My seventh-grade English teacher censored one of my first published works.
I wrote a book report about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by John Le Carré. The teacher at Eliot Jr. High in Altadena thought the book was inappropriate and gave me a zero. Maybe she confused it with a James Bond story with its sexually-charged character names. In contrast, Le Carré’s George Smiley often was seen as part of the furniture. He lived inside his head, thinking. That’s where I lived!
Note: Richard Burton is not on the cover.
My mom took the teacher’s opinion as a disparagement of our home’s bookshelf. After all, she and my dad paid for and read most of those books. She “marched down there” to give “that teacher a piece of my mind.”
At the dinner table that night, she reported the day’s event to my dad. “I told that woman that my children can read anything that’s on our bookshelf!” No doubt, she used her Bavarian brogue and index finger for emphasis. My mother’s finger-play could rival Lewis Black’s digital displays any day of the week. I imagine her accent probably added to the “discussion” by eliciting, um, THE GERMANS.
I received credit for my work. I also steered clear of reporting my discoveries in Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal, published in 1967. I think George Smiley would have done the same.
Le Carré’s Pigeon Tunnel is in my queue now.
Le Carré died Dec. 12, 2020, at the age of 89.