John Kennedy Toole put a bullet in his brain in 1969.
Thought his manuscript was garbage.
Thought the world didn’t want to hear about Ignatius J. Reilly…
This sweating, farting, medieval philosophy obsessed manchild who rails against modern society from his masturbation stained bedsheets in New Orleans.
(The rejection letters piled up)
His mother, god bless her stubborn Southern soul.
She dragged that manuscript around for eleven years.
Practically holds a gun to Walker Percy’s head until he reads it.
And then? Pulitzer Prize…
Imagine someone today getting their sanitizing hands on Ignatius. This walking dumpster fire of toxic masculinity, casual racism, and weapons grade narcissism.
Imagine them trying to make him palatable.
You know what you get?
Nothing. A corpse dressed in Sunday clothes. A vampire with its fangs filed down to nubs.
Cause this is what’s happening in the literary world with all of these types of book burner folk. The ones who are trying to wipe away great work and not allowing people to read, understand and see how the world really works.
Books aren’t instruction manuals for living. They delve deep into the human condition.
Like in medicine. You sometimes need to see the disease to find and understand the cure.
Ignatius works BECAUSE he’s a monster. Not the fun kind with tentacles and teeth, the real kind. The kind you’ve met. The kind posting conspiracy theories on Facebook. The kind living in their parent’s basement at 35, blaming everyone else for their failures.
You’re supposed to recognise him.
But no. There come the protectors. The saviours. They’re the types of people who think you’re too fragile. Or maybe too stupid. Hell, too impressionable to handle what really goes on down the darker sides of humanity.
If censorship was a hammer they’d be swinging it all of the damn show.
Take Huckleberry Finn as example. Gets yanked from schools faster than you can say “that word makes me uncomfortable.” But strip out the racial language and you strip out the entire point. That’s a book about a kid unlearning his programming. About choosing humanity over society’s rules.
Anyways. The main point of this email is to just read the hard books. The ones that might make you wince.
If they’re banning it. It’s for good reason.
If you truly want to understand people. Those works will unravel everything at a visceral level for you.
Here’s a silly long link again that’ll take you to grab the book if you want it.
Stephen Walker.