Why We Must Read the Wrong Books

and ban book banners while at it.

"A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."—Italo Calvino

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who read everything and those who read only what they think is good for them(of course, there is the unlisted category of people who don't give a flying fugg).

I count myself among the first category, the explorers, the adventurers, and, on occasion, the unfortunate casualties of truly horrendous prose. We are those who wade boldly into the boundless sea of literature, its monsters, or the occasional grammatical shipwreck. The second category, however, consists of the literary prohibitionists, the book-banners, I call them.

Who are these peculiar creatures? They are the moral hygienists of the written word, forever dusting the shelves of human thought with the sterile precision of hospital ward attendants. To them, books must be cleansed, purified, and, if necessary, exorcised of all that is troubling, unsettling, or heaven forbid, incorrect.

Well, I say a reader must delight in the world’s absurdity, and embrace the great, tangled mass of human folly with open arms. Do not be like the book banner who spends his days in a state of chronic indignation, mistaking its private distastes for universal law, as though literature were a dining menu that must cater exclusively to his particular palate.

I find them amusing, truly. But we have more pressing matters to attend to. Let us turn, then, to the real business of the day.

Some books should be banned. This is a claim I will not shy away from. It is one of those statements, like "prejudice is good," that demands a chin held high and a steady gaze when uttered. But the moment a book is banned, it must be read. This, too, I insist upon. If I had to compose a manifesto of intellectual life, it would contain at least these two maxims, proudly contradicting each other at first glance but like two cogs in the same wheel that spins thought forward.

And it is precisely this contradiction that makes the point: all reading is a dance with danger. The very act of thinking means to venture into uncertainty, to step into untested ground. But there are those who, as a form of security, seek to provide a neat and sterile literary diet, just as there are those who would impose a rigid moral or political diet. "Eat only the good books," they say, just as the pious puritan or the earnest bureaucrat says, "Eat only the good foods, say only the right words, think only the clean thoughts."

It is a fine sentiment. But just as any child who has been denied sweets only dreams of them more fervently, the forbidden book is the most seductive of all books. The list of books not to read is a reader's first syllabus.

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My dear friend, we must be curious. The man who has only read the right books is a child still. He has been weaned on soft, digestible literature that does not disturb his slumber. He has not yet encountered the sharp-toothed books that bite, that bruise, that linger in the mind like an unresolved melody. He has never fought a book and lost, nor fought a book and won.

Indeed, the true mark of intellectual maturity is not the ability to recite great books but the ability to wrestle with the wrong ones. It is the skill of reading a book and saying, "No, this is false," not because someone has pre-warned you, but because you have tested its arguments against your own mind. This is the discipline of real reading.

But the book-banners do not believe in real reading. They believe that books do not sharpen the mind but mold it like soft wax. They fear books the way a superstitious farmer fears the full moon thinking it is a sorcerer’s wheel that brings misfortune. They are not entirely wrong though; books do have the power to shape and misshape the mind. But the response to this danger is not avoidance, but inoculation. If a man is to live in a world of poisons, he must learn to recognize the taste of poison.

Consider the man who has only ever been exposed to virtue. When vice arrives at his doorstep, he will not recognize its face. He will call it by some other name—progress, necessity, realism—and invite it inside. The man who has never read a seductive lie will not recognize one when it is whispered in his ear. The man who has never encountered the rhetoric of tyrants will not see tyranny when it comes clothed in pleasant slogans. The woman who has never experienced Yorùbá men will be swayed with the hearsays of the naysayers, but does she know? This woman will then proceed to deny herself of the suavity of these wonderfully made creatures. Tragic.

This is why we must read the wrong books.

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Take, for instance, Plato’s Republic, which suggests that the best government would be one run by a small group of philosophers—an idea that, in practice, would lead to disaster, since philosophers are notoriously bad at running anything except long conversations. Or consider Rousseau, whose sentimental musings about the "natural goodness" of man have been disproven by every ten-year-old who ever stole a biscuit when no one was looking. And then there is Nietzsche, who, for all his brilliance, seems to have written entire books just to see how many people he could upset.

These books are dangerous, yes. But they are also invaluable. A man who has read The Communist Manifesto and rejected it understands why he has rejected it. A man who has read Nietzsche and come out on the other side still believing in God has strengthened his belief. A man who has read Freud and remains sane has…well…performed a small miracle.

These books are not good because they are correct. They are good because they are deep, because they force the reader into the arena, to fight, to take a position.

It is the same in fiction. For example, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment—a book that tempts the reader, along with Raskolnikov, into believing that some men have the right to commit murder, only to unravel this illusion with unbearable precision. Or Paradise Lost, where Milton, despite himself, makes Satan so charismatic that the reader must wrestle with the question: Why does the Devil sound like the hero?

Some books are valuable not because they teach us what to think, but because they teach us how to think. Even a book that is entirely wrong can be invaluable if it trains the mind in discernment. There is a greater danger in never being exposed to error than in encountering it early and learning how to resist it.

The book banners always imagine corruption as a kind of stain, something that, once touched, spreads and cannot be undone. But the mind is not a white sheet; it is a fire. And fire, when fed properly, does not blacken, it burns brighter.

A child does not learn to walk by avoiding the floor. He must stumble. He must bruise his knees. A man does not become a tyrant by reading Macbeth, though if he does, it is at least some comfort to know that he will likely end up talking to ghosts and regretting everything. And so too must a reader stumble through books that confuse, books that seduce, books that outrage. There is no other way.

This is not to say that all books are equally valuable. Some books are merely bad, and not in a way that challenges or strengthens the mind. There are books so shallow that to read them is to come away empty-handed. There are books that are not wrong in any interesting way, but simply dull, lifeless, and mechanical. But even the worst books have their uses. The man who has read an awful book now knows what an awful book looks like.

There also exists a particular strain of moralist who clings to the belief that insulating individuals from subversive or ostensibly pernicious literature will cultivate virtue. Yet, the annals of censorship suggest a far more paradoxical reality. It is not societies steeped in intellectual engagement that descend into moral decay, but those bereft of such engagement. Likewise, it is not the child who has wrestled with unsettling ideas that emerges fragile, but rather the one sequestered within an intellectual enclave of unchallenged orthodoxy, and who, upon his first encounter with contradiction, shatters like porcelain.

To insulate people from books is to leave them defenseless in the world of thought. It is the equivalent of sending a soldier into battle without a weapon.

The simplest proof of the value of reading the wrong books is this: the best books have always been banned at some point.

Socrates was condemned for corrupting the youth. Galileo's books were locked away for fear they would unsettle the faithful. Ulysses was once deemed obscene, The Brothers Karamazov was censored, and Orwell’s 1984 was considered so dangerous that it was banned by both capitalists and communists alike. Even the Bible, at various times and places, has been kept from the hands of the common reader.

If history teaches us anything, it is this: the book that someone wants to ban(cancel) is probably worth reading.

The only way to truly defeat a book is to read it and prove it false. Censorship or discrimination only adds glamour to a bad idea. But exposure, thoughtful, rigorous exposure dismantles falsehood far more effectively than ignorance ever could.

So, I say again: some books should be banned, but the moment a book is banned, it must be read.

Read the wrong books. Read them critically, read them skeptically, but read them. The mind, like the body, is strengthened by resistance. Just as a healthy immune system must encounter germs to develop, a healthy intellect must encounter bad books, dangerous books, even foolish books. It must learn to meet them, to wrestle with them, and, when necessary, to reject them.

So dear reader, I beseech you to never indulge in this flight from prejudice, sentiment, and perspective. That is, the flight from the very things that make us human. The book-banner tries to do this, he convinces himself that the only safe reading is the one that offends no one and challenges nothing. But this is the kind of safety that turns into suffocation. To be human is to be tangled up in biases and affections, in loves and hatreds, in strong, unshakable opinions. The essayist understands this. He does not deny it. He embraces it and, more importantly, he laughs about it. This is what the reader must do too.

The truth is not fragile. It does not need to be hidden away like a delicate vase or a nervous pet. It is a lion, and the best way to defend it is simply to let it loose(don't take my word for it).

After all, what is the purpose of education, if not to prepare the mind for battle?

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I call the winds again, that they may carry you onward.✨