I Stand Against Book Burning, Unless You’re Burning Goosebumps: The Horror At Camp Jellyjam

I’m taking a stand.

Book burning. As a writer I feel the responsibility to speak up against the practice, particularly in light of recent literary bonfires in Tennessee carried out by ignorant, frightened people. Book burning is the purest form of stupid: a violent and childlike rejection, a performative expulsion of demons that never existed in the first place for the benefit of those that do — cheap fear-mongers who haunt our politics for profit.

Then again, if you’re burning a copy of Goosebumps: The Horror At Camp Jellyjam, go for it. I hate that fucking book. The cover illustration is one of the worst things ever conceived by the human mind, so you can burn copies of that book straight to hell for all I care. I’ll pour the gasoline myself. It would bring me untold pleasure to watch the thirty-third entry in the Goosebumps series bend and warp in the flame, as that uncanny nightmarish artwork is violently banished to the rancid abyss from which it came.

I understand if this is seen as hypocrisy. Knowing my avowed and principled stance against book burning, it’d be perfectly reasonable to ask me “how can you look the other way when this book is being burned, but not other books, such as Goosebumps: Night Of The Living Dummy II?” First of…