What happens when you read a book like “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” in high school? I suppose many things, but some that relate specifically to me are an interest in reading and writing, a list of new albums to buy at Pitchfork Records on Main Street and a lifelong interest in pursuing a career in education to be able to help kids learn about the world as I needed to in 2007.
Pretty terrifying thought, I know.
When a girlfriend gifted me Stephen Chbosky’s book during my freshman year at Concord High, I was the same age as the main character Charlie. It changed my life in the same way “Catcher in the Rye” changed the protagonist’s life. Upon hearing that Merrimack Valley High School caved to the pressures of parental complaints about the book’s content, the first thing I did was ask my wife, “people are still banning books?”
Here, then, is a flash book report that I welcome anyone ages 15 to 18 in the Concord area to steal for their literature class.
According to the American Library Association, some of the reasons for the book’s censorship include mention of homosexuality, offensive language, drugs and alcohol, nudity and suicide. Reading this, you’d think this was an episode of “The Howard Stern Show” in prose form, but let’s add context to some of these topics.
The book starts with Charlie grieving the lost of his only middle school friend, Michael (suicide). He then befriends Patrick and Sam, two high school seniors who take a liking to the shy protagonist. Patrick is in a secret love affair with the high school quarterback Brad (homosexuality). Sam, who Charlie develops a crush on, share a similar past of sexual trauma they both experienced as children (nudity). Charlie’s older sister, meanwhile, is in a physically abusive relationship with her boyfriend, and at one point, is forced to go get an abortion (offensive language). And…well, they’re in high school (drugs and alcohol).
Of those complex topics, the one I find the most horrifying is one that is never addressed in its decades of censorship: the behavior of the parents toward children. Whether it’s the shame Charlie’s parents put on her sister that forces her to hide her mistakes from them, or the violent patriarch of Brad who mysteriously extracts his son from school and releases him back into the public as a violent homophobe, or the multiple sexual predators who will forever affect the lives of the children who trusted them.
These characters don’t seem to understand that the world’s problems aren’t solved by a slap across a child’s face or looking the other way. Instead, the correct response would be to expose their children to the realities of a sometimes very scary world, and educate them on what is right and what is wrong. Then, when their kids start to identify victims in their personal lives, as I did with my friends and classmates in the Concord Public School system, you know how to empathize, cope and heal.
There is a plotline in the book that serves as a great metaphor. Patrick and Brad have their affair (I will never understand why, but because it’s the 90s, it’s “okay” that homosexuality is culturally uncomfortable). Brad’s dad finds out, and presumably tries to beat the gay out of his son, who then turns his rage toward Patrick. Sometime later, Patrick finds out that Brad is hooking up with a complete stranger in a park in town. Keep in mind, this book takes place in 1991, where the AIDs crisis is prevalent in American culture. It doesn’t seem like the “punishment” did anything to correct Brad’s homosexuality — rather, he just found a more dangerous place to express it.
While there are a lot of insulting things about this book being banned, I’d argue that the foundation of my disgust with this decision is that it is so hacky. Banning this book is a cliche, at this point — it has been banned a million times since its publication in 1999.
To say a book like “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” is prophetic would have been laughable to me when I was 15. Now, it seems that truth really has become stranger than fiction.
Austin Sorette is a writer and author who attended Concord High School and whose mother taught in the school district for 25 years. He lives in Maine.