One of the best books I’ve read this decade is Dennis Lehane’s incredible Small Mercies. Set in Boston in the summer of 1974 and focused on the city’s violent response to the forced integration of the city’s schools, it’s not for the sensitive reader. The main character, Mary Pat, is a bitter, alcoholic, racist who, when her daughter vanishes, takes on the Irish mob, the police, and, from her perspective, all of Boston to find her child.

Our world was, obviously, a different place in 1974. Much of America was comfortable with and unashamed about their biases. It was an era where kids–I was one–grew up telling dumb Polack jokes, where the n-word was commonly used, and the idea of a same sex relationship was treated with, at best, mocking humor and at worst, violence. On the yellow buses I took home from schools, kids taunted other kids about their weight, their dentition, and their ethnicity and the bus driver paid not a whit of attention. (When I got braces in 5th grade, the kids on my bus in Bloomfield Hills chanted for what seemed like miles Tinsel teeth Duck! Tinsel Teeth Duke. My best friend Suzie, who’d not yet gotten her teeth fixed, heard Buck tooth Ribbit, Ribbit, Ribbit. Buck Tooth Ribbit, Ribbit, Ribbit.)

In this book, Lehane writes Boston as it was. As he began writing it, he was well aware that the language he wished to use would, for some, be unacceptable. He, however, felt it was necessary to tell the story he wished to. In this incisive interview at Shondaland, he said:

That was the very first discussion me and my editor ever had. I said, “I’m not dialing this back. I’ll modulate it. I appreciate the need for nuance in some of this, but I’m not dialing it back fully.” What we did was, we went in, and we looked at any place where it wasn’t clear that these words were coming from Mary Pat’s consciousness; they weren’t coming from the authorial voice. That was the key. We were very scrupulous about that. I’m glad we did it. I have no issues with that. I know this book is going to be brutal to read, and it’s going to be shocking to see those words. People are going to have a lot of trouble with some of it. But, man, my job is not to write to your safe space. If you can’t take it, don’t read the book. Simple as that. But it’s important that people see what the quiet part [of racism] looks like. People don’t understand that this is still happening in very uncoded language. And if you don’t have a real look at that, how are you supposed to even remotely figure out how to address it?

I huzzahed when I read this. I do not believe it is an writer’s responsibility to produce prose that makes readers feel safe, unappalled, or validated. Cranky old lady that I am, I feel that safe spaces let us stay in our own worlds and that can stop us from growing and changing when we face challenges. Being safe makes it harder to adapt to our chaotic and often dangerous world. As Alex Honnold, a few years ago, wrote for the NYT, being fearful of something helps us differentiate between real, physical danger and general anxiety. We can excise all the offensive language or characters we wish, determinedly live removed from society’s evils, but that doesn’t stop the world from being full of horrors. I’ve always felt that confronting that which offends me in books makes me more able to challenge it in person.

We live in a time of what is clearly advancing censorship. Networks, many a school district, colleges and their students, and countless governments are pulling books, cancelling speakers, shutting down groups, etc… whose articulated values they find offensive. This, in most cases, is not a good thing. And, in its own way, the carving out of safe spaces in books isn’t either.

I understand the impulse. There are many topics and genres I try and avoid. I’ve found it easy to keep endless gore, kidnapped children, horrific violence against women—this is the hardest to keep away from—and tales with absolutely no hope out of my life. It’s beyond easy to find out anything you want to about a work of art or literature—that’s what the internet is for.

My dislikes are just that: mine. I am able to discover them without needing a book or film or show being plastered with content warnings which too often function as spoilers. And dislikes are not determinative. I still read and watch things I find upsetting—I think of it as a kind of resistance training. I may not want to know the details of our punitive carceral system but, damn, am I glad I watched Rectify.

All this is to say that here you will not find content warnings on book reviews or posts. There are few topics I’m not willing to at least discuss, even if they are offensive, racy, or seemingly mean. Art, like life, is complicated. I’d rather we challenge the things that scare us than bury them beneath a few words.

Now, I’m off to read Lolita. I hated it in high school—not for its plot but rather its dullness. I don’t know how I’ll see it now. I’ll let you know.