Public objection to Chris Grayling’s proposed ban on sending books to prisoners, now declared unlawful by the high court, culminated in a high-profile protest outside Pentonville Prison in London earlier this year. In the intervening months, disputes between members of political and literary institutions were of a telling nature. There was much idealised rhetoric about an access to books symbolising the “values which distinguish our country”, designed to counter the snide elitism of a certain minister claiming that prisoners are “not waiting for their next Jane Austen”. Perhaps it is appropriate that an altercation over books was turned into a narrative of good against evil. Stories provide us with heroes and villains, but literature looks beyond that, and banning books for those who society has cast as the bad guys deprives them of access to such a perspective.
Studies from 2014 have shown that 48% of the prison population cannot read, write or count to the standard expected of an 11-year-old. Wider problems in the education system have cut off many from even being eligible to receive the benefits that reading can bring, suggesting that the furore surrounding the proposed ban signifies our unwillingness to come to terms with our own failings as a nation. The redemptive power of books – as if independent from pre-existing education and firm foundations of literacy – is a dream that we all want to believe in. Accepting that a poor start in life can have inescapable consequences, that redemption is unlikely when so much is stacked against you, would mean facing up to widespread social problems many would rather shy away from.
Reality stands out clearly among the narratives. Avi Steinberg, a former Boston prison librarian, did not shy away from unpalatable truths in a previous interview. Despite once having been mugged in a park by an ex-con who boasted that he’d still got two overdue titles, his experiences gave him insight into this matter that seems to elude the well- meaning literary establishment: “Prisoners weren’t there to transform themselves, or be transformed – but they would still come to the library.”
The television series The Wire is famously reliant on the experiences of its cast and crew which make it a reflection of prison reality – former policemen, Baltimore journalists, drug dealers – and for incarcerated D’Angelo Barksdale in the second season, the prison book club is highly symbolic of both his attempt to reform and the futility of it. D’Angelo, when discussing The Great Gatsby, picks up on Gatsby’s library of unread books as falsely symbolic of his education and his unfounded reputation as an ‘Oxford man’. He both relates to and scorns Gatsby’s attempt to re-invent himself as a way of coming to terms with his own past: “It doesn’t matter that some fool say you different, ‘cause the only thing that make you different is what you really do, or what you really go through.” The potential for redemption that we want to see in books is set against a much harsher reality when D’Angelo is killed for co-operating with the police.
However, the galvanising of support in protest against the proposed law achieved its clearly worthy aim, and perhaps it is the symbolism of that which counts. A book ban would suggest that inmates have been given up on, that they are now part of a system with no contact with the outside world, subject to its unstimulating atmosphere and to the limited content of its libraries – and that chances to reform and rehabilitate are being chipped away at bit by bit. It means that we have to fight these smaller battles to prevent a future where there is no more fight to be had.
At the Pentonville protest Carol Ann Duffy read her poem Prayer through a megaphone; a poem in which prayers are answered and deep consolation is found in seemingly small and unexpected ways – as in books for example. It was subtly appropriate to the issue at hand, bringing some meaning and nuance into a protest that is, after all, a spectacle – a visual vehicle for conveying black-and-white messages, seldom doing matters of complexity justice – as literature ought to do.
