"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Reviews of subversive literature
Dateline Seattle: we’re not banning books, just “suspending” them! Interesting USA Today article: it’s no longer just isolated parents working alone, now book banners and book banner wannabes are starting to organize and band together. The Smithsonian, taking its cue from Obama and the Democrats in congress, caves to threats of Republican miffitude. Even writing […]
The difficulty of getting at the truth of a story was increased today by Wonkette, an influential political blog, then multiplied by Fox News, a conservative propaganda outlet. Starting with the onion’s outer layer, here’s the headline and blurb from Wonkette: An American state has decided to promote illiteracy? What, are they shutting down schools? […]
A conservative book-banner’s question: why can’t our school libraries be filled with lofty thoughts written by dead white men again? And here’s the expected pinko response. Books the right would cheerfully ban. An old (1994) essay by conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, saying there’s no such thing as book-banning in the USA. I’m calling bullshit. If […]
Maps? I love ’em! Well, maybe except for this one: View Book Bans and Challenges, 2007-2010 in a larger map The Pentagon has figured out a way to take a book out of circulation without actually banning it. Here’s a good anti-censorship manifesto from the writer who was recently “disinvited” from a youth book fair. […]
In honor of the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week 2010, which starts today, here is a special roundup of banned book news, and a comment on Wilbur Smith’s The Dark of the Sun. Wondering which ten books drew the most fire over the past year? Here’s your answer. Corrected entry (see comment below post): […]
Remember Fredric Wertham, the 1950s anti-comic-book crusader? The Library of Congress has opened his private papers to scholars of censorship. Is that a photo of a man’s butt on the cover? Your book has just been banned in Canada! A new front in the fight against censorship: guerrilla libraries. Bummer. The small-brainers in Stockton, Missouri […]
Banned Books Week is September 25-October 2, so mark your calendars. And in case you didn’t know, the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, sponsor of Banned Books Week, has a Facebook page. Planning to take your copy of Mein Kampf with you on your next trip to Toronto? Maybe you should rethink that. […]
Toni Morrison is under the gun again, this time in Indiana. No way! Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were once banned from American libraries? State senators in Delaware want schools to notify parents 48 hours prior to any book being used in the classroom, so that parents can pull kids from school during those […]