After Dinner Conversation

Volume 2, Issue 7, July 2021

The Book of Approved Words

Can you change your thoughts by changing your words? Do you have an obligation to speak the truth, even a politically incorrect one? In this work of philosophical short fiction, the narrator is a government approved writer. His job is to update published works by deleting words that have been made illegal; words like Easter, retard, and faggot. Words that might offend anyone. The narrator leaves his office to pick up the newest edition of the Bureau’s Book Of Approved Words. Of course, in getting the new edition, he must turn in the old edition. The narrator goes home, frustrated. Each year, it seems, there are less and less words. The narrator finds his brother-in-hiding, Silas, waiting in his house. He works with the Freedom Of Speech Movement and has a request, he would like a copy of the old banned books the narrator received from his grandfather that he keeps hidden. They plan to upload the books to the net for others to read. The next day the narrator is reassigned from writing movie reviews to writing music reviews because he wrote one to many “anything-but-glowing,” movie reviews. He agrees to provide an earlier edition of a dictionary to his brothers group. The narrator submits the old edition dictionary to be published on the net, his career has come to an end. He is now an outlaw too.