![]() It was banned in Germany for a long time, and I liked it - not because it was banned, but because it addresses its subject matter with a frankness, not to be conflated with honesty, that makes it hard to read, because you’re flinching the whole way through. Because the stuff that’s most inappropriate is oftentimes the most necessary and the most beautiful.Ī couple of weeks ago, I finished The Nazi and the Barber, a hilarious Edgar Hilsenrath novel people have been telling me for years to read. ![]() It’s about embracing the profoundly profane, the absurd. It’s not a search for the forbidden, or embracing paeans to violence and salaciousness - I’ve nothing against either, but that shit’s everywhere. But I was, and still am, definitely attracted to good books deemed controversial, that someone felt the need to keep out of someone else’s hands for whatever reason: Catch-22, Lolita, Animal Farm, All Quiet on the Western Front. ![]() When I was younger, it wasn’t out of the ordinary to stumble across a book that had been banned in some school district or library system - “banned in Boston,” they used to say, often tongue-in-cheek. Can you elaborate on the “shit I’ve been thinking about?” ![]()
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