Why oh why are people always trying to
ban and/or burn books? Don’t they know that attempting to censor (or, in
some cases, cleanse the earth of) a novel only makes us all want to
read it more? Don’t they realize that the effort to suppress invariably
helps usher in the opposite result: literary immortality. Whether it’s
the brazen licentiousness of Lady Chatterley’s Lover taking England by storm during its obscenity trial, or reports of the “sheer unrestrained pornography” of Lolita prompting
UK customs officials to confiscate all copies of the novel thereby
generating a maelstrom of publicity ahead of its US publication, history
has taught us that the harder the Powers That Be rail against a book,
the more popular said book becomes.
Though the impact is generally minimal, even now, deep into the
Information Age, there are still those in this country who choose to
spend their free time petitioning school boards and libraries to remove
from the reach of their children all copies of books they deem to be
immoral. In fact, it is likely that someone, somewhere within these
United States is, at this very moment, either burning or preparing to
burn a pile of books which they have found to be offensive to their
puritanical sensibilities. Why these censorious individuals don’t take a
beat and consider the groups from whom they are inheriting this impulse
(the Tribunal of the Holy Inquisition, Ireland’s Committee on Evil
Literature, the Nazis, the “firemen” of Fahrenheit 451, Pastor Terry Jones), is anybody’s guess.
Still, it’s important, every once in a while, to remember the
then-controversial works of literature that were once cast into the
cleansing fire of censorship and managed to make it out the other side,
not merely unscathed, but stronger for the attempt. ... [mehr] https://bookmarks.reviews/10-controversial-classics-for-banned-books-week/
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