A very serious matter happened recently, with almost universal indifference.
This autumn, the novel “The Boy with Upturned Feet” by author François Blais was published by Fides.
The well-received novel follows two teenage girls’ investigations into the disappearance of their little neighbor.
fiction
The book is said to cover various themes: friendship, the difficulties of youth, the paranormal, suicide, etc.
I write “says one” because I confess that I have not read it. You’ll soon see why it doesn’t matter here.
The author is not just anyone. Notably, he has won a Governor General’s Award in the children’s literature category and a Quebec Youth Booksellers’ Prize for earlier work.
It also happens that shortly before the book was published, the author committed suicide.
You guess the rest, right?
A site like Leslibraires.ca, which has reading recommendations that can also be used to buy online, already includes a warning that the book deals with sensitive topics, particularly suicide.
I am not opposed to this warning.
But obviously the state had to intervene with its big clogs.
The Direction national de santé publique circulated a notice to educational circles, signed by the acting deputy minister, urging them not to recommend reading the book on the pretext that it would encourage suicide.
The government’s argument is based on the fact that the author ended his life, which the publisher had banned from being widely disseminated.
A particularly zealous and combative regional leadership is bluntly demanding that the copies of the book that have already been sold are withdrawn from circulation.
A case of censorship? Not quite, because the sale of the book remains permitted. But the initiative is certainly aimed at distracting from work.
However, this is not an essay advocating suicide or a treatise on the means to achieve it, but fiction.
Apparently it is no longer enough for booksellers to warn us.
It is no longer enough that television stations now decide for us to withdraw such a film, which is considered “shocking”, because we fear the protests of three grantees.
It is no longer enough for NCOs to patrol campus looking for “blasphemous” books or words.
How far ?
This time it is the state that is bringing all its weight, all its credibility, to the operation.
Now is the government going to step in and tell us what readings are good or bad for us?
Did we get there?
Is there anything more important to do than our glorious and very capable Ministry of Health?
Now is he going to warn us about any work by FICTION (by FICTION!!!) that involves suicide, incest, drugs, raw sex, drinking too much, eating too much or fighting in a bar?
The publisher deserves an apology. He probably won’t get it.
