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Banned Books Are Cool
September 29th, 2008
No, I don't mean it. Banned books aren't cool. I mean, the banning isn't cool. But the books? Well, in the words of Judith Krug, director of ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom, "These are books that say something, that are meaningful to who we are and what we are."
Which is, you know, very cool indeed.
To continue my celebration of Banned Books Week, here are a few more things worth checking out:
- AL Focus has posted yet another amusing video, this one in honor of Banned Books Week.
- Little Willow has posted some nice ruminations on banned books: the chasm between exercising discretion in your own reading and forcing your personal choices on others, the role of ageism in book challenges, and her personal favorite banned books.
- The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990-2000 are represented visually in this short video. (Via Bookshelves of Doom.)
- For a global cross-section of banned books, check out LibraryThing's Banned Books Library. Currently, it includes just under 700 books that have been banned somewhere around the world. In addition to the usual bibliographic information, there's info about the cited reasons for banning. (Via Abby the Librarian.)
Do you ever feel that banned books are trumpeted at the expense of other, better books, just for the fact that they are banned?
Challenged books just feel so...arbitrary, to me. I recently read Fancy White Trash, and there were a couple of gaybashing scenes* that were frankly, ridiculous and in bad taste. How come nobody's screaming about that one, yet? Is it because it's fairly low on the literary merit pole?
*The Gay Best Friend (tm) was showered in [metal adult implements] at prom. A friend and I have taken the phrase "Showered in [metal adult implements]" to refer to any incident in a YA novel in which logic is stretched like so much silly putty.
Hi Rie, I do think there's a mystique about banned books, and they certainly get more hype because of their challenged status. However, something that nearly all of the most-challenged books have in common is that they're of high literary quality and/or popularity.
They are, for the most part, books that have stayed in print over time, often over the course of decades (no mean feat). They are often books that are part of a school's curriculum, whether as required or recommended reading. They are books that are more widely reviewed and publicized, for their quality and/or innovation, not their "offensive" content. In all these ways, they get on more people's radar and therefore rub more people the wrong way—some enough to challenge them.
In other words, these "banned books" were being trumpeted before they were ever challenged—just not for the same reasons.
You know, that correlation hadn't quite clicked in my head. Thank you! I see now that the reason these books get around is because they were of literary merit in their own right, and thus people have more chance of being exposed to them.
I always liked that quote from Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary by Pamela Dean:
“The library was one of Gentian’s favorite places in the school…it had tables, chairs, cushions, and a great many books, as well as a librarian who put a shelf of banned books right at the entrance with notices exhorting one to read them…She found the Newberry Award a better guide to what was good to read; as Becky said, some banned books were boring, some were absurd, and some were contemptible, but she didn’t see why somebody else should decide any of those things.” (Dean, 1999, p. 135)
In some "tales from library school" news, my pro-book-banning classmate who admitted that he would hide/destroy books that he didn't think the public should get their hands on has been topped. There is a student in my Research Methods class who doesn't believe in social science research...
Sigh. I do believe that most challenges are born of good intentions, particularly the desire to protect others (especially children) from "bad" ideas, but at the same time I don't have much patience for, say, folks who steal/hide/destroy library books to make them unavailable for other patrons. At the very least, citizens who file formal challenges deserve credit for playing by the rules—by which I mean the law.
What's your classmate's objection to social science research? I'm totally flummoxed by that one.
It's complicated, but from what I understand she believes that nobody can measure the entire population and thus all research is fallacious. She's also offended that people with money twist the numbers to make even more money. There was a bit in there about what really matters can't be measured by statistics, but I don't want to put word in her mouth as I can't remember her exact phrases for that.
TL;DR version: She doesn't believe that you can measure truth, so you shouldn't even make an attempt.
Addendum: Fancy White Trash wasn't on my radar, but based on what you've said: ew, blech. And, you know, perhaps it's just a matter of time before someone files a challenge...
See also http://preview.tinyurl.com/sowell for a different point of view.
Thanks for the alternative perspective, Dan!
Thank you so much for the link! I really hope people think before they dismiss books, much less condemn them.
Me, too! It particularly galls me when I hear about people objecting to books based on isolated passages or even just on hearsay. Context is (almost) everything.