Thursday, March 28, 2024 -
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Sanitization

There are certain writers who are machines. Every year, without fail, they turn out at least one new novel. Grisham is one, and Elin Hilderbrand has become one too, becoming synonymous with the summer beach read.

She’s not the kind of author I expect to pop up in a JTA news story. But she did, because her latest book, Golden Girl, included an unseemly reference to Anne Frank, which the publisher announced would be removed from further printings.

I order books from the library months in advance, so the version I just finished included the Frank allusion. I was reminded once again why I oppose the current cultural impulse for sanitization. For one, it artificially constricts our understanding.

Recently, two law professors suggested that the infamous and immoral Dred Scott decision no longer be studied extensively, as it is humiliating and demeaning. Isn’t that exactly why it should be studied? How can one understand racism in the US if a significant episode is excised?

The decision also strongly influenced the 14th Amendment, which to this day determines US citizenship. In a legal system of case law, is it not essential for lawyers to understand the evolution of any given law?

Sanitization also whitewashes. Hilderbrand’s Anne Frank reference wasn’t particularly horrible, but by removing it the reader will not know that she thinks it’s appropriate to compare a recent Duke University graduate raised in an unhappy home to a young girl forced to hide in an attic to avoid genocide.

Future readers will not know that Hilderbrand thinks that being a refugee — typically someone who is fleeing torture or death — is a casual enough experience that light-heartedly comparing it to secretly bunking in a Nantucket mansion is proportional, comparable and appropriate.

Has Hilderbrand or her editor actually read Frank’s diary or know anything real about her story, including her tragic demise in a Nazi concentration camp? I assume not, otherwise the use of her experience as a cultural meme would be shameful.

Be it ignorance, insensitivity or idiocy, Hilderbrand chose to use Anne Frank as a cultural meme. Why let her pretend she didn’t?

Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected]

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