Steve Martin is obviously a man of many talents — from acting, to stand-up comedy, to balloon animal artistry.
He’s also a published author, as evidenced by his new book Steve Martin Writes the Written Word, which collects several of his essays, novellas and short stories in one volume. In addition to his blow-job-heavy I Love Lucy fanfic, the book also contains the 2000 novella Shopgirl, which was eventually turned into an embarrassing movie.
To promote the new book, Martin recently guested on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, where he explained the difference between a novel and a novella. “You start writing a novel, and you just sort of run out of gas,” Martin joked. “You send it to the publisher and add an ‘la’ at the end of ‘novel,’ and you go, ‘Why, novella that’s very special!’”
Kimmel then asked Martin if he hid Shopgirl “within the pages of this book” because it has been “banned from Florida schools.” While the question elicited laughter from the audience, the host wasn’t joking. Martin’s book really was banned in Florida — but somehow not because of its baffling misunderstanding of feminine hygiene.
In 2023, Collier County, Florida banned more than 300 books from its school libraries “out of an effort to comply with state law HB 1069,” which allows “expanded mechanisms for challenging books” if the content “depicts or describes sexual conduct.” In addition to Shopgirl, the list of prohibited works also included repugnant filth such as Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey and Anna Karenina by noted smut-peddler Leo Tolstoy.
At the time, Martin cheekily thanked Collier County for banning his book, pointing out that “people who want to read it will have to buy a copy!”
And now it seems as though the ban may have actually paid off. “They banned my novella Shopgirl in Florida,” Martin told Kimmel. “And I’ll tell you one thing, nothing sells (a book) like having it banned.”
He’s likely not kidding. In recent years, books targeted by right-wing governments have seen a spike in sales following local bans due to “heightened media attention.” For example, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, “topped Amazon’s best-seller’s list after a school board in Tennessee banned it” in 2022.
Martin did observe that being banned in Florida puts him in stellar literary company. “So many famous, great books have been banned,” the comedian argued. “For example, did you know that the book Big Butts was banned?”
Although, as far as we know, Big Butts did not become a bestseller.
