Banned Books, it is almost time for the annual observation of our shame. This year it runs from September 27 to October 3. It is a great time to (re)read a banned book.
Suggestions? Consider The Grapes of Wrath from John Steinbeck. For something older, The Canterbury Tales, From the venerable Geoffrey Chaucer. It was considered obscene. And to think we read it in High School. Perhaps a bit more topical is Uncle Tom’s Cabin from Harriet Beecher Stowe. Candide, Voltaire, and Elmer Gantry, Sinclair Lewis (the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature) which I have not read. Nor have I read Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsow, banned for its “bawdiness”. Americans are fond of banning sexual books. Howl, Allen Ginsberg; Naked Lunch, William S. Burroghs; Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller; Catch-22, Joseph Heller; the list goes on. And on and nn. Consider Alice’s Aventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll it was banned in China; Or the French, thought to be so open (well, in the circles I run in) Banned Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert, and Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov.
Well, that is a quick listing you can hit up Wikipedia. That also includes pages for book burning, “Challenge” which talks about “the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of (different works)” and banned files, movies, and other media.
It is time to read, before you can’t anymore,
—- MichaelRpdx :: osm5