Julia Keller
CULTURAL CRITIC
September 27 2009
My childhood was a bloodbath.
The blood stayed safely confined within the covers of books, but still: I relished gore. I ate up stories of serial killers and ax murderers and remorseless poisoners. I couldn't get enough of gun-toting hoodlums. Supernatural creatures, such as the vampires that currently flit and hover over pop culture, did not intrigue; my passion was strictly reserved for true crime, for the real-life roguery that imperils our every step -- or so one might think, from these lurid accounts.
My obsession worried my mother, who feared she had hatched a monster. One day, while I was busy toiling in a fourth-grade classroom at Geneva Kent Elementary School in Huntington, W.Va., she went into my room and gathered up my true-crime stash. I returned home, discovered the theft and confronted her: What had she done with my precious books?
"I threw them away," she replied with an infuriating calmness.
Oh, the outrage! Seething, I resolved then and there to run away from home -- Alaska sounded nice -- and get a head start on my destiny, which involved the establishment of a detective agency. What especially rankled was that my mother's fears had been wrong-headed: I didn't identify with the killers. I identified with the cops, the sleuths who cracked the case. I wanted to solve the crime -- not perpetrate it.
That day marked my first encounter with banned books.
The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/chi-0927-lit-life-banned-bookssep27,0,2766625.column
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