Freedom to Read

Wherever people can read, there are stories about the magic, mystery, and power of what they read. Val Ross presents a history of reading that is, in fact, the story of the monumental, on-going struggle to read. From Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon the Great, the world’s oldest signed author to Empress Shotoku of Japan who in 764 ordered the printing of one million Buddhist prayers; from the story of Hulagu, Ghengis Khan’s nasty brother who destroyed the library of Baghdad to Bowdler and the censorship of Shakespeare, there have been barriers to reading ranging from the physical to the economical, social, and political.

Written for children ages ten and up, You Can’t Read This explores the development of alphabets, the decoding of ancient languages, and censorship in Ancient Rome and modern America. It's about secret writing, trashed libraries, writers on the run, writers in hiding, books that are thought to have magical powers and mistranslations that started wars. It's about people: from the American slave Frederick Douglass to girls in Afghanistan in the year 2001 who defied laws that prevented them from learning to read.

From the New Testament to The Diary of Anne Frank to current objections to the Harry Potter series–dubbed the most frequently challenged books of the 21st century by the American Library Association–the tradition of banning, censoring, and challenging books has been remarkably enduring.

Forbidden Fruit is fundamentally an apologia for the freedom to read. Author Pearce Carefoote’s principal interest is not so much in the morality of censorship as in its ultimate futility. In a world where freedom of speech, ideas, and religion clash with various forms of fundamentalism, where, post—9/11, democratic societies debate the limits to freedom of speech, Forbidden Fruit calls on all of us to examine the long history of censoring ideas and reminds us that the impetus to ban books is still very much alive.

Many of the works discussed in the book are very familiar and most readers will be surprised to see the writing that has been and continues to be challenged in Western society. While most citizens of a democracy say that they oppose literary censorship and support the freedom of expression, Carefoote provokes us to face some of the thorny questions of modern censorship: Where do we stand when the nation’s largest bookseller decides not to carry Hitler’s Mein Kampf? How do we respond when a high school teacher has been disciplined for assigning The Merchant of Venice in a public school? Or when the only bookstore in a small town decides not to carry The Satanic Verses for fear of reprisals? Or when certain magazines and novels, fall into that grey area between literature and pornography. Ironically, it is the Internet, as Carefoote points out, that may finally force governments, schools, and families to talk about what is appropriate for reading and viewing and what is not–and, more importantly, why.

Scales, a middle-school librarian for 28 years, performs a valuable service here. She pushes banned books front and center so that instead of hiding these titles, librarians can celebrate them. She has chosen 12 frequently challenged books (including Blubber (1974), The Goats (1987), Julie of the Wolves (1972), and My Brother Sam is Dead(1974), and she shows teachers and librarians how to teach them. Particularly useful is the introductory chapter that instructs readers how to teach the First Amendment using discussion questions like this: "Interpret the following quote by Oscar Wilde: 'The books that the world calls immoral are the books that show the world its own shame.'" She then goes on to individual titles; for each there is a long synopsis of the book, discussion questions, and activities. Some of the activities stretch a bit, but everything else is solid, useful, and thought provoking. Much of this was originally published in Book Links magazine, and Scales knows her material inside out. She also knows how to inspire others to take up this cause and gives them an effective handbook to do just that.

This literate, sexy, and politically provocative collection of writings featurs excerpts from some of the most significant publications seized at the Canadian border and labelled "degrading," "obscene," or politically suspect. Includes works by Kathy Acker, Dennis Cooper, bell hooks, Marguerite Duras, Jane Rule, and many others.

Throughout history, tyrants, totalitarian states, church institutions, and democratic governments alike have banned books that challenged their assumptions or questioned their authority. Even today, attempts by school boards, local governments, and religious fanatics to restrict our freedom to read continue. The four-volume Banned Books collection focuses on more than 400 works that have been censored for their political, social, religious, or erotic content -- in the United States and around the world -- from biblical times to the present day. Works have been chosen for their literary or historical significance, including their role in the history of censorship. Most are read in middle- and high-school curricula as well as in university courses; some have been the focus of major national or international campaigns; and all were either written in English or are available in English translations. Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Social Grounds discusses writings that have been banned over the centuries because they offended or merely ignored official truths; challenged widely held assumptions; or contained ideas or language unacceptable to a state, religious institution, or private moral watchdog.

In Dirt for Art's Sake, Elisabeth Ladenson recounts the most visible of modern obscenity trials involving scandalous books and their authors. What, she asks, do these often-colorful legal histories have to tell us about the works themselves and about a changing cultural climate that first treated them as filth and later celebrated them as masterpieces? Ladenson's narrative starts with Madame Bovary (Flaubert was tried in France in 1857) and finishes with Fanny Hill (written in the eighteenth century, put on trial in the United States in 1966); she considers, along the way, Les Fleurs du Mal, Ulysses, The Well of Loneliness, Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, Lolita, and the works of the Marquis de Sade. Over the course of roughly a century, Ladenson finds, two ideas that had been circulating in the form of avant-garde heresy gradually became accepted as truisms, and eventually as grounds for legal defense. The first is captured in the formula "art for art's sake"-the notion that a work of art exists in a realm independent of conventional morality. The second is realism, vilified by its critics as "dirt for dirt's sake." In Ladenson's view, the truth of the matter is closer to -dirt for art's sake-"the idea that the work of art may legitimately include the representation of all aspects of life, including the unpleasant and the sordid. Ladenson also considers cinematic adaptations of these novels, among them Vincente Minnelli's Madame Bovary, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and the 1997 remake directed by Adrian Lyne, and various attempts to translate de Sade's works and life into film, which faced similar censorship travails. Written with a keen awareness of ongoing debates about free speech, Dirt for Art's Sake traces the legal and social acceptance of controversial works with critical acumen and delightful wit.