In the late 1970s a group of parents in a Twin Cities suburban school district asked the school board to remove two books from the school library. The books included two short stories, The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson, and The Gnats of Knotty Pine, by Bill Peet.
In The Lottery, a fictional small town observes an annual tradition known as “the lottery,” in which a member of the community is selected by chance and stoned to death. No one could recall how the tradition began, but no one questioned it, regardless of how wrong and immoral it was.
In The Gnats of Knotty Pine, the other animals won’t listen to the gnats’ suggestion for keeping the hunters away, but learn to appreciate the tiny bugs when they’re able to make the hunters “buzz off.” Just because gnats are tiny and can be pesky, doesn’t mean their voices are not worth listening to. You could say the same about children, for whom the story was written.
I don’t recall the arguments the protestors made, except that they viewed the gnats’ story as “anti-hunting.” With The Lottery, I presume opponents felt it was an attack on institutions and traditions that tried to preserve the status quo and not ask questions. Don’t question authority, which is always right.
As the editor of the local weekly newspaper at the time, I wrote an editorial chastising those who made the request, and urging the school board to deny. Without researching archived copies of the paper, or finding the news coverage and editorial, I rely on my memory, which tells me the school board did deny the request.
Which brings us to the situation today, “unprecedented in its scale, and in the proliferation of organized groups who are trying to remove whole lists of books at once in multiple school districts, across a growing number of states,” writes Jonathan Friedman, director of free expression and education at PEN America, in the Washington Post on June 9, 2022.
The top banned books according to Barnes and Noble include: Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury; Maus, Art Spiegelman; To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee; 1984, George Orwell; Lord of the Flies, William Golding; Animal Farm, George Orwell; Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck; The Hate U Give, Angie Thomas; Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram X. Kendi; The 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones; and Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut.
When parents, politicians or activists seek to ban books for reasons such as, profanity, violence, sex, race, it becomes magnified in the news and social media, boosting awareness and sales. I hope the ‘banned’ status helped them sell more books. I have secretly thought that I would like to gain that status for any of my books. Their themes and plots included drugs, murder, mental illness, discrimination, and bio-terrorism, all stuff that should be banned anyway.
You could argue that some books deserve to be banned, such as, Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf; Mao Zedong, Little Red Book; Saddam Hussein, Begone Demons; Benito Mussolini, Doctrine of Fascism; Moamar Gaddafi, Little Green Book. Dictatorial personality cults spew propaganda to create political power by enthralling enough people to support them. At least in our experience today, the prime suspect does not read or perhaps even write. Now the propaganda instead blasts from social media and several cable so-called ‘news’ programs. Could we say Faux News?
I have read seven of the books on the B and N list. I am baffled as to why anyone would want to prevent reading them. In an op-ed in the Sept. 9, 2022 issue of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, entitled, “Ten points to consider before banning a book,” a retired teacher writes that books are mirrors. They instill empathy and understanding. Reading is vital to academic growth. Reading fosters imagination and possibilities.
If banning certain books makes them more popular, bring it on! I am willing to sacrifice on the banned books pyre: Good Ice, Buffalo Ridge, The Swineherd’s Angel, or Beyond All That Matters (Scheduled for publication April 30). – No. 11 in the Words on Paper series, Sept. 19, 2024.
Next: Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Digital world pros and cons
