One interesting thing about revisiting these books I haven’t read or read about in a long time is remembering why I once deliberated about whether to write my Masters thesis about the fiction of either Tom Robbins or Larry McMurtry, and in no small part, it had to do with their female characters. Though I relished the language of one author, and the narrative skills of the other, I intended to address how they wrote women characters, and my points were not all valentines toward either writer. That had little to do with enjoying their novels nor any sense of conventional “morality,” and also considered the time and culture in which the novels were written.
I think it’s an important part of reading that nothing should become “truth” to us at the expense of accessing our brain, our senses, our instincts, our better feelings. It’s wise to question even those books we’re told are indisputable truth. As a writer myself, with a deep love and understanding of stories and storytellers, I believe there’s no.such.thing.
I don’t have the energy to tackle a discussion of the means used to indoctrinate and control humans. I’ll always believe that the more we read, from the contrary and challenging and unsettling to the comforting and amusing and entertaining–all of it–the better off we are.
Oddest of all to me is the way book banning movements so often begin with people/readers believing the lie that “no one is banning books.”