For centuries, people have written books in the hope that their words would provoke, disturb, question, annoy, challenge and, occasionally, embarrass. That is rather the point of a book. There is something ironic about a publishing house suddenly discovering that words can have consequences.
Publishing houses in a democracy are not supposed to look at a manuscript and think, this is very good, very important, very publishable, provided we remove the bits that might upset people who matter. The bits that question power, bits that name uncomfortable truths, bits that might make someone important pick up the phone.
Picture this editorial meeting-
“Do we believe this passage is inaccurate?”
“No.”
“Do we believe it is defamatory?”
“Not exactly.”
“Do we believe it is badly written?”
“Quite the opposite.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“It might offend someone powerful.”
The editorial criterion should ideally be, is it true, is it well argued, does it deserve to be read? Not who might be annoyed. A publisher’s business is putting words between two covers. It is rather odd to become anxious when those words threaten to escape into the world. The safest solution to tackle this is to remove the criticism of power, the inconvenient names, the uncomfortable questions, the sentences that might cause trouble and edit the book until nobody can possibly object. What remains will be perfectly safe but It might also be perfectly pointless. There is an absurdity in a publishing house being afraid of a book. Books have no muscles, no police force, they have only words. But words travel. They make readers think. They make powerful people uncomfortable and remind them that they are being watched.
A publishing house getting scared of a book, that might actually do what books are supposed to do, is the real irony. A flightless bird need not be a chicken. Sometimes it is simply a bird that has forgotten how to fly. It is a like a penguin standing at the edge of the ice, looking at its wings and wondering if it is risky to dive in the cool waters of the ocean.
