THOMAS F. BERTONNEAU writes:

It came to my attention recently that the current reading assignment in my son’s tenth-grade English class involves Jay Asher’s so-called young adult novel Thirteen Reasons Why (2009).  Asher’s publishers have pushed his book skillfully and have succeeded in insinuating it in high school reading lists across the nation.  Commercially, Asher has scored a hit, with a captive audience of high school students. 

What to say about Thirteen Reasons Why?  The Amazon webpage devoted to Asher’s title cites the Booklist summary of the plot: “When Clay Jenson plays the cassette tapes he received in a mysterious package, he’s surprised to hear the voice of dead classmate Hannah Baker. He’s one of [thirteen] people who receive Hannah’s story, which details the circumstances that led to her suicide.  Clay spends the rest of the day and long into the night listening to Hannah’s voice and going to the locations she wants him to visit.  The text alternates, sometimes quickly, between Hannah’s voice (italicized) and Clay’s thoughts as he listens to her words, which illuminate betrayals and secrets that demonstrate the consequences of even small actions.”  Does it sound like a soap opera in prose?  It is that assuredly, but it is regrettably much worse than that.

No one should allow himself to be gulled by the gushing way in which readers extol Asher’s novel.  “I just finished this,” one Amazon reviewer writes, “and I am telling you it was compelling.”  The same reader opines that Thirteen Reasons Why “should be required reading by anyone in high school or middle school – or anyone who has a child in high school or middle school.”  Another reader writes: “If you have the chance to only read one novel this year, Thirteen Reasons Why should be that book. It’s sad, amazing, heartbreaking, and hopeful, all at the same time. I dare you to read it and not become so immersed in the story that you lose track of time and your surroundings.”  A mildly dissenting review characterizes Asher’s story as “very depressing,” with the explanation that, “it was about a girl who committed suicide and her thirteen reason why.”  The dissenter adds that, “it did not help that [the girl’s] guidance counselor was a total idiot and her parents didn’t care.” 

I bought a copy of Thirteen Reasons Why and read it through.  I concluded after a few pages only that this book is extraordinarily inappropriate reading matter for fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds.  The novel is obsceneunder the normally understood meaning of that term.  It deals explicitly, in reductive and graphic terms, with actions and events that are crassly sexual and emotionally base.  Many of these actions rise to the level of criminality.  Thus there is at least one “Peeping Tom” incident, at least one incident of attempted rape or unlawful sexual contact, and an incident of actual, serial rape.  There are representations of female solicitation of male libidinousness.  The story elsewhere represents young people of high-school age scheming to harm innocent parties in lewd and brutal ways. 

In its fascination with low behavior, Thirteen Reasons Why is entirely at one with the prevailing fare in mass entertainment. The characters in Thirteen Reasons Why have no discernible interests beyond their own selfish, uncultured, and immediate gratification.  Not to mention that Thirteen Reasons Why misrepresents suicide by making it appear to be an unavoidable response to bullying, abuse, and other types of morally repulsive behavior.  Adolescents do not need images of bad behavior.  They need images of decent behavior. 

Because it imitates the quasi-pornographic character of soap operas and sitcoms, Thirteen Reasons Why cannot help its adolescent readers become suspicious of contemporary mass entertainment.  Consider three passages from the book.  The first of these comes early in Asher’s story. 

The point-of-view character Clay Jensen is listening to one of the cassette tapes sent to him as a suicide note by Hannah Baker, the much put-upon girl who has ended her life.  Hannah is recounting the details of her encounter with a sexually aggressive classmate including statements that he made to her:  “The jerk put his hand on my shoulder.  ‘I’m only playing, Hannah.  Just relax.’  [.]  ‘I’m only playing, Hannah.’  Translation: Your ass is my play-toy.  You think you have the final say over what happens to your ass, but you don’t, not as long as I’m “only playing.”  [.]  ‘Just relax.’ Translation: Come on, Hannah, all I did was touch you with no indication that you wanted me to touch you.  If it’ll make you feel any better, go ahead, you can touch me wherever you like.” 

The second passage comes from the novel’s “Peeping Tom” episode.  Hannah, suspecting that Tyler has surreptitiously photographed her, schemes with a female classmate to be together in her bedroom when Tyler makes a stealthy visit.  They hope to catch him in the act, sweetening the hook so to speak by simulating a lesbian encounter.  The scene presumes Tyler’s eavesdropping as well as his peeping: “‘You know what I could use?’  [Hannah’s friend] asked.  ‘A nice, deep back massage.’  [.]  She winked at me, then got up on her knees and worked her hands forward like a cat stretching until she was all the way down on my bed.  [.]  I straddled her back [.] and began rubbing her shoulders.  [.]  ‘You know what it means if he stops taking pictures, right?’  I told her I didn’t.  ‘It means he’s doing something else.’  [.]  She pulled open the drawer [of my dresser,] looked inside, and covered her mouth.  What?  There was nothing in my drawer worthy of a reaction like that.  There was nothing in my room worthy of that.  ‘I didn’t know you were into this,’ she said, nice and loud.  ‘We should use it together.'” 

The third passage comes from the climax of the story, when Hannah, at a party, witnesses the serial sexual abuse of a girl who, in an alcoholic stupor, has fallen unconscious in an upstairs bed.  Unbeknownst to the abusers, Hannah is present in a closet and hears the events.  A character named Bryce enters: “Blood pounded in my ears.  I rocked back and forth, beating my forehead into the pile of jackets.  But with the [loud music] pumping throughout the house, no one heard me.  [.]  And with the [loud music] thumping, no one heard him walking across the room.  Walking across the room.  Getting on the bed.  The bedsprings screaming under his weight.  No one heard a thing.” 

Thirteen Reasons Why purports to judge these incidents as selfish behavior that drives Hannah to suicide.  But the descriptions, couched in calculatedly titillating prose, force their way into the foreground while the very non-explicit judgment about them recedes into the background.  I believe that Asher has inserted the judgments for plausible deniability, to justify the prurient descriptions.  A good question to ask about the salient passages is whether a responsible adult would feel comfortable reading them aloud to a roomful of fifteen- or sixteen-year-olds.

If the answer were, “No, a responsible adult would be distinctly uncomfortable doing so,” then one might ask why it is legitimate to mandate that fifteen- and sixteen-year-old girls – and boys– read the same novel and discuss it in class and write about it as homework. I believe that reading Asher’s descriptions aloud to a minor person would approach the threshold of unsanctioned behavior. At the very least reciting Asher’s sex scenes to teenagers would appear as creepy and lascivious. Why then is it not lewd or abusive to compel fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds to read such low-grade prose?

                                                                                                         — Comments —

Markus writes:

Thomas Bertonneau wrote:
 
“Thirteen Reasons Why purports to judge these incidents as selfish behavior that drives Hannah to suicide.  But the descriptions, couched in calculatedly titillating prose, force their way into the foreground while the very non-explicit judgment about them recedes into the background.  I believe that Asher has inserted the judgments for plausible deniability, to justify the prurient descriptions.”
 
In just a few words, Mr. Bertonneau has stated the matter brilliantly. While I haven’t read the novel, and have no plans to do so, I’ve noticed the exact phenomenon he is describing. So much of the moral outrage that comes from liberals is mere posturing. Occasionally you meet up with one who is sincere (though completely deluded), and who truly believes that we can let the genie of total sexual liberation and “equality” out of the bottle while coming down hard against those who will inevitably transgress the new boundaries and commit acts such as rape, etc. The savvier ones, like the author of this trashy novel, know better. Doing away with God and traditional morality is necessary for their higher purposes, and while it may produce some messy results, they’re okay with a few broken eggs. After all, they’re building the perfect omelette.
 
Let them deny it all they want; it’s no longer plausible to anyone with eyes to see.

Mabel Le Beau writes:

I remember in 8th grade when the rest of the English class was assigned to read books that I’d read years before, I chose to sit in a quiet corner and devour ‘Les Miserables.’ As I recall, it was nightmarish, but at least there was some distance (time) between the events portrayed and me.

Mr. Bertonneau writes:

Believe it or not Les Miserables actually was the in-class assignment in my eighth-grade English class at Malibu Park Junior High School.  That would have been in the fall of 1967 or the spring of 1968 and I’m sure it was a simplified version, or at any rate considerably abridged.  It is true: Hugo’s novel is replete with terrific images – the grinding poverty of the lower classes, the impotent outrage of the unjustly accused, the inhuman proficiency of the government agencies and their functionaries.  But Les Miserables is also replete with gestures and scenes of profound human decency, kindness, and grace.  It is conspicuously not pornographic, never stooping to lascivious description or otherwise abusing the good taste of civilized readers.  The sex-scenes in Thirteen Reasons Whyare actually much rougher, much more graphic (or pornographic) than the sordid scenes in the French naturalist novels – like those by the Brothers Goncourt and Emil Zola.  In Flaubert’s Madame Bovary,readers understand that the titular Emma Bovary has compromised herself, sexually and adulterously, but Flaubert tastefully spares us the physiological detail and any bad language.  When the French state charged Flaubert with obscenity over Madame Bovary, he pointed out in defending himself that he had not endowed his story with so much as one scene that could legitimately be described as lewd.  The lewdness was implied, but it took place “offstage.”  In creepy items like Thirteen Reasons Why there is no supporting image of decency to give context to the prurient interest, which is the sum and total of the tale.

Caroline Beckenhaupt writes:

I am wondering if Mr. Bertonneau allowed his 13-year-old son to read the novel? This type of novel is rather common for young adult reading. It is subversive of their innocence—if they have any left if they’ve been allowed to be immersed in popular culture. I have a 12-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl and I’d never allow them to read this stuff. I believe the morals and images in this type of junk can form a young person’s spirit and soul if there is no counter-balance of family or faith. 

Yuck! It brings back memories of stuff I read at that age that damaged my soul.

Mr. Bertonneau writes:

Caroline Beckenhaupt asks a legitimate question: “I am wondering if Mr. Bertonneau allowed his 13-year-old son to read the novel?” My son, for the record, is about to be sixteen years old; he is in the tenth grade. 

I sent a letter of protest to the principal of my son’s high school, setting out more or less what I set out in the article for The Thinking Housewife. I thought it better not to make demands, but rather simply to characterize the novel by quoting from it and to make my arguments (a) that it is trashy, hence unfit for teenaged consumption; and (b) that its presence in the curriculum can only be at the expense of some item of genuine literary merit. I did not demand to ban the book or to excuse my son from reading it. I do in fact think that the book should be replaced in the curriculum by some other, better book because not being literary it has no place in a high-school classroom. That is not, however, where I wished to begin. I did also discuss the book with my son, telling him what I thought of it and why, and commiserating with him that, it being an assignment, he was regrettably obliged to read it and to fulfill any homework or class work in which it figured. 

Seeking a special arrangement for my son seemed to me a bad idea, as singling him out would only call attention to him and perhaps complicate his relation to the English teacher. Adolescent males already have enough “attention issues” and I did not want to add to his burden of being a teenaged male. 

And now, as the late Paul Harvey used to say, for the rest of the story… I sent that letter nearly two weeks ago and have so far received no response, not even an acknowledgment of receipt. This type of stonewalling also belongs to the corruption of American secondary education, which tends to regard parents and enemies. The next hierarch in the local district is the superintendent of schools, to whom I will take my complaint. I expect nothing from him either, as this was the experience of a friend who complained about another book in another course. 

I am curious what other parents would have done.

Laura writes:

It is almost impossible for a parent to fight this in isolation. He has to be part of a general uprising from other parents. However, most parents, though they may devote time to volunteering for sporting events or other activities, are completely passive when it comes to course content. Many are so pleased their children are reading anything that they pay no attention to the quality of the books. Many allow their children to watch MTV and trashy television shows anyway. How can they then complain about the same thing in school?

If I were in Mr. Bertonneau’s situation, I would have complained to the principal and superintendent as Mr. Bertonneau has done, which most likely would lead to no change or not immediate change.  I also would have gone into the teacher, stated my objections and told the teacher that my son would have to be given another reading assignment. This wouldn’t have to be done openly. In most schools students routinely leave classrooms for special services and it would not be unusual for him to disappear from that class for a couple of weeks and work in a study hall. I don’t think this would be very embarrassing to the student, but I agree he wouldn’t like it.

The general downward drift in any school is almost inalterable. Despite the many decent teachers, the system itself is rotten, destined by the force of its own inner logic to cater to the lowest common denominator in morality and literature and to progressively erode the influence of even the best of families.

Art writes from Texas:

I myself was reading very few books of that sort when I was 13. [Note: Mr. Bertonneau’s son is 16.] I didn’t even think things had gone to this point, but I guess it is not a surprise. Markus makes a good observation about some liberals. It seems that almost everyone has to draw a line somewhere, and there are some moral lines that the ordinary person has difficulty crossing. This can be seen with Zac Bertschy, editor at Anime News Network. He will zealously reject the Republican and the conservative, but will just as zealously reject those with pedophilic fantasies, even those who merely discuss them. The question is, how long can they maintain this attitude? If it’s only a fantasy everything is okay, isn’t it?

Laura writes:

Returning to the question of what parents can do, it’s worth noting that a school district near where I live allows homeschoolers to come in for any class they wish, which would allow someone in Mr. Bertonneau’s situation to simply withdraw his son from the class and teach him literature himself. In time, as homeschooling grows and taxpayers who have removed their children from public schools become more vocal, this will become more common. I am confident that this is the direction in which we are heading, though it may take a long time to get to the end goal, which is community and parental control over education and genuine marketplace competition. Parents should have the option of picking and choosing among the classes a school offers. There is no reason why schools must be all-or-nothing deals. We have become so accustomed to compulsory schooling and its unyielding, un-democratic demands that we don’t think of how unusual it is that an institution can command such obedience. Our public education system is the single greatest example of successful Fabian-style socialism.   

By the way, the school district that allows homeschoolers to come in for classes is a middle class district with a fair number of homeschoolers. The education revolution is overwhelmingly a middle class phenomenon. That particular district also happens to have one very enlightened administrator.

Karen I. writes:

My eleven-year-old son came home with a headache and a stomach ache a few weeks ago. I was surprised because he was fine when I put him on the bus. I asked when he started feeling sick and he said it was during a movie. I asked if he saw something in the movie that made him feel sick. He finally told me there was a scene that bothered him. It showed a rabbit being killed, cooked over a fire, skinned and eaten. He said it was so bad, he just looked away as much as he could without the other kids noticing. I suspect many kids in the class were doing the same thing. Right after the movie, my son asked to go to the nurse because he felt like he was going to throw up. I was upset that my son was shown a movie in school that I would not have allowed him to see at home. Unfortunately, he was sick for the remainder of the day. I think the stress of the graphic movie scene gave him a migraine. 

I appreciate the warning about the Thirteen Reasons Why book. It sounds awful and I will protest if my children are ever expected to read it. I recall having to watch real, graphic footage from WWII in eighth grade. It gave me nightmares for weeks. Unfortunately, kids won’t admit something they have been exposed to in school is bothering them if it does not seem like it is bothering the other kids.

Mrs. Beckenhaupt adds:

Apologies to Mr. Bertonneau for my hasty math. My heart just aches when I hear of what young people read in school. For example, my stepson, now 27: when he was in 8th grade had to read The Chocolate Wars. This was in a Catholic school. The best I can say is that the point of view of this book was nihilistic and kind of hopeless. I recall being shocked & disturbed myself after reading this book. It’s a common book for kids to have to read, from what I gather. 

Also a friends’ daughter in (honors, natch) English in high school had to read Maya Angelou. I don’t think she’s that great a writer, but more than that, the child can read this sort of stuff by herself, without any assistance/guidance/insight from a teacher. To me, this is dereliction of duty for a teacher to have such unchallenging material in an English class, much less an honors one. 

I firmly believe young people (particulary 13 and above) should be exposed to challenging stuff—like (for example) Plato, Augustine, our founding documents; books written in elevated English that would strain their minds a little (or a lot!) to read. Though one wonders how many contemporary teachers even have the background and intellectual muscle for this sort of endeavor. 

Traditionally many adolescent children start to ask deeper questions about life. It is a sin that schools deny them the heritage of the great writers who also struggled with what it means to lead a life well lived.

Laura writes:

Yes, on all points.

Y. writes:

There are alternatives. 

A friend’s son, who started community college at age 16, is finishing his Associate’s degree at age 18, and is planning to complete a Bachelor’s at a university. They live in Florida where taxpayers pay for qualifying students to earn college credits during their junior and senior years of high school. Financial aspect aside, it shows that many 16-18 year old students are capable of college. 

If there is no college nearby, many colleges offer courses online. Joyce Swann, with a high school diploma herself, educated her ten children through accredited master’s degrees at home using correspondence programs. Since they worked on their courses year-round, their education was accelerated to where their degrees were completed by the time they were 16 or 17. Two of her daughters were teaching at their local community college at age 18.  Two of her children, Alexandra and Benjamin, wrote of their experiences of education at home. 

Arthur Robinson, Ph.D., also provided for education at home. After his wife died, his children mostly educated themselves while he provided supervision but while also continuing his own work. They would earn credit through testing for courses normally taken during the first two years of college and then finish their degrees on campus. His family’s experience and his methodology continues through several pages on this link. (I am not trying to sell their cd set of books; many of the books can be found elsewhere or other books can be used.) 

If the high school cafeteria employees served maggot-covered garbage on your child’s plate, you probably would not tell your child he is obliged to eat it. You would find an alternative.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

Since you are enthusiastic about homeschooling, you may have watched the homeschooling debate on Dr. Phil several years ago. I found out later on a homeschooling forum about what happened before the show: the way in which Phil & his bunch hijack, manipulate, stage, script, sabotage and rig their shows and even misrepresent the opinions of their guests. My husband thinks that everything you see on television is to “sell soap”: you know, make it all edgy & “controversial” and increase your ratings. I do not agree with him. I think that certain parties are feeling threatened; I know it’s bad in some parts of Europe for homeschoolers. And in USA, it appears from what I read and hear that homeschooling is being clamped down on, bit by bit. In any event, regardless of where you stand on any of this, you must admit the following is nothing if not entertaining. I am scratching my head over why anyone would go to such extremes as the following event to make negative points about – homeschooling, of all things.

Laura writes:

Homeschoolers do have problems in Europe, but general conditions have been progressively improving in this country. Colleges are happy to have homeschoolers. A sizeable market of businesses sell books, curricula and courses specifically to the homeschool market and there are many active homeschool organizations. There is not the slightest possibility of this movement being curtailed. It is only going to grow. As it does, more cooperative ventures, such as parent-supervised schools, evolve and these make it much less taxing and daunting for parents.

John P. writes:

I have no wish to insult Karen I. but I feel compelled to point out that, not so long ago, eleven-year-old boys would have been actually killing, skinning and cooking rabbits, a very useful skill to have. When I was a boy I was already too effete to clean fish but many of my boyhood friends were required to do so by their fathers as part of becoming a man.

As to graphic footage of WWII, girls should not be required to see such things but it’s different for boys. In addition, many nurses saw terrible things in WWII and kept a level head. To me, this is just another example of how the school system takes necessary experiences and perverts and distorts them to serve an ideological agenda.

Laura writes:

Coed education has led to the abolition of boys.

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