Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life is in stores. I’ve been waiting impatiently for the March 2^nd release date.

When I walked into Barnes and Noble to purchase it, it was not on the front display. This did not surprise me. Peterson is, after all, considered “alt-light” and subversive. The Obamas figured prominently in the front display, as did books on the environment and fiction by authors Janet Evanovich, James Patterson and Dean Koontz.

Neither was it in the New Non-Fiction section. Not in Sociology, Self-Help, Psychology. With my brow furrowed, I could feel my heart racing with literary injustice. It’s a brand-new release from an incredibly popular and brilliant professor, writer and lecturer, I thought. Where the fuck was it?

I kept walking around, but it simply was not displayed. This is impossible, I thought. I sought out an employee and asked politely if she could help me find Dr. Jordan Peterson’s new book. With just a millisecond of dubious hesitation, she smiled and led me to the display.

We walked. And walked. And walked. All the way to the back caverns of some obscure sociological section I would assume is reserved for books written by and about the criminally insane. It took so long to get to the display that I began wishing I had packed a lunch. Finally, we arrived at a table in the far corner of the store, behind a display of candles, journals, and odd literary sundries.

That is where Dr. Jordan Peterson’s book was displayed. On a narrow wall, obscured by a display of scented pencils. That would be akin to Dr. Peterson himself running the Dumbo ride at Disneyland. I mean, how dare they? I turned to the associate and asked, “What, your store doesn’t have a basement?”

She was not amused. She looked strangely at me the whole morning as I worked in the café, maybe thinking I was going to pull out a firearm and force her to read Green Eggs and Ham.

Listen, I don’t know why Jordan Peterson’s book was in a corner. Maybe it was just coincidence, maybe it will be placed in front at a later time. It’s not the point anyway. Book store owners can put books wherever they want. It doesn’t matter. Because the people who want to read them will find them no matter where they are.

While I may not know how to navigate automatic doors and soap dispensers, I am an intellectual. I read everything by everyone. I don’t choose a book based on the author’s political beliefs, sexual orientation, or stance on global warming. On any given day I could be reading a memoir from Michelle Obama, a sociological study by Malcolm Gladwell, a biography on Joseph Mengele, an autobiography by Matthew McConaughey, a treatise by Gloria Steinem, something by Robert Greene, a book about the black arts, *a chronological history of the nipple, a suspense novel by Gillian Flynn or a work of comedic genius by David Sedaris. I once even plowed through Greta Thunberg’s self-indulgent No One is Too Small to Make a Difference in the time it took me to chug a small caramel macchiato.

I felt it was an important book to read. Isn’t this what staying informed and educated is about?

I follow Dr. Peterson on Instagram, and I enjoy the daily discourse and back-and-forth. But in the past few years, it has been suggested to me that I should not be reading his books. That he is subversive. That his followers are dangerous.

We are? I am? But why? I need these answers.

The first thing I have decided to do is to re-read 12 Rules for Life to see if there is something I missed. Something dangerous, as critics purport. Are there Satanic rituals in there? I also decided to do some more rudimentary research. Yesterday I found an article from The Guardian by Dorian Lynskey. Maybe Dorian can clear this up, I thought.

Yikes.

Here are some ways the article referred to Dr. Peterson:

“The culture war’s Weapon X. Heavyweight intellectual armature. Tough-love stern-dad.  Doughty truth-teller. The most important and influential Canadian thinker since Marshall McLuhan. The most influential public intellectual in the western world, ‘a kind of secular prophet … in an era of lobotomized conformism.’ The Professor of Piffle. The stupid man’s smart person. A dangerous goof. An old-fashioned conservative who mourns the decline of religious faith and the traditional family.”

Is that right, Dorian? Well, then, you can step off. Because he’s MY Professor of Piffle.

According to Lynskey, Peterson’s fan base is so popular and strong that requests for interviews from public figures who have ever crossed swords with him decline those requests. Supposedly they don’t feel like getting death threats from Peterson’s fan base, a fan base described to be so zealous that the only way they can be brought to their senses is by Peterson himself. He must tweet them to “back off.”

Who knew?

But this is not me, and I’m certainly not prepared to launch into discourse about post-Marxism. The crux of this post is simply this: Are we what we read? If you look at the books I listed above, and you decided to judge me based on that reading selection, you could easily infer that I am a liberal, a sociologist, a feminist, a climatologist, a Satanist and a Nazi.

Using that logic, isn’t that right?

I am none of those things. I am simply a reader. A lover of words, and thoughts, and concepts, and of the English language. Does Barnes and Noble honestly think that obscuring a new release by a best-selling author is the right thing to do? Moreover, does B&N really think they can keep it out of readers’ hands?

I used to tell my students to never let themselves be defined by geography. Not by salary, not by zip code, not by ethnicity, gender, workplace, income or speech pattern. Who cares where you live, where you work, how you talk? Work on yourself. Because in America, anyone can be anything. That’s the glory that is America.

You can be anything you want to be, we tell our young people. But when we expose them only to the books we deem influential, we send them a different message:

You can be anything you want to be. But only if you’re reading the right books.

I’m not clear on what is going on with Dr. Seuss, because I’m strategically avoiding the news until I can gather my thoughts about it. But I know I’m distressed. As an English teacher, it pains me that any book would be banned or taken out of publication simply because one day someone in a little room with too much time on his hands decided it contained “subversive thoughts or images.”

Any image or thought can be made subversive by an individual who has decided to make them so.

*There is no such book. I looked it up. But it has great potential.