Re: Banned Books

Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Fri, 26 Sep 1997 14:13:06 -0700

Jon Tveite wrote:

> Just a few (almost) random thoughts...
>
> Does anyone else find it a little odd that "Banned Books Week" has
> become so... uncontroversial?... boring?... pointless, maybe?  I mean,
> sure, maybe some of the teachers and librarians and booksellers who
> support BBW have actually read these banned books, but I would guess
> that most Americans would never have heard of 75% if not for the list.
> That includes, of course, most of the fundie wackos protesting the books
> in the first place.  Not that I'm *opposed* to BBW or anything -- I just
> have a hard time seeing it as much more than another come-on from Barnes
> and Noble.  (Yes, I know I'm too cynical to breathe.)  It's like the
> powers-that-be are saying, "There's no harm in endorsing freedom of
> expression -- since nobody actually reads anymore."
>

Nobody reads anymore? Maybe you should join some more literary mailing lists.
The number of James Joyce fanatics and Thomas Pynchon fanataics alone (not to
mention Salinger) really amazed me when I first joined those (these)
list.Have you ever lived in a foreign country where books are banned by the
government, not just school boards of parochial parishes? I'm not even
talking about a drastic society like Iran; Great Britain will suffice. (Hi
helena, what's being banned on the archipelago THESE days?) Basically, you
never miss your water til your well runs dry and I guarantee that if you
lived in another country that doesn't value freedom of speech as much as
other countries you'd snap out of your cynicism.

> Or maybe it's upsetting because the things that get books banned these
> days are so irrelevent to me.  Tasteful, affirming depictions of
> homosexuality, for example -- only a dogmatic moron would argue that
> books containing them should be banned.  Maybe I'm jaded, but it's hard
> for me to get really excited about the struggle against these morons.
>

The older you get the more you'll realize that freedom is not something that
is "achieved," it's not a plateau one gets to and then rests. It is a
CONSTANT struggle. There will always be ignorance to combat, but luckily,
there will also always be enlightened souls you'll find that you can forge
forces with in the name of freedom.

> Which leads me to another rant: does anyone else detect a smug,
> self-congratulatory note in celebrating "Banned Books Week?"  As if to
> say, "Isn't it great that we've come through the dark ages?  Aren't we a
> smart, tolerant bunch for allowing Catcher in the Rye back on our
> library shelves?  People used to be so ignorant, didn't they?"
>

It's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.

> 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?
>

Point well taken, however it is not until said books fall into the hands of
people who want to ban them do the titles become "household names." Contrary
to popular belief, Banned Book Week is not just a gimmicky promotion drummed
up by Barnes & Noble to have another excuse for a sale. I remember first
being aware of Banned Book Week when I was a teenager back in the late 70s,
long before chain bookstores started to make a killing in the open market,
and my school district had quite a struggle one year (the year I graduated
from high school) with these misguided folk. Not only was I writing letters
to my local newspaper at the time, I even wrote a speech for my high school
graduation class that had at it's core an illustration of how ironic it is
(was....is) that even though we had reached an age where we could drive,
vote, have all sorts of privileges that come with age, that our freedoms to
choose which books we could or could not read were being endangered.

> >From the article:
>
> > "Saying, 'I don't want my child to read material is OK,'" said Krug.
> > "But saying, 'I don't want my child to read this book and to protect my
> > child I want you to remove the book so no one else has access to it,'
> > that's a horse of a different color."
>
> This is what it comes down to, for me: people want to the sanitize the
> culture at large so they don't have to do their jobs as parents.  It is
> the parents' responsibility to teach children how to think for
> themselves within the value system the parents want to pass on.  Not
> only is it stupid, unrealistic, undemocratic, and wrong to seek &
> destroy every potential challenge to that value system in the child's
> environment, it is also counterproductive: an untested ideology will
> blow over in the first stiff wind the grown-up child faces alone.
> Furthermore, it seems like an admission that the value system isn't all
> that great to begin with, if they think little Billy is going to forget
> everything he learned in Sunday School the first time he stumbles across
> a "beaver shot" (to quote Vonnegut, among others) on the Internet.
>

I agree.

> Okay, I'll stop now.
>
> Jon (Tveite) <jontv@ksu.edu>
> _________________________________________________________________
> "Well you say that it's gospel but I know that it's only church."
>
>                              Tom Waits, "That Feel," Bone Machine

  "Why cook dinner? Why make my bed? Why come home at all?"

Tom Waits, "Fall of Troy"

Malcs