RE: Banned Books -- reply
Jon Tveite (jontv@ksu.edu)
Tue, 30 Sep 1997 11:16:11 -0500
Patti Larrabee <Patti.Larrabee@hsc.utah.edu> wrote:
> Hear, Hear Malcolm. I, too, remember Banned Book Week from the seventies. It
> may have been around even longer for all I know. It was not dreamed up by
> Barnes & Noble.
I didn't mean to impugn anyone's fond memories of Banned Book Weeks gone
by. I'm sure, like many other cultural objects, it doesn't mean quite
as much as it once did. I guess that was my subtext: that BBW, whatever
its original intent, seems now to be celebrated mostly by retailers. On
the campus where I teach, at least, the only reference to it was a
banner in the Union bookstore, which has never been a hotbed of free
expression in the past.
> People don't read anymore?!? Get real. Thanks to Oprah
> people are reading more then ever before, and the authors she chooses are
> really quite good.
In the interest of accuracy, I would have to insist that I didn't say
"People don't read anymore." I was trying to read between the lines of
Banned Book Week, and what I found there is that The Establishment must
not be too concerned about these books which have been banned in the
past -- possibly because very few people read them -- if BBW is so
uncontroversial now.
Since you brought it up, however, I would say that while people *do*
still read, they do so very differently than in the past. I think books
are now seen, by most people, as just another form of entertainment.
People want diversion, generally, from their reading material -- usually
mindless, sometimes not, but seldom intellectually challenging or
dangerous. I'm not going to comment on Oprah's list -- the only name
I've heard is Toni Morrison, who is certainly brilliant and has a lot to
say -- but most of the "serious literary fiction" that sells, these
days, is hardly likely to stir up any social dissent (would anyone
bother to ban The Bridges of Madison County?). Granted, there have
always been plenty of mindless books published and consumed in great
numbers, but I think that earlier in this century there was also a
relatively wide audience for writers like JD Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut,
James Baldwin, William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Sylvia Plath, etc., who
did a lot more to challenge the status quo than most of the authors who
are being widely read today.
> As for keeping a vigil
> on banned books we can't let our guard down. A children's book by Cynthia
> Rylant called Dog Heaven was banned in the Bible belt. Why? Because it
> insinuated that dogs went to heaven. Evidently this goes against most
> fundamentalist religions. (there is a sequeal now, Cat Heaven).
No, we can't let our guards down, but this is a perfect example of why
BBW has lost much of its meaning. Imagine BBW 50 years from now, when
we look back and celebrate our right to read about doggie heaven --
doesn't quite have the same grandeur as Anne Frank or Lolita, does it?
Attempts to ban a book like this are advertisements for the stupidity of
the Christian Right. I guess what I was and am trying to say is that
commercialism and disuse pose much greater threats to freedom of
expression than these fundie freaks do.
Jon