In observance of Banned Books Week, I picked up Laurie Halse Anderson’s Twisted to read. It’s been challenged in a high school in Kentucky – Anderson’s blog has been tracking the details of the challenge – and earlier this week it looked like it was going to return to the AP English classes in which it was offered. But, now the superintendent is holding the book back. He wants “evidence” that this book is relevant, that it’s worthy of being classified as “college level” material. Well, here’s my best defense.
Twisted is a book about what it means to be a son, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a family. It’s a book about what it’s like to stand on the cliff’s edge overlooking hell, feeling burned, tortured, seared, blistered by the heat, and then, instead of running, instead of submitting and throwing yourself into the inferno, choosing to face it, to fight back against it, to stand tall, to do what’s right and to fight for the light.
Like Anderson’s first novel, Speak, and her latest, Wintergirls, this is a book about a teen’s descent (in this case, a boy named Tyler) into isolation, humiliation, self-loathing, and pain, and the events that brought him there. It’s about the high school (and corporate) cultures that harm, shut out, falsely accuse, mock, punish and fear the person who struggles, who acts out of conscience. These are the systems, so easy to disappear into, that easily believe the worst about a person, that worsen or animate his fall with a leg stuck out to trip him, a fist in his face, and a pint of milk poured anonymously down his back.
This is a book about the cruelty of the suburban economic ladder, how its rungs deform people, and the false belief that final entry into the upper class – the outward appearance and acquisition of American wealth – will save your soul and your family’s soul. It’s a book about the invasive pathogen of that mistaken belief, the invasive pathogen that can eat a family up, almost kill it dead.
But, Twisted is also about love, humor, and hope. It’s about the few nourishing souls – a friend, a sister, a teacher, a mother – who try to get through to Tyler, who stick with him even when he’s at his worst, who care enough to believe the best about him, who are unimpressed by postures, but who understand the need to let the rage out.
Anderson skewers those false creeds of masculinity that subtly or overtly beset boys everywhere – that you must be unfeeling, that you must “bag” a girl no matter what the circumstance, that respect for the opposite sex is optional (even disposable), that you must be physically strong to have worth, and that the drive for power above all else is the worthiest pursuit. “The only thing on was commercials. Buy our razors and be a man. Buy our pit sticks and be a man. Spray this junk down your shorts and women will crawl all over you. Get a second mortgage. Buy a second car. Buy our razors.”
A “real man,” Anderson’s book argues, admits he’s weak, does the dirty work of standing up for what’s right, challenges loved ones when they’re hurting you, and doesn’t take advantage of others.
And it says all this with a funny, wry, fast-moving plot led by a really likable, believable character. Like in Speak, Anderson knows how to make us laugh, how to point up the absurdity in, well, life, even in the midst of a serious downward spiral. See how the family, after a visit from the police and Tyler is tacitly accused by them of sexual misconduct, stalking, being generally a pervert and a freak, and after he’s pounded and snatched at and mocked and beaten in school for what he didn’t do to the most popular, beautiful girl around, just see how the family still dons reindeer antlers and bright red sweaters that Friday and forces themselves to pose happily for a Christmas photo.
The end of Twisted is full of hope. Tyler, baseball bat in hand (because that’s the sort of weapon it takes to smash through the anger, cruelty, lies, and false fronts of angry detachment and criticism constructed by his father), descends into the basement to save his family’s life. He’s a boy owning up to his weaknesses and fighting off his demons (real and imagined) and his story is told in the language of real, young adult life.
I don’t know what it means that a book is “college level” material. Did the book make me take a hard look at myself and past choices I’ve made in my life? Check. Did it make me think hard about the choices I will make in the future as a parent, a husband, a brother, and a son? Check. Did it make me wrestle with questions of family and the responsibilities of parents and teachers and each of us to be decent and assume the best of each other? Check. Did it make me resolve to face tough emotional conflicts instead of shrinking from them? Check. Did the book make me cast a harshly critical eye at the pursuits of money and sex and image that distract us and alienate us from one another? Check.
I don’t know if these are “college level” issues. But, I know that they’re deeply human issues and they’re evoked here with layered, engaging, and enjoyable writing. I don’t ask for much more in a book.
The sad irony in banning Twisted would be in the fact that those who would seek to censor it only prove the ultimate point of its story – that the more we hide from who we are and what the world is really like, the more small, rigid and twisted we become.
(Jarrett, The Loft)
When The Lovely Bones was published in 2002 it took off like a shot, catapulting its author, Alice Sebold, high into literary stardom. This dark, wrenching novel of disquietude and loss is the story of Susie Salmon, a 12 year old girl who is raped and murdered in an underground den by a neighbor one afternoon when she takes a shortcut home from school. Susie narrates the story from a place of solitude – her own personal heaven – where she observes her grief-stricken, traumatized family as they come to terms with her death while searching for answers about the crime. She also watches as her killer evades justice. Written in spare, at times lyrical, at times graphic, prose, Sebold’s novel is unsettling in its evocation of a conflicted afterlife, as well as its depiction of a terrifying, brutal crime that tears a family apart.
September 26th – October 3rd, 2009 is 
