Ever since the choice of Sarah Palin as McCain’s running mate, I’ve been kind of bummed. I figure if John McCain is in the White House, with everybody in DC packing a gun now, he’s bound to call the wrong person “friend” and Palin’s going to end up President. I’ve been trying to figure out how this can possibly be a good thing for me or the country and coming up with nothing, when just yesterday I got a very nice fan letter from a young woman who was reading my books out of her local library—about the only place one can find my books these days. They’re sure not down at the Barne$ & Noble. Then it dawned on me how a Palin Presidency could be good for me. She can ban my books!
As most people have heard by now, the famous former mayor of Wasilla asked her town’s librarian if she would be down with, you know, taking a few books off the shelf if the mayor didn’t like them. No specific books were named. Palin was just trying to establish the Censor-in-Chief principle involved—that the chief executive’s job is to keep bad books off the shelves.
That got me to thinking about my books this innocent young girl had just read: a woman turning into a wolf and liking it, reincarnation and blasphemy, clones and virtual immortality, anarchist time travelers. Shit. We can’t have that stuff on the shelves, can we, Sarah? You can’t waffle on your principles! What’s good for Wasilla’s good for the world, right? Look what censorship did for Joyce, Salinger, Miller, Burroughs, Vonnegut, Dan the man Brown, for chrissakes. My career’s in a slump now. I could use the notoriety. The book I’m writing now, Sarah? Get this: Lucifer is the hero. He gets into the dreams of children. C’mon, Sarah. You need to get out ahead of this. You’re for shooting wolves out of planes. Surely you can shoot Wilderness off the shelves. Let’s see what you got. Bring it on. Go ahead. Make my day. I want you to.
How can you help? The two or three of you who read this blog? Email Sarah Palin today. Tell her, “You’ve got to ban this Danvers’ guys books now before he pollutes any more young minds! And don’t forget Robert Sydney—more evil under another name!” The way I figure it, some of my stuff might have to come back into print so that people can get copies for the book burnings. Maybe a few audio books would be nice. I remember when the Dixie Chicks were being worked over by the Country First crowd, the satisfying crunch those CDs made. There’s that dreadful movie version of Wilderness… I might toss that on the blaze. The important thing now is to get behind Sarah Palin, future Censor-in-Chief of America! C’mon! Burn baby burn! Burn baby burn! Everybody…
Fiction is nothing but lies! Ban the lies!
Now, Dennis. Your books were all over the place in Glasgow. I had photographic proof, but Richmond Camera killed that roll :\
I totally support banning your books. Sadie used to be a supreme intellectual snob, on the fast track to studying Nabokov with Brian Boyd, until she got a hold of my copy of Circuit of Heaven. Then she dropped out of school, followed Bauhaus on tour, and became a lesbian!
SEE THE CORRUPTING INFLUENCE YOU HAVE?!
You menace.
Pitbulls with lipstick have no need for books. Unless they are fortified with ‘knowledge’ of creationism, duh!
You know, Dustin, when I wrote Circuit of Heaven, I asked myself, “How many lesbians is this going to create?” But I didn’t think of my country first, and now they all want to get married and destroy marriage for the rest of us. (You sure it wasn’t the Nabakov that did it?)
Now, Marina,I’ll bet a pitbull wouldn’t mind chewing on a good book now and again, especially a puppy. The lipstick’s optional. I recall the young Alice digesting a book or two of an evening. Might as well be the Good Book, right? Not evil books that would taste like lies!
However, Susan, let’s not get too carried away. If President Palin bans all fiction that won’t benefit my career now will it?