Re: catcher copies..Penguin paper back
Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Fri, 22 Aug 1997 07:39:47 -0500
> Wow! All of the copies here (Australia) and in Britain are censored too
> I havn't ever seen an uncensored copy! What does it say?
Fuck you.
Literally: that's what it says!
This is the reason The Catcher in the Rye is so often on the "top 10" list
of banned books in the U.S., where people are fond of saying things like,
"I believe in freedom of speech, but --" One of the most cited reasons is
the use of "obscene" language, including the sections where Holden sees the
words "fuck you" written as graffiti, and he concludes that "if you had a
milllion years to do it in, you couldn't run out even half the 'Fuck you'
signs in the world. It's impossible."
So, the book itself is published in unexpurgated form in the U.S., but
because of this grave menace to the morals of young people <*grin*>, school
boards and community groups often try to have Catcher banned from schools
and libraries. It's ironic, because if people actually bothered to read
what Holden is saying, they would realize that he himself is
extraordinarily sensitive in the welfare of little kids, and that he wishes
he could protect them from the harsh realities of the world, if only it
were possible.
That's how it is done in the U.S.
We have a fine set of laws about certain liberties, but we get people who
decide they know better and try to ban the material with which they
disagree. The American Library Association has an annual "Banned Books "
activity, where they attempt to educate people about the banning of books
in parts of the U.S. It's not a case of Catcher being published here with
the text transformed into "--- you"; it's that moralizers try to get rid of
the book completely, generally under the pretext of protecting children,
and generally rationalized along the logic of "I believe in freedom of
speech, but this book crosses the line."
And there is our key to all this: Any time someone announces "I believe
_____, but _____," duck your head and pay very close attention to what
follows: it's almost guaranteed that the speaker is about to rationalize
why some point of view needs to be suppressed.
We occasionally mention Kurt Vonnegut in this list. In Vonnegut's
collection of bits and pieces of his prose, "Palm Sunday," he has a
wonderful section called "The First Amendment," about the business of
banning books. (He mentions Salinger, and Vonnegut of course is involved,
too, because his "Slaughterhouse-Five" is also routinely banned.)
Vonnegut says that the law "sounds more like a dream, which reads as
follows: 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the
freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.' " And he
concludes, in part, "How could a nation with such a law raise its children
in an atmosphere of decency? It couldn't -- it can't. So the law will
surely be repealed soon for the sake of children."
That was written in 1980 or so. It is amusing to consider how Vonnegut
pretty much anticipated the Communications Decency Act, which presumed to
police speech on the Internet (and which was struck down as
unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court this summer). Vonnegut in his
later novels sometimes gets annoyingly mannered; "Palm Sunday" makes you
realize exactly why generations of readers are seduced by his work, because
it is bold and generous and funny and wise.
It's a sobering lesson for those of us who read Catcher in its original
state that some of our "bananafish" fellow travelers are not quite seeing
the same book we see in the U.S.
Question for all of us in the peanut gallery out here: Have you run across
a ban on The Catcher in the Rye yourself? If you did, what were the
circumstances? What did you do? Did anyone challenge the banning of the
book?
--tim o'connor