So. Goodreads, Twitter, Amazon and just about everywhere else in that part of the internet that deals with fiction is in an uproar about Kate Breslin’s romance novel, For Such a Time.
Long, horrifying story short: it’s a retelling of the Book of Esther, an important book in both the Jewish and Christian faiths. It’s set during the Holocaust. Breslin has, apparently, decided that Esther’s story is a love story (no such thing happens in the original text). She has reimagined it as a “romance” between a Nazi SS-Kommandant of a Concentration Camp and Hadassah Benjamin, a Jewish girl who, due to her blonde hair and blue eyes, is saved from Dachau and instated as his personal secretary at Theresienstadt. (This was not strictly-speaking a death camp; but since so many were shipped TO death camps from Theresienstadt, that’s really arranging deck chairs on the Titanic.)
I can’t really discuss further plot details because I’ve not read this novel, and don’t intend to.
I’m not here to debate whether Kate Breslin’s novel contains elements that are deeply offensive, not just to Jewish people, but to anyone aware of what happened during the Holocaust (and frankly, that should be everyone above the age of about four. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.)
Undoubtedly, Breslin’s novel contains material that most people, Jewish or not, would find offensive. From a lack of real consent between Aric and Hadassah (which in itself should disqualify it from Romance Fiction awards, so far as I’m concerned) to Hadassah’s character arc including the implication that she has converted to Christianity, this book sounds like a big old train wreck.
What concerns me today is this: what is an appropriate reaction when someone writes a piece of fiction that offends you?
Do you show your disapproval by not buying the book, and spreading the word about it so that others can avoid it, too? (This is the route I’ve taken.) Or, as others have done, do you lobby to have the book disqualified from awards? Do you send letters and petitions to the publisher to have it taken off the shelves altogether? Do you send death threats to the author? Or what?
Throughout the drama on Goodreads and on Twitter, a quote from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray came to mind:
“There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.”
It’s human nature – and I do it too – to completely agree with that quote, until we are presented with a concrete example of a book that causes us offence; one we do see as immoral.
The goal posts are at a different place for everyone. For example, I’m firmly on the bandwagon of 50 Shades of Grey detractors, but I know plenty of people who aren’t.
Today, Wilde’s quote is usually brought up in reference to books that once caused moral offence, but are now seen through the filter of post-Sexual Revolution attitudes and half a dozen decades. DH Lawrence’s controversial novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover comes to mind. In 2015, it’s difficult for us to see how this book caused so much public offence that it underwent a trial for obscenity, but it did, and the feelings that brought it to trial were real.
There are many other books which are often banned and/or restricted, because they offend people – anything from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to American Psycho. (I haven’t read the latter.) National Censorship is a different ballgame to taking Titus Andronicus off the school reading list for 13-year-olds, but it all comes back to a similar argument: This book offended me. Other people should not read it.
I’m certainly not arguing that detractors of Breslin haven’t the right to be offended, even horrified. They absolutely do, and I applaud them taking to Twitter and Tumblr and voicing their protests in an intelligent, passionate way. But I keep coming back to a question I can’t answer:
Once we are offended, what do we do with that? Do we push to prevent others reading a book because it offended us?
The Reader In the Tower 
This is horrifying. More worrying in its way than the 50 Shades furore (i.e. idolising an abusive relationship) because this is about the perversion of real history.
I do not condone censorship or book-burning. Even less would I condone death threats to the author!
But expressing outrage at the ideas contained in this book and the book itself, absolutely. This premise of this book is so absurd and SO offensive that now I understand why you yourself have chosen not to read it.
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Well, I’ve never read this book and don’t especially plan to. That said, unless I were to read it for myself, I don’t think I could offer any critique, except possibly to say whether I found the subject matter abhorrent or not – which might be doing a disservice to the author, who may have treated the subject with great sensitivity.
I do listen to what critics say, of course, providing they are reviewers who do a generally great job and whom I feel I can trust (yes, you, Naomi, no need to blush.) And of course I appreciate that for dedicated bloggers and professional critics, expressing opinion is absolutely critical.
As a general rule, though, if I hear of a book (or maybe a film) that I think I might be offended by, I vote with my pocket and leave it at that. I figure anybody who can be called compos mentis is entitled to their own views and opinions providing they don’t impinge on my prime directive: don’t force anything on anybody (which absolutely includes mandatory opt-ins to receive junk mail on stupid websites just because you’ve asked for details of a holiday package!) If asked, of course, I might explain my own views, but I’d probably still finish up by saying: ‘Try it for yourself.”
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Well said as always, Nigel 🙂
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The interesting relationship in the story of Ruth is the one she has with her mother-in-law, Naomi. To recast this as a love story is stretching it a ways.
Also unable to comment on this particular book, not having read nor intending to read, it. Generally speaking though I’d not be in favour of ‘warning’ people not to read things we find offensive. Better, I believe, to put the other interpretations out there, or we’re no better than the fundamentalists who preach against children’s fiction because there is magic mentioned.
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There are even people who are posting attacks on Goodreads reviews saying they liked (or loved) the book. Truthfully, that makes me deeply uncomfortable. Nobody’s mind ever got changed by someone doing the internet equivalent of screaming in their face.
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I don’t think anyone is being stopped from reading the anti-semitc trash The government is not censoring it.
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