If Courage Fails You

My childhood memoir, Courage Comes to You, has just been censored. No, not by a government, but by a publisher. Here in full is the explanation, which the publisher sent to my publicist:

When reviewing the author’s online posts, they are a little too political. Through experience, we have learned that authors who are politically active in social media–regardless of party or affiliation–limit their audiences by being so. The exception, of course, would be political books.

When my publicist submitted Courage Comes to You to this publisher, I did my usual research and discovered he’d earned his doctorate at a conservative Christian college. However, I noticed no obvious bias in his publishing list, and the topic of his dissertation sounded like an interesting sociological study in a nineteenth century setting. I gave him the benefit of any doubt about his respect for free expression. Now I wonder.

Courage Comes to You, which takes me into my twentieth year, has two broad, interlocking storylines: adaptation to life without vision, which I lost at the age of thirteen, and to America, to which my family and I emigrated from England that same year. As a young boy, I was critical of America, but through my teens, I developed an appreciation for my new country, the warmth of many of its people, and its often brave determination to confront its history. All in all, the memoir is an America-affirming work.

I assume the publisher objects to essays I’ve posted to my website, where I’ve published occasional satires naming Donald Trump, most recently in “Should We Let Government Use Ghosts to Search Our Homes” and “Trump Musings.” For the record, I haven’t posted anything to traditional social media sites for at least three years. The year before that, I posted about my novel Caroline, none of it political.

The target in my political satires isn’t Republicans or conservatives generally, but that one man: Donald Trump. To explain why, I’ll focus here on his love of casting insults. Under other circumstances, conservatives would surely share my repugnance at Trump’s record of denigrating women reporters as they ask him questions, consistent with his disgraceful “grab them by the pussy” boast. There was Trump’s contempt for John McCain over having been made a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Most relevant to this essay was his mockery of a reporter who has a chronic condition limiting his control over his arms. Recently, he characterized California governor Gavin Newsom as “low IQ” due to his dyslexia. Dyslexia is an inability to process text in the usual way, not an indicator of intelligence. Whatever else he may be, Newsom is intelligent. Besides, to call anyone “low IQ” is a gratuitous insult.

It is commonly thought that censorship is what government does, while what private publishers do is make business decisions. Actually, that’s a First Amendment distinction; censorship can take place outside government. The publisher’s claim that my Trump satires could harm sales casts doubt on his rationale. A recent poll shows Trump with a 36% approval rating and 60% disapproval rating. Overall, in a scan of poll results, Trump’s best approval rating is only 41.8% and his lowest disapproval rating a whopping 54.9%. If my occasional Trump satires actually factored in my book’s sales, they would likely be as a boost.

Rejection of my book because of a few satires critical of Trump scattered over ten years overlooks many posts in which I seek to reconcile political differences. In “Blue Sky Over Texas,” I cite instances of the thoughtfulness of conservatives I’ve encountered. My seven “Libby Speaks” posts are satires of a Democratic official office holder and a Republican office holder, both of whose reputations would suffer if the characters were real. Those posts explore the limits of what even an effective politician can accomplish.

Overall, of the 188 essays currently appearing on my website, 59 are partly tagged as political. Even these are rarely partisan. For instance, “Words That Make Us Feel Hopeless” is about discouraging the use of words such as “chaos,” while “All Quiet on the Ilium Front” quotes passages from Erik Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Homer’s The Iliad to make the case for our leaders, none named, to battle out their grievances in arenas instead of sending ordinary people into war.

The subjects of the vast majority of my posts are apolitical: literature, disability, word usage, morality and justice, history, whimsy, memoir, and more. I’ve also posted numerous short works of fiction.

Every thinking person has political views, and authors are thinkers. My posts demonstrate my engagement with a variety of subjects. In the case of the Trump posts, my conviction that he is a threat to much of what I value in America reflects not just my own anxiety, but one that is widespread. The publisher is saying, in effect, that Trump is allowed to exploit his lofty position to lash out at anyone in any way he chooses, but that when we react as private citizens in a public forum, we are being “political.” If I were to succumb to this precondition for getting my work published, I’d need to title an updated memoir, When Courage Fails You.

I hope my memoir’s affirmation of America won’t prove to be merely a fond reminiscence of a distant era.