![[Logo]](/images/101ReasonsLogo.png "101 Reasons to Stop Writing")
It’s Banned Books Week in the US, an annual event promoted by the American Library Association, where librarians take a break from shushing and congratulate themselves for fighting the good fight against age-appropriate reading material.
It’s fitting that this year’s visual theme is piracy, as libraries themselves are veritable Aladdin’s Caves of copyright abuse, blatantly encouraging their customers to read the books cover to cover, even take them home, without paying a cent up front — all the while generating fat profits from “late fees”, which can run to several dollars, depending on how many months pass before you find the book again under the couch and guilt yourself into returning it.
Readers outside the US may be surprised to know that America’s little flirtation with democracy back in the 1770’s spawned a subculture of special interest groups, full of fundamentalist nutbags and politically correct DoubleThinkers who believe it is their obligation to get elected to their local school boards so they can tell librarians that salacious word-porn like Catcher in the Rye shouldn’t be available to children who haven’t been fully indoctrinated into their parents’ worldview yet. In the more enlightened European nations, like Australia, we have virtually done away with such interest groups, trusting in the entropic force of government bureaucracy to make the process of objecting to library books so onerous (and devoid of public soapboxing) that only the most media-friendly soundbite protest has any chance of success.
The Banned Books campaign’s public message is opposition to censorship — their tagline is “Free People Read Freely”, which they’ve registered as a trademark so you can’t use it freely — but the real message is Trust Your Librarian. Apparently, letting the government or special interest groups dictate what books are or aren’t available in your local library is “censorship”, but letting the librarian decide is called “selection”.
It’s an important distinction, because while people may organise local opposition to local pressure to ban a certain book from a local library, there is no national campaign to throw open the floodgates and ensure that every book is available at every library. With limited buying budgets, and the constant pressure to justify the library’s existence by stocking the kind of populist nonsense that people actually want to read, librarians must balance their desire to build the New Library of Alexandria in Cowpoke, Iowa, with the very real problem that they don’t have time to read, let alone consult the public over most of the new titles they order.
Librarians want the selection process to be completely opaque, not because they relish the unchecked power to shape the reading habits of the tiny percentage of the population who use the local library, but because attending local council meetings to debate the literary merits versus subtle homosexual agenda of a 24-page children’s book is a fsckin’ waste of time.
The proponents of Banned Books Week would like to encourage you to mark the occasion by (re)reading a book that was banned at some point but is now freely available, ostensibly to celebrate the moral victory of elegantly written smut over mindless prudishness. If you’re going to do this, though, do it in style — skip Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Ulysses, and go straight for Hitler’s Mein Kampf or the Marquis de Sade’s One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom. This will serve several purposes:
I would advise against borrowing any Sade from a local library, if indeed you can find one, because the pages are likely to be so encrusted with stains of a dubious nature that the FBI could use it as a DNA database.
If you support Banned Books Week, there are several web badges on their website that you can display on your blog. Here’s another one you can use, courtesy of me:
If, however, you believe that books aren’t banned often enough, here’s an image you can use:
I think you know which one I’m using.
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Back when the anti-censorship magazine Gauntlet first started up, the first issue featured a quick quiz to determine your level of tolerance toward free speech and exactly how far you’d go to protect the concept. It’s not surprising that the questions were graded on free speech/passive and censorship/active axes, because while lots of assholes are willing to work to ban books (as witnessed by the Georgia nutjob who keeps changing her criteria for wanting the Harry Potter books banned because she can’t just say “They’re anti-Christian!” and get what she wants), a ridiculously small number of individuals are willing to make active efforts to expand the limits of free speech. After all, it’s a lot easier for bookstores to promote the idea that buying banned books somehow protects the right to sell them than for the bookstores to do something more forceful.
As for the actual banning is concerned, I’m reminded of an incident when I was working for Film Threat Video Guide fifteen years ago. After spending three months researching a major article on the various forces in the American South that pushed for various film censorship agendas (including a then-new group in Fort Worth that wanted retroactive ratings on all videos sold or rented in Texas that also covered “Occult” and “Subversive” subject matter), the final article was cut at the last second so publisher Chris Gore could wank for three pages on how he wished that his short films would get banned so they’d sell better. This is why I advocate complete freedom for all artistic venues, because the best way to prevent another Chris Gore film from being made is to allow any and all to see the previous ones without government or church interference. In the long run, Proverbs 26:11 works a lot better than any amount of suppression.
Thomas Sowell calls Banned Books Week NATIONAL HOGWASH WEEK.
I don’t mean to sound like a pretentious ass with the following comment. I just like reading philosophy is all.
I was reading Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche) today and I saw a quote in there you might like to add to your cycling collection:
“Everyone being allowed to learn to read ruins in the long run not only writing but also thinking.”
Unrelated to the topic, but I thought you might appreciate it. Enjoy
My dear Low, how could you think that quoting Nietzsche would sound pretentious?
Interesting quote, though. Nietzche sure was a grumpy bastard.
Um, exactly who in America decided it was worth this much energy to decide which gardening magazines and Harold Robbins novels the 80 year olds of the Western World ™ should be reading?
May I suggest something?
1. Ban as many books as physically possible in the US. Preferably not just porny ones.
2. Remove them from libraries
3. Pack ‘em up in crates.
4. Send them to Spain where we have a trillion horny octogenarians who can check em out and
a. Burn a few
b. Send a few to Poland (they’re in need of banned books there, I hear)
c. Give me the three or four dozen that are good.
See? Problem solved.
Sean, you’re absolutely right. If I was aiming for pretension I really should have gone for Kant or Heidegger. Nietzsche is just so low-brow. Also, no matter how many times I type it, I’m always startled every time I spell “Nietzsche” correctly.
I was invited to read at a big “banned books” event on my university campus. Imagine my chagrin when they asked me to read a selection from Catch-22. Um, excuse me, no. I brought my own copy of Little Black Sambo and was not so politely informed that wouldn’t be appropriate. So much for opposing censorship. *sigh*
[...] Banned Books Week rolls around again, take a moment out from protesting the piffling arguments about whether [...]