In a three-way conversation with friends a few days ago, the subject turned to books and, in particular, the things we found most offensive in the novels we read. Although we are close friends of about the same age who attend the same church and share similar world views, we found we were bothered by very different things in the novels we read.
Is it the graphic sex that bothers us? Well, yes ... or no. The person I expected might be most bothered by the sex turned out to like it. Was it the bad language? Well, yes, but not to the same degree for each of us. Was it the violence? We all read thrillers, and no violence at all in a thriller can be dull. But even so, extreme and graphic violence can be offensive. What about certain social or political viewpoints? Well, it depends.
I have read Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolitia twice in my life, once as a college student when it was assigned reading for a class and again when I was in my 70s. Very different things bothered me in each reading, I noticed.
As a young man, the violence when Humbert Humbert kills another man disturbed me most. I hardly noticed the sex, probably because it was mostly implied and not explicit. When I read the novel again decades later, I hardly noticed the violence, probably because I have read so much fictional violence in the meantime, but the the sex between a middle-aged man and a young girl offended me. At this point in life I could read between the lines.
The novel had stayed the same, but I had changed.
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