Seduction of the Innocent Read Online Free PDF

past me to reach across the desk and shake hands with Maggie, who had not risen, then extended his hand to me, and we shook. His firm handshake stopped just short of showing off. I also got another curt nod, and half-expected him to click his heels together.
    I gestured to the visitor’s chair, the mate of mine, and he sat, feet on the floor, arms folded, chin as high as Bryce’s on the latter’s exit.
    “Thank you for accepting my invitation,” Maggie said. “May I order up some coffee for you?”
    “Thank you, no. I confess I am here more out of curiosity than anything. I am as prey to that human frailty as any layman.”
    I wanted to point out that curiosity wasn’t exactly a frailty, but this was Maggie’s show. I settled back comfortably and sipped my glass of Coke—Bryce had squeezed a lime in, bless him—and listened.
    “I hope we’re not adversaries,” Maggie said. “But we are obviously on opposite sides of this comic-book controversy.”
    He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “That fact, of course, fuels my interest. As it happens, I caught that broadcast Monday night, when you and that television host and my friend Lehman got into your heated discussion.” His smile was a thin line that curled at either end, patronizing but genuine. “I must admit, it made good viewing. I was amused by your comparison of comic books to traditional children’s fairy tales.”
    She shrugged. “I believe it to be apt.”
    “With all due respect, Miss Starr, I certainly don’t. Or is ‘Mrs.’ your preference?”
    “Professionally, it’s ‘Miss.’ And surely you can’t deny, Doctor, that children’s literature has always been violent. There’s the grimness of the Grimm Brothers, Peter Rabbit’s farmer with a shotgun, Peter Pan’s pirates.”
    “Yeah,” I said, not able to resist, “and what about those talking clams in Alice in Wonderland that got eaten up? Maybe your buddy Albert Fish read that as a kid.”
    Maggie flashed me a look that only I could read, but the shrink merely smiled. “You’ve read up on me, Mr. Starr.”
    “Part of my job around here, research. I’m clearly not the brains.”
    That amused him, just a little. He was taking no offense, I’ll give him that much.
    “I think all of us,” he said, “prize the books we read and loved as children. Why, many of us save and even cherish the worn volumes themselves, those frayed mementoes of our youth, and carry them with us into adulthood.”
    He was right. I had still had the copies of Spicy Models, published by the major, that I’d lifted from his editorial offices when I was in the seventh grade.
    “But it’s hard even to imagine, isn’t it,” he went on, in his thick accent and perfect English, “any adult or even adolescent who has outgrown comic books ever dreaming of keeping any of those garish pamphlets over time, out of sentiment or any other reason.”
    He might have been wrong about that. My Dick Tracy, Dan Dunn and Secret Agent X-9 Big Little Books were in my closet on a shelf. Next to the stack of Spicy Models.
    “Be that as it may,” Maggie said, “many comic books are perfectly harmless. Or do you object to the likes of Donald Duck or Little Lulu ?”
    “Such trash is less harmful than the crime comic books,” he allowed. “I’m afraid the combination of simple text and crude pictures serves only to discourage children from reading real books. Inhibits their imagination. Still, the sale of such material, I don’t protest.”
    I said, “But don’t you lump the superhero-type of book in with the crime comics?”
    He nodded. “I do.” His eyes met Maggie’s. “And this is what, I’m afraid, does indeed make us adversaries of sorts. Your syndication service has distributed the comic strip versions of some of the most dangerous of these characters.”
    Dangerous. That word again.
    “The undercurrent of homosexuality in the Batwing comic book,” he said as if tasting something sour, “is extremely