Through some cosmic fluke, Banned Books Week and Bay Area Burger Week overlap this October. There will be the inevitable critics (“should be Banned Burger Week”), but there’s at least one dude sitting dead center in this unlikely Venn diagram for whom this will be the greatest week of his life.
I suppose I’m writing this doodad for that guy—some free speech absolutist on the MAHA meal plan. With my luck, it’s Elon Musk.
I’ll stick to the facts—Banned Books Week runs Oct. 4–10; Burger Week stretches Oct. 7–18, because even our weeks come supersized. In any other era, I’d be dishing the satire all over this unforeseen confluence of books and burgers—political issues have always infiltrated our cuisine—anyone else remember “Freedom Fries?” But this year, I just want to eat my cheeseburger and read my book far from the madding crowd too…
I once saw someone reading Das Kapital in a McDonald’s. Within minutes, men in black had wrestled them into a van and vamoosed. All that remained was Marx and a single ketchup packet.
Last year, the American Library Association documented 487 attempts to censor books, targeting 4,235 unique titles. If that’s not ordering off the menu, I don’t know what is. Among the most challenged titles: The Perks of Being a Wallflower, A Clockwork Orange and Gender Queer. Not quite a box set but titles that are not unfamiliar to banned books lists—particularly the last title, which was created by a local author.
Project Censored recently published “Make America Read Again,” wherein its authors examine book banning alongside declining reading habits and argue that defending the freedom to read is essential to democracy. Basically, a public that loses its appetite for reading becomes easier to feed bullshit.
Perhaps we can start small. Read the label on the ketchup packet. Work our way up to doodads like this. Eventually, a whole book. Otherwise the grill gets set to Fahrenheit 451, in which case the burgers will be medium but the books more rare.
Daedalus Howell is the editor of the North Bay Bohemian and Pacific Sun, and writes ketchup packet confessionals at dhowell.com.
