author for not including ‘black suffering’ in her depiction of Slavic / Chinese slavery. Most sensitivity readers are well-off city dwellers with good income and education. They define themselves not by their achievements, interests or life experiences, but by their identities.
I have emailed Harper Collins, Hachette, Macmillian countless times about my fears as a writer of being censored and dropped. There are morality clauses in publishing contracts, and sensitivity readers (get a real job, losers) vet books. Glad I don’t write Young Adult, but I worry it will come to my genre, literary fiction. Next year, I’m entering the ‘query trenches.’ I hope an agent loves my book. But I refuse to submit to this regime. The publishers never reply, they are accountable to no one.
Many of the publishers are young enough to not know the Rushdie affair. If you happen to work in publishing, please listen to me. This stuff is scary and tyrannical. You know it is. It will only get worse if people don’t speak up against it.
How awful…
Yep. These are very real examples (also note that the leader of the pack who went after Amelie Wen Zhao’s Blood Heir was himself targeted the following month). I always mention these cases, and others, when I see comments insisting that cancel culture is a myth. Those of us who write know exactly what’s going on. Thanks for speaking up about this!
Well, I can hardly write a post here without ‘Awaiting for Approval’, and it is not always given.
“How to save fiction
Spineless publishing houses have given up on the arts”
By not buying their woke approved drivel….
Go woke go broke!
And maybe there should be a formal identifier for every book that passes muster and then they will be easy to avoid.
This is a great idea! I love the thought of walking through a bookshop and seeing the sticker WARNING! THIS BOOK HAS BEEN THROUGH THE WOKE POLICE AND IS THEREFORE UNSUITABLE FOR THINKING GROWNUPS…
“according to Publisher’s Weekly, this book had been vetted by sensitivity readers and still the joke made it through.”
Old sensitivity readers, before they were ‘De-Colonized’ fully.
“Western science was inextricably entangled with colonialism, especially British imperialism. And the legacy of that colonialism still pervades science today.Listen to the audio version of this in depth article here:
As a result, recent years have seen an increasing number of calls to “decolonize Science”, even going so far as to advocate scrapping the practice and findings of modern science altogether. Tackling the lingering influence of colonialism in science is much needed.” (from ‘The Conversation’)
See— it is not just Fiction which is ‘All Wrong’, it is in fact Everything. Non-Fiction is in fact, ‘The Worst’.
‘The Natural History Museum’ gives us article this on their home page “Are natural history museums inherently racist? The answer is naturally YES.”
What is needed is explicitly and loudly anti-woke publishers.
As a writer, I see in this a tremendous opportunity. After all, art has always thrived – not just in the very face of censorship, but precisely because of it. It is in adversity that artists, real artists, can come to define themselves and their work.
Of course, it doesn’t come easy or cheap. You will be shunned. You will lose publishing deals and be deplatformed. But in times like these, that is the only way to do anything that has any meaning.
And for those who would submit to having their character’s jokes edited by the quasi-religious censors of the Social Media age: Enjoy those royalties. Because that is ‘literally’ all you are doing it for.
I grew up in apartheid South Africa under an authoritarian government. Plenty of stuff was banned and not just political work – anything deemed ‘subversive’ with an occasional swear word right through to hard porn. The consequence of this is many of us got to read and watch things at a tender age that we would not normally have done.
Graham, I agree with you. But the problem is also that new writers won’t even get a foot in the door as no literary agent will touch their work. There will be no opportunity to shun them or cancel their publishing contracts or deplatform them. And, sadly, I expect this is already going on.
For sure you are right. How many insightful tracts on atheism never made it passed the clerical censors of the Middle Ages? How many great pieces of erotica were written but never published in prudish Victorian times?
Still I hold that it is better to write a brilliant piece of unpublishable taboo and go hungry, than to self-censor and make it onto a bestseller list of sheep shit.
My third novel went through a few rounds of copyediting — most of it during 2020’s Summer of Our Discontent. In every round, there was a change suggested (“It was a black day” —> “It was a dark day”), a question as to whether my mentioning that women once gave birth in fields might offend some readers (I’d ask my great-grandmother if she were still alive), and another suggestion to strike the phrase “pow-wow” from a bit of dialogue (because, surely, a university-educated person would never use such a term). STET, STET, STET.
The early reviews, however, are finding fault with the meta-story because (oh, the horror), I wrote a book that has *evil women* in it.
The death-spiral of my writing career is going to be fun to watch…
In the unlikely event that my four novels ever get anywhere near publication, I will insist on a no-sensitivity-reader clause. Of course this will mean the publishers backing out, but I’m past caring. I’m just not going to compromise with the woke scum
I grew up in soviet satellite. Most of the good books (and all the good children’s books) I could get my hands on in the 70s and 80s were published before WWII. Perhaps a similar time is coming….
I think they’ll start burning them. And anyway how will you find them? Amazon won’t let you buy or sell them, and I’m sure public libraries have already started purging their shelves.
I feel forced to add riders to my speech nowadays. Like – I can’t see anything wrong with a joke mentioning Anne Frank, if it is done in good taste. So to a certain extent I have been infected and it is too late for me.
My second thought, also showing a degree of that same infection, was where do you draw the line? Was ‘To Death Us Do Part’ also just harmless fun and brave for turning something serious into a joke?
Everybody will have a different idea about where censorship should stop. Why not control things like in movies where you have ratings on the books and warnings by the government censor that they may cause offence? This will have two advantages: it will create jobs in the new career of Public Censor (think of the new degrees and professors of Public Censorship – it could even mean new universities) and, most importantly, it will increase the readership of the censored books – you only have to think of the way young children are attracted to adult topics just because they are censored.
A joke about Anne Frank is not necessarily anti-semitic but your rider is valid.
Very interesting Chris – my generation, which grew up with Till Death Do Us Part, the Carry On movies, Are You Being Served, the Black & White Minstrels, page three girls etc. etc. produced an attitudinal and legislative revolution aimed at discrimination against women, gays, coloured people, disabled people and so on. We could go to the movies and watch Clockwork Orange, Bond movies, Westerns etc. and yet never turn out like the characters in the films. How could that have happened?
“The alternative, I guess, is that all we are allowed to read will be campus novels about young people with lovely politics arguing sexily before falling into bed with one another”
With dissent crushed, what would they be arguing about?
Agreeing with each other emphatically before not having sex sounds more plausible. And I don’t wish to read either.
They would argue about which thought, concept, book, idea, politics, nation, historical figure, etc, were worse. Obviously they all would be bad, but just how bad will still provide serious conversation and argument.
Yes, I think you’re on the right track. Silly me!
For some time, prior to the current madness, we were constantly told that art wasn’t just a warm, reassuring bath to wallow in. That it should challenge, who remembers the “Shock of the new” Now the art mandarins tell us its just that, a reassuring bath, one of political platitudes.
Art, literature, music, poetry etc is in the grip of a highly professionalised, regulated, civil service. The main aim is to perpetuate itself and a sign of this degeneracy is that curators and book editors are more likely to catch the imagination of media folk than the artists.
Make your art, write your book get a part time job. It is the only solution, no experience is wasted on an artist, it will keep you connected. Imagine what Charles Bukovski or Nabrokov’s books would be like, without offence, or Rubens paintings without sex and violence.
Art that is purely about political and social orthodoxy, ends up on the scrap heap pretty quickly.
And Bukowski’s first novel Post Office sold a million copies. Most authors these days would kill for those sorts of numbers.
Yes, he probably blew the money at the racetrack. Someone saw the strength and integrity of that writing and took a punt. Publishers would love those numbers, but the way those big houses want to shift units has little to do with taking a punt. I collaborated, in a very minor way, with Sir David Attenborough on a book for Random House, what an eye opener!
I’ve got quite enough pre-censorship literature to keep me going. Tough luck on current writers I know. I suppose it was like this for playwrights during Cromwell’s time.
‘something called hyperbole, from the Greek, meaning: get a grip’.
I can’t decide if this is itself some kind of joke as the definition is bonkers (over the top’ would be better) and the example is not an instance. For self conscious examples see Shakespeare, eg. Laertes in Hamlet: ‘Now pile your dust upon the quick and dead / Till of this flat a mountain you have made /T’o’ertop old Pelion or the skyish head /Of blue Olympus.
I ran your Shakespeare quote through ‘Google Sensitivity Reader’ and it translated it to:
No matter how much dirt you pile on old dead White People they just will not go away.
I really liked that part of Hamlet, where it is so fitting today, all about Class Privilege. Wile burying Ophelia the gravedigger grumbles how she, after committing suicide, is still allowed a place in the cemetery wile a commoner would not be, and Yorick is tossed aside to make room for her.
Thanks Sanford (and good to see you back). By coincidence I was discussing that very passage with a friend today! As an upstart from the sticks WS knew a thing or two about class privilege.