Banned Books
Last week was the 25th Annual Banned Books Week sponsored by the American Library Association and several other book selling and publishing associations. If you are thinking “so what?” then you might want to heed the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas: “Restriction of free thought and free speech is the most dangerous of all subversions. It is the one un-American act that could most easily defeat us.”
In case you think these challenges arise from one particular segment of the political spectrum, think again. Challenges are just as likely to come from the liberal left as they are from the conservative right. As author Nat Hentoff writes: “the lust to suppress comes from any direction.”
Granted, there are some tomes I might find inappropriate for any number of reasons, but I would never tell anyone else that they couldn’t read them. Along with some challenged authors whose topics might make me uncomfortable there are also any number of others I have enjoyed. John Steinbeck, J.D. Salinger, Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Maya Angelou come to mind.
In case you’re interested, the Top 10 banned classics are: “Ulysses,” “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” “Madame Bovary,” “The Scarlet Letter,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” “Of Mice and Men,” “Brave New World,” “Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” “Moll Flanders,” and “Candide”.
If you want to learn more, go to www.ala.org. Printers should be very interested in such things.