Skip to main content

Illicit Literature

By


Seeing the anniversary of the banning of Ulysses, it brought to mind all the books that have been banned in America over the years for one reason or another.  The most common complaint is the impact books like The Catcher and the Rye would have on young impressionable minds.  Even the Harry Potter series won't be found on some high school library shelves, because of its so-called "demonic" content. 

Then there is the presumed sensitivity to racial issues.  As a result, Disney has refused to reprint its classic film, The Song of the South, although numerous pirate copies are available through the Internet.  An interesting case of a self-imposed ban.

Why all the fuss?  In 1983, the Alabama State Textbook Committee rejected The Diary of Anne Frank because it was a "real downer."  The logging industry took exception to The Lorax, and sponsored a book called The Truax.  Discussing puberity is a taboo too, judging by the reaction to What's Happening to My Body?

Here's more banned books over the years.

Comments

  1. Rick DiguetteDecember 6, 2012 at 1:39 PM

    I wouldn't ban any book, but Ulysses could sure use some editing. Not my favorite book.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonDecember 6, 2012 at 1:44 PM

    I feel the same way about The Brothers Karamazov.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Rick DiguetteDecember 6, 2012 at 3:13 PM

    I am willing to give writers like Dickens and Dostoevsky a pass since they were writing their novels as they were being serialized. Joyce was just being self indulgent.

    ReplyDelete
  4. TripplerDecember 6, 2012 at 11:27 PM

    Of that list of 50, I read at least 27 of them. Maybe some day I'll read the rest. Censorship is unamerican and books should not be ban or expurgated. If some are offended by the contents, then it's best to restrict the reading to adult on college campuses or elsewhere. This way the contents may be discussed intelligently.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more