Re: Banned Books

Tim O'Connor (tim@roughdraft.org)
Fri, 26 Sep 1997 11:52:57 -0500

> Meanwhile, hardly anyone is writing books with really dangerous ideas in
> them now, and the ones that do aren't getting published, and the
> published ones aren't getting read.  Why not dedicate a week to
> promoting *contemporary* books that are as subversive as Catcher was in
> its day?

A few years back, Bret Easton Ellis came under heavy (and ham-handed)
attack for his novel "American Psycho."  It was a nasty book about a nasty
killer -- not everyone has the skill to make a Hannibal Lecter character
sympathetic! -- and it drew condemnation from every direction.

His publisher dropped out, writers of all ideological angles attacked the
book, and we saw from both the left and the right the kind of empty-headed
"I didn't read it and I don't have to read it to know it's bad" logic that
leads to suppression of books.  Even writers I normally respect came along
with Op-Ed pieces attacking the book.  Eventually it found its way into
print and later into paperback, and that was that.  Society failed to fall
apart.

The only reason I suspect we don't see more contemporary books banned is
that, as you said, readership seems to be down, and there's not as much
awareness of current books as there is of the tried-and-true oldies, which
have saturated pop culture.  The exceptions when new books are banned seem
to be those books that are written for children.

That would make sense, since Mommy and Daddy may not read new books, but
they do sometimes read to their children, and in doing so, discover
material they find objectionable.

By the way, I hasten to add that while I am not anyone's parent, I
understand that parents might want to shelter their children from certain
material, and I respect that.  What I don't respect is when those same
parents want to prevent me or anyone else from seeing that material.

I mentioned Kurt Vonnegut in an earlier post today.  When he was speaking
on Monday, and was asked about Banned Books Week, he said that he couldn't
understand why Slaughterhouse-Five was banned, because you could learn more
about sex from a fourteen-year-old than you could from that novel.

--tim o'connor