Burn the Book?

As an ardent bibilophile I have a problem with anyone who advocates book burning in any form, especially if they think they have a good reason for doing so. The firemen in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 had excellent reasons for torching the books. Arguments abound for burning the Bible, the Quran, the Harry Potter books, Mein Kampf, or the Betty Crocker cookbooks. Recently, Professor Allison Bridger of San Jose State University (Calif) symbolically torched a book titled The Mad Mad Mad World of Climatism and posted the photo on the University website. The reason? She disagreed with the author, therefore no one should read the book,

It is highly ironic that educators and librarians claim as their own (despite massive conservative support) an annual observation in the last week of September called "Banned Books Week," which since 1982 has drawn attention to those repressive forces in society that seek to destroy books or limit availability, for whatever reason. By her own efforts, Professor Bridger has aligned herself with those who seek to destroy the First Amendment of the US Constitution. While Professor Bridger protests that she had the best of intentions, it should be remembered: book burners always have the best of intentions...

"We don't like them"

"It's a flawed document"

"We are saving society"

"We disagree with them"

"It's for the greater good"

"We were just following orders"

The Golden Age of Reading

The more I consider, the more strongly I tend to believe the Golden Age of Reading was 10. At that point in my life, I had all the mental tools needed to read any book, the inquisitiveness to search out the meaning of what I did not quite yet understand, and the quality of vision to be equally dazzled by the old and the new, for to me they were the same thing.

Of course, I write here of another time, another culture, when schools actually taught the reading skills needed to excel, when books and magazines of all sorts were easily available with even the most modest allowance (mine was very modest -- I haunted thrift stores where old comics were a nickel and pulps a dime), when parents could purchase a set of encyclopedias without having to sell the first-born (lucky for me, but selling the second-born would have been okay), and the youth of the time had so few other distractions -- just sports, trouble-making and that flickering silvery screen called television.

Now, don't get me wrong. Back when the dinosaurs ruled the earth (as my children and their children believe) was not an idyllic time for the prolific reader. No time has been -- hey, don't get your nose caught when you close that book; you have to forgive my son but he swallowed a dictionary when he was young; we have an odd number of people, so to make the teams even why don't you go read a book; you're book-smart, but dumb at everything else. As today, the reader has to persevere against all sorts of unkind remarks from friends, family and jackasses...some thing just don't change.

People do not change, and are just as good and evil as they have ever been, but society has changed around us. Some, like me, are not very good at adapting ("change is bad"), but most other people seem to the proof from which Darwin always searched. Nastiness, duplicity, mendacity, sloth, irresponsibility and brutality are now survival skills; so, also, are manual dexterity, multitasking, memorization of processes, and an ear for technical jargon. Me? I just read and write, and I'm not bad at arithmetic, problem solving, and connecting the dots -- not exactly the survival or advancement skills they used to be in business and civic life.

Not only has reading taken it on the chin due to social changes, but reading just for the sheer pleasure of reading has  been kicked in the jewels by all the distractions of the modern world -- television is now in color, hi-def, 3D and has 900 channels; computers and the internet can consume literally thousands of hours of your time and give very little in return; social networking can give you 5,000 BFF, all who want your attention; the death of faith and the rise of fear causes many people to engage in endless vapid social rituals; rather than read, people zone out with i-pods in their ears, like the ubiquitous shells in Fahrenheit 451; and  the would-be reader is not even safe from the government as Michelle Obama and other intrusive do-gooders urge you to get up and dance your fat away. 

As a kid and young person growing up when all the obstacles to having time enough at last to do all the reading I wanted, the ultimate wish-fulfillment episode of the original Twilight Zone was the one in which Burgess Meredith happened to be down in the bank vault (reading during lunch hour, of course) when The Bomb hit. No more boss, no more wife, no more co-workers, no one at all to keep bank clerk Henry Bemis from engaging in that one activity that made life bearable -- reading. Not even the death of civilization could stop the little man from rising to the top of the evolutionary heap; suddenly, when all else had been taken away, reading became the one activity which could keep Mr Bemis sane, keep him from putting a gun to his head. In a nuclear flash, Mr Bemis was transported to a golden age of reading and he had the enthusiasm and vigor of a ten year old. I was shocked speechless when he broke his glasses, and felt such pity for the abject little man such as I have for no other person, before or since. Now that I have big thick trifocals I think I identify with poor doomed Mr Bemis more than ever.

When I think about how the golden age of reading was 10, at least back in that age before others felt they knew best how to live my life, I wonder about the readings habits of the contemporary youngster. Is he reading? Possibly not, but if he is, it may be little more than required reading at school, the sort of didactic stories and essays chosen by committee, the "right" sort of reading designed to produce a more tolerant, more malleable child. Books are being yanked right and left from school libraries by officials who are as well-meaning as they are fearful of responsibility, and political action groups such as CAIR are seeking to remove books from private ownership. Take out A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, because it might offend Mormons; remove Little Black Sambo to keep from offending Jesse Jackson, never mind that tigers come from India, not Africa; destroy all the books by Joseph Conrad (colonialism), Edgar Poe (morbid!), and the writings of the Founding Fathers (dangerous). Instead, give that ten year old books like the execrable Skippyjon Jones series, the tolerant Bernstein Bears, and The King Who Wanted to be a Queen. Golden age? Not of reading or anything else it seems.

The Golden Age of Reading is no longer 10.

Today's youth do not read for pleasure, only by assignment, and only from approved books.

The encyclopedia has been supplanted by Wikipedia, dictionaries by Merriam-Webster.com, and big books by little screens.

By the way, folks, Kindle is evil.

And change is still bad.

(first posted on "The Hopeless Bookaholic")

Drop That Book!

Yesterday (28 September 2011), I had the honor of reading publicly in the lobby of the San Diego Public Library as part of Banned Books Week. Starting about 1430, I began reading, and did so for about an hour. I was one of several people who agreed to read on a schedule, though anyone was welcome to read a book from the "banned books book cart" present, or a book of their own choosing.

My book of choice was the infamous The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. To me, this is the ultimate banned book. When we think of banned books, we think of actions by governments, and while there were many countries that did -- and still do -- ban this book, government action represents only the tip of the iceberg. Muslims all over the world took to the streets in protest of the book and its author, even before the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa on 14 February 1989, which decreed death not only for Salman Rushdie but for anyone associated with the publication, translation or distribution of the book. The author, with the assistance of Scotland Yard, went into hiding, and even though he issued an apology, the death sentence remained in effect until the Ayatollah died himself; even the revocation of the fatwa did not stop the violence: the Japanese translator was murdered; its Italian translator barely escaped death; its Turkish translator also escaped being murdered, but 32 others died in ensuing riots.

I am quite happy to report I survived my reading of the forbidden tome. There were no attacks, no demonstrations, no demands for apologies from the local CAIR chapter, though in the past it and its director, Edgar Hopida, tried to shut down free speech by pressuring the library to intervene when someone with an opposing viewpoint reserved the public auditorium for a presentation. No signs, no shouts, no swords; however, there were definitely scowls and stares from some library patrons, but they did not linger, did not listen...they did not ban the books for others, but they did ban it for themselves, and that's the only type of banning that should occur in this country, and even that's pretty sad, for no one should be afraid to read anything.

Even the the US does not engage in nationwide book banning -- the last book to receive that honor was the venerable Fanny Hill in 1963 -- thousands of books are challenged or banned at a local level, usually either by school districts or counties and/or cities. Huckleberry Finn and Cather in the Rye are perennial targets of book banners, but thousands of others are put forward each year, sometimes with success, sometime not. Despite what many people think, Liberals are just as likely to ban books as Conservatives, perhaps even more so since school boards and library commissions tends more toward the left than the right, while complainants often veer right. As society changes, though, the reasons also shift -- just recently a school district banned one of my favorites from the school libraries. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes tale, was prohibited to students, and the reason -- it might offend Mormons.