A fire burns today, of blasphamy and genicide...
EDITED! FOR REASONS OF IRONY!
(For those of you who don't know me and how my journal works: Yes, the subject is a song lyric. East Jesus Nowhere by Green Day. I fully rec it. And the cut quote is by Heinrich Heine and is everywhere on the web, but I read it on ALA's website.)
The B's of Books, Burning and Banning: Or Censorship in a Country with Freedom of the Press As It's First Promised Right (May need to shorten that...any ideas?)
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
--Constitution of the United States of America, First Amendment (1791)
The first amendment of the United States constitution guarantees us the right to choose what we say and write. It also gives us, equally, the right to gather in mass quantities, and to come to our local governing body and demand action.
You’ll find that’s a catch-22 if there ever was one.
The first time a book was ever banned in US history it was also burned. It happened in Massachusetts in 1650. A religious book written by William Pynchon was confiscated by Puritan authorities and burned by the public executioner in the Boston market.
We’ll just let our eyes slide over the fact of there having been public executioners back in the countries heyday, shall we?
The Meritorious Price of our Redemption, published during Pynchon’s visit to London in 1650, spoke of opposing the Calvinistic view of the atonement and was considered erroneous and heretical. Thus, it was sent to the pyre.
That, however, was over a hundred years before our promised rights were penned. Although important in it’s own right, it happened while still essentially under British rule.
America became an open-minded, enlightened country since then. Right?
1885: The USPS kicks off it’s special-delivery service, Dr. Pepper first peppers our taste buds, the beautiful Statue of Liberty, her copper shining new and bright, is brought into New York harbor, and, oh yeah, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is banned mere months after it’s publication.
What’s that? Inconceivable! Apparently not. Written by Mark Twain née Samuel Clemens, the book that is considered the first Great American Novel, was banned in Concord, MA for it’s course language and tawdry subject manner.
Whether its opposition was offended by the continued use of the word ‘nigger’ (215 times throughout the book) or outraged by the way Twain wrote the narrative in lead character Huckleberry’s common speech, the fact remains that Huck and runaway-slave Jim sailing down the Mississippi on a raft had critics and a few other authors in a tizzy.
Little Women authoress Louisa May Alcott, a native of Concord, had said of the author himself after the banning, “If Mr. Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them.”
Sorry Ms. Alcott, but Twain went on to write numerous books after Finn, including A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court only a few years later.
And while straight-talking Huckleberry will be removed from a children’s library twenty years later in Brooklyn, it will happen no where else noteworthy. The majority of the US population had spoken, and they rather liked reading something aimed more towards their humble roots.
So that’s it right? Surely the great country of America had seen the light, remembered its promises of freedom. After all, the country had only been under it’s own power for just over a hundred years. No chance it could already be senile.
Think again.
In this corner, weighing in at an estimated 1.9lbs is One Book Called Ulysses! And in this corner, weighing incalculable tons, the United States of America!
Court is now in session.
Three lawyers raise their heads and state in clear and perfect harmonies: “This book violates the national standards for obscenity!”
Did they really say that? Probably. In perfect harmony? Probably not.
Serialized in parts in the journal The Little Review in 1918, then published entirely in Pairs in 1922, by 1928 it was officially listed by the U.S. Customs Court as one of the obscene books to be kept from American hands and readers.
In 1933 a copy made it’s way to the U.S. attorney for libel proceedings. Libel, in this case, meaning ‘the publication of blasphemous, treasonable, seditious, or obscene writings or pictures.’
Lead defense attorney Morris L. Ernst and his associate Alexander Lindey planned their strategy carefully; they had a friend bring a copy to the States. A friend who they met at the docks where a customs man saw the book but didn’t want to do anything about it. That just wouldn’t do for Ernst, who later wrote “…But we insisted and got his superior over, and finally they took the book and wouldn't allow us to bring it into the U.S. because it was both obscene and sacrilegious.”
Ernst then postponed the case until it was put before the judge of his choice. The Honorable Woolsey, who was known to love old books, antique furniture and who wrote elegant decisions.
The judge postponed the case further to read Ulysses, along with other books written about it.
By the end of the trial, Ernst, having already stated that his school teacher wife undoubtedly came across the same vulgar words scribbled on toilet walls through the course of her work, brought to the judges attention that the standards of obscenity change, and that by the standards in 1933, Joyce’s words were not obscene.
Of one such four-lettered word, Ernst said, "Your Honor, it's got more honesty than phrases that modern authors use to connote the same experience.”
“For example, Mr. Ernst?”
“Oh--‘they slept together.’ It means the same thing.”
“That isn't usually even the truth,” said Judge Woolsey. And Ernst knew his case was already halfway won.
On December 6th, Woolsey announced his verdict.
“I hold that Ulysses is a sincere and honest book, and I think that the criticisms of it are entirely disposed by its rationale . . . In respect of the recurrent emergence of the theme of sex in the minds of his characters, it must always be remembered that his [Joyce] locale was Celtic and his season Spring . . . Ulysses may, therefore, be admitted into the United States.”
And the winner of this Ban-Out: One Book Called Ulysses! And long over due; until this trial, Ulysses had been banned for fifteen years already, starting from it’s serial in 1918.
So banning books, that’s pretty harsh for a country with freedom of the press. Surely that’s the end of things, there can’t be another step to take.
…As a great man once said, ‘Don’t call me Shirley.’
If you’re a lover of irony, you’ll adore what’s coming next.
“Monday burn Millay, Wednesday Whitman, Friday Faulkner, burn 'em to ashes, then burn the ashes. That's our official slogan.” So says Guy Montag, leading man of Fahrenheit 451, the fireman who sets fires instead of putting them out.
But he only sets books on fire. Does that make it okay? Is burning books the way to go?
Acts 19:19-20 of the Bible say it is. “Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men and they counted the price of them and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver. So mightily grew the word of God and prevailed.”
While Ulysses was being fought for, Nazi’s were having a little bonfire party over Germany-way.
You’re cordially required to attend the Berlin Book Burning, May 10th 1933. Special guests include all works of H.G. Wells, Jack London, Freud, Thomas Mann and Einstein. A ceremonial toast will be held in their most esteemed ‘unGerman’ honor.
What does that have to do with America? The answer is simple. Nothing. Only that we’re doing the same thing right over here inside our Land of the Free boarders.
So riddle me this, Mein Führer, how does it feel to know some American churches and governing bodies are following in your pyrotechnic footsteps?
Two years later, Warsaw, Indiana. Trustees of the library ordered all Theodore Dreiser novels to be burned.
As if that wasn’t enough, Dreiser was a resident of Warsaw for three years, starting when he was at the tender age of thirteen. How’s that for loving-thy-neighbors?
Not big enough? Alright.
Have you read any Harry Potter? Even if you haven’t you probably know it’s about magic. And if you ever had a history class, you know how our ancestors treated such heretic notions.
Grab a marshmallow and answer me this: “Baby Jesus, or Harry Potter?” Tough call?
Pastor Jack Brock didn’t think so when he put the question to his Alamogordo, New Mexico congregation during his Christmas Eve sermon in 2001.
His wasn’t the first church to condemn the boy wizard. Eight months earlier, an Assembly of God in Butler, PA torched books and CD’s they found offensive to their God. But oh, pastor Jack, no need to worry about stealing their flame.
More people turned out to his fires of Heaven. Maybe it was due to the fact that he chose to do it on the eve of authoress J.K. Rowling’s wedding that was the clincher.
400 people turned up to the private ceremony and tossed their contributions into the towering inferno.
J.R.R. Tolkien, Star Wars products, popular music, and the works of Shakespeare rounded out this eclectic get-together. The congregation singing Amazing Grace as temperatures in the heart of the fire reached 451 degrees and the books caught ablaze made sure the various medias had something to tell their networks about.
I wonder how many disheartened children and teens of the fanatical participants made a New Years resolution to reacquire their destroyed entertainment and this time, find a better hiding place. A hollowed out tree would do, in a pinch.
Now then.
Ever play Spot The Difference in those coloring and activity books?
Want to play now?
Spot the difference:
Here’s a hint. One is Berliners and the Nazi party tossing books, the other are Pennsylvanians watching popular media go up in a blaze of censorship 68 years and almost 4,000 miles apart.
They look pretty close, don’t they?
The First Amendment; now do you think it’s a catch-22?
You may be asking yourself by now ‘What does this have to do with me?’
We’ve seen books banned in Massachusetts, Indiana, and the entire US. Saw them burned in Germany, Massachusetts, and New Mexico.
Lets go off with a bang in our own back yard. Think of this as quick-fire trivia challenge in Jeopardy.
Published and simultaneously banned in 1852 in most, if not all, Southern states. What is Uncle Toms Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
Banned for ‘lies about the South’ this book was published in 1945.
What is Black Boy by Richard Wright.
He’s well known for his Daily Show, and his book that was banned in eight libraries in South Mississippi.
Who is John Steward, and his book America (The Book)
This book was banned for profanity in 2002 in one Southern Mississippi library, and remains one of the most challenged books of the 21st century.
What is Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
In this semi-ironical feat of censorship, this book was banned though not burned, in a school district Mississippi in 1999.
What is Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury?
Correct! Well done.
All the backyard bannings have ended, but will it stop with these? Will The United States of America ever be willing and content to let it’s people, individually, chose what they’d like to read and what they wouldn’t?
Probably not. There will always be people whom think they know what’s best for the rest of us… But there will also be the authors who challenge them.
So go forth. Learn your literary history so you don’t repeat it, stand up for a book others want banned. And read. Read as many books as you can and show the censors how you’re still the same person you were before you read of wizards and magic, and dark tales of ghosts.
If we shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, we shouldn’t judge it’s merit by it’s contents.
“Local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books …”
- U.S. Supreme Court in Board of Education, Island Trees School District v. Pico (1982)
It seems, that before you go, I have a bonus rapid-fire question for the masses:
What essay, unpublished but written in Summer of 2009 was banned in a South Mississippi library:
What is this essay by this writer right here?
Correct again!
In this ironical addendum, it must be stated that this essay has been banned before it even had a chance to reach readers in the library it was to be put in. It can’t be for course language since, as to my knowledge, the only word I used to which could be construed as offensive is that one six-letter ‘n’ word when describing Huck Finn.
The only tawdry subject matter that I see, now that I’m looking this over, is about Nazi’s. Book burning and banning in general can’t be the tawdry subject. Could it?
Perhaps the Powers That Be at that library are afraid of offending the few people who could actually be offended by being reminded of the first promise we’re given as Americans.
It’s because I named the five that happened in Mississippi, isn’t it? Obviously my also naming New York, Indiana, Massachusetts and New Mexico was typed in invisible ink.
One such PTB told me, when she found out Mississippi is named (ignoring the fact that I repeatedly mentioned other states were as well) that the state “had enough knocks already, and all I’m doing is kicking it again.”
Do you think that? Do you think I should have censored this essay on censorship because I was told this state already has enough image problems?
I’m not going to go into stereotyping states and their images here; now is not the time nor place for such.
I’m not going to censor it. The way you’re reading this is the way I originally wrote it, with only this addendum edited in when I was told it wasn’t going to happen. (At the end you’ll find this essay’s word count. If this is ever edited by me, I will say so here and change the word count accordingly. However the number should never drop.)
I wonder if the PTB’s realize what they’re doing isn’t helping that image they’re so worried about. In fact, it’s in this writers opinion, that what they’re doing is making it worse.
It makes one wonder if, had I lived in any other place, would I be having the same problems?
Word count, including the these words here: 2,431
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Jonathan Banks. DVD. Paramount, 1980.
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