Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Censoring the
Books No One Reads Anyway
The not-so-grand inquisitors are now coming for Agatha
Christie – Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple are decreed insensitive and the
narratives of their adventures, which began during the First World War, are to
be recalled and rewritten for the delicate sensitivities of a population that
mostly doesn’t read at all.
Maybe even the titles will be Orwelled: Lord Edgeware Retires, Unpleasantness on
the Nile, The Absence of Roger Ackroyd, Unhappiness on the Links, Awkwardness
on the Orient Express, Mrs. McGinty’s Moved Away, and Inclusive Values Under
the Sun.
Roughly 80% of Americans are literate. This skews higher
for those born in the U.S.A. [48+
US Literacy Statistics 2023 - Percentage by State (thinkimpact.com)]. The
problem is not that Americans can’t read; the problem is that often they no
longer do so because they no longer perceive a need for it. Once upon most
households subscribed to a daily newspaper and several news or general interest
magazines, but that is rare now. The news comes mostly by noise on screens, and
even when there are words they are usually displayed in very short sentences
and seldom with any paragraphing.
Much newswriting is so simplistic that one might think it
was carefully limned on a Big Chief tablet, which is something else that has
been made to disappear.
The dumbing-down of language and timorous self-censorship
affects the national discourse. It is embarrassing to view an elected national
leader calling out one word at a time from a prompting device. It is also embarrassing
to see a television newsie stumble over simple vocabulary while employing the
same old filler language we’ve heard for years. And what has led news writers to refer to one person as
“they?”
And now almost anything one chooses to read can be a
matter of fear. In an unhappy era when
even the weather has become politicized, a village cozy crime yarn like Murder
in the Vicarage can hardly escape censorship by the sort of Miz Grundys who
seek only for outrage, not for enlightenment.
In an Agatha Christie yarn the murder is the crime; now
the police inspector might arrest Dame Agatha for a failure to refer to the
suspect by their (cough) preferred pronouns.
Imagine what the busybodies are going to do with Louis L’Amour
and your favorite authors.
-30-
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