It’s 12.10am on a school night and I won’t sleep for a while. I feel a tight, choking feeling in my body as though I want to vomit, but not from my stomach, from my mind. I just read something that I can’t unread, and therefore saw something I can’t unsee.
Books have a long history as sacred vehicles that transcend mortality and carry the human intellect from one generation to the next. What could have been lost from the past is not lost, because we have books. Their sacred position in society means that their destruction is a mark of corruption. The burning of books has symbolised tyranny and the banning of books is the oppression of ideas.
Censorship, when it comes to books, is a dirty word, but tonight I am wondering this: if we outlaw child pornography, criminalizing even its possession, then how can we allow it to exist in books?
I haven’t read the controversial Lolita, but after what I did read tonight, hidden unsuspectingly at the three-quarter mark of my novel, I fear for those who want this kind of content uncensored.
There is great evil in the world and we must be aware of it, but to read the first-person narrative of someone utterly perverse causes you to momentarily adopt their perversion.
I cannot call for the banning of the books, but tonight, I’m glad that not so many people read. I fear for a society that has that filth in their heads.
sarsrose 