There’s a certain annual we own that has been doctored. One of the comic strip stories was deemed too scary to be found unexpectedly – I think it was one illustration in particular. Solution: trap the story so it can’t come out.
Now some people find Scooby Doo too much to begin with, and others love it. One of the latter is resident here, and regularly inbibes Scobby stuff, mostly cartoons from different eras. But finding one overly scary story among the others that were deemed fine meant an impasse – the book was not safe.
What to do? I had the answer. It had been done to one of my childhood books – a Japanese-illustrated fairytale collection. The illustrations for Red Riding Hood had been deemed too scary at some point.
And so the whole story was tamed by sellotaping up the pages. It meant you got one very thick page to thumb past, but it meant you could safely skim the rest of the book – which was reasonably sunny and cheery, all in all.
I proposed the same solution for the offending Scooby story, and so we did it. The whole story is ‘held in’ – a bit like putting plastic sheets up at a crime scene? – and remains that way. As, I think, does my fairytale collection.
In my teens, I would occasionally, and unwisely, read ghost story collections from the local library. I remember being so disturbed by one story that I put the whole book in the corner of the room, under my dresser, with the paper edges touching up against the corner on two sides.
I think it was again a way to trap a story – until it could be safely disposed of, back to the library. I could have left it in another room of the house, I realise now, but somehow this was the solution that helped me deal with a ‘dangerous’ story.
I’m trying to make sense of what is happening here. Reading is such a place of escape, generally of safety (though that depends on what we choose to read) – and sometimes, that place of safety is threatened by stories that disturb us in one way or another.
We cannot always take back the impression of the story – and often, the pictures, whether on the page or in our mind – but we can find ways not to let them disturb us any further.
Books do not always come with a rating, or a safety warning. There is much that is wonderful, uplifting, in books, and much that is dark, frightening at times. Both tell us about the world, about the human condition.
Just as we choose to take things in from books, to let them influence and shape us, we can also hold them at a distance where we need to.
Whether it’s taping things up, removing them from the house, or finding other ways to remind ourself which world is which, it’s good to be aware of the power of books – and to know our own limits.