Censorship in Modern Times

Censorship in Modern Times
By M.J. STEPHEY



Since 1982, the American Library Association has sponsored Banned Books Week to pay tribute to free speech and open libraries. The tradition began as a nod to how far society has come since 1557, when Pope Paul IV first established The Index of Prohibited Books to protect Catholics from controversial ideas. Four-hundred and nine years later, Pope Paul VI would abolish it, although attempts at censorship still remain. Here, TIME presents some of the most challenged books of all time.



Candide
By Voltaire

This classic French satire lampoons all things sacred " armies, churches, philosophers, even the doctrine of optimism itself. In search of "the best of all possible worlds," Voltaire's ever-hopeful protagonist instead encounters the worst tragedies life has to offer and proceeds to describe each in a rapid, meticulous and matter-of-fact way. The effect is equal parts hilarious and shocking. (Imagine Monty Python circa 1759). The book's phrase "Let us eat the Jesuit. Let us eat him up!" became an instant catchphrase. The Great Council of Geneva and the administrators of Paris banned it shortly after its release, although 30,000 copies sold within a year, making it a best-seller. In 1930, U.S. Customs seized Harvard-bound copies of the book, and, in 1944, the U.S. Post Office demanded that Candide be dropped from the catalog for major retailer Concord Books.



The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
By Mark Twain

In 1885, the Concord, Mass. Public Library banned the year-old book for its "coarse language" " critics deemed Mark Twain's use of common vernacular (slang) as demeaning and damaging. One reviewer dubbed it "the veriest trash ... more suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable people." Little Women author Louisa May Alcott lashed out publicly at him, saying, "If Mr. Clemens [Twain's original name] cannot think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses he had best stop writing for them." (That the word "nigger" appears more than 200 times throughout the book did not initially cause much controversy). In 1905, the Brooklyn Public Library followed Concord's lead, banishing the book from the building's juvenile section, explaining: "Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration." Twain enthusiastically fired back, once saying of his detractors: "Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it." Luckily for him, the book's fans would eventually outnumber its critics. "It's the best book we've had," Ernest Hemingway proclaimed, "All American writing comes from that. There was nothing before. There has been nothing as good since."

Despite Hemingway's assurances, Huck Finn remains one of the most challenged books in the U.S. In an attempt to avoid controversy, CBS Television produced a made-for-TV adaptation of the book in 1955 that lacked a single mention of slavery, or even any African American cast members to portray the character of Jim. In 1998, parents in Tempe, Ariz. sued the local high school over the book's inclusion on a required reading list. The case went as far as a federal appeals court; the parents lost.



Brave New World
By Aldous Huxley

Huxley's 1932 work " about a drugged, dull and mass-produced society of the future " has been challenged for its themes of sexuality, drugs, and suicide. The book parodies H.G. Wells utopian novel Men Like Gods, and expresses Huxley's disdain for the youth- and market-driven culture of the United States. Chewing gum, then as now a symbol of America's teeny-bopper shoppers, pops up in the book as a way to deliver sex hormones and subdue anxious adults; pornographic films called "feelies" are also popular grown-up pacifiers.In Huxley's vision of the 26th century, Henry Ford is the new God (worshipers say "Our Ford" instead of "Our Lord,") and the car maker's concept of mass production has been applied to human reproduction. As recently as 1993, a group of parents attempted to ban the book in Corona-Norco, Calif. because it "centered around negativity."



Nineteen Eighty-Four
By George Orwell

It's both ironic and fitting that Nineteen Eighty-Four would join the American Library Association's list of commonly challenged books given its bleak warning of totalitarian censorship. Written in 1949 by the British author while he lay dying of tuberculosis, the book chronicles the grim future of a society robbed of free will, privacy or truth. Some reviewers called it a veiled attack against Joseph Stalin and the Soviet ruler's infamous "midnight purges," though, oddly enough, parents in Jackson County, Fla. would challenge the book in 1981 for being "pro-Communist." The book spawned terms like "Big Brother" and "Orwellian" and continues to appear in pop culture " most recently as the inspiration for a political YouTube hit. The year 1984 may have passed, but the book's message remains as relevant as ever.



The Catcher in the Rye
By J.D. Salinger

Within two weeks of its 1951 release, Salinger's novel rocketed to #1 on the New York Times best-seller list. Ever since, the book " which explores three days in the life of a troubled 16-year-old boy " has been "a favorite of censors since its publication," according to the American Library Association. In 1960, school administrators at a high school in Tulsa, Okla. fired an English teacher for assigning the book to an 11th grade class. While the teacher later won his appeal, the book remained off the required reading list. Another community in Columbus, Oh. deemed the book "anti-white," and formed a delegation to have it banned from local schools. One library banned it for violating codes on "excess vulgar language, sexual scenes, things concerning moral issues, excessive violence, and anything dealing with the occult." When asked about the bans, Salinger once said: "Some of my best friends are children. In fact, all my best friends are children. It's almost unbearable for me to realize that my book will be kept on a shelf out of their reach."

The book introduced slang expressions like the term "screw up" (as in, "Boy, it really screws up my sex life something awful.") Literary critics have both hailed and assailed the novel, which broke the literary mold with its focus on character development rather than plot. Holden Caulfield, the novel's protagonist, has since become a symbol of adolescent angst. In 1980, 25-year-old Mark David Chapman shot Beatles legend John Lennon in front of his Manhattan home and later gave the book to police as an explanation for why he did it.



Lolita
By Vladmir Nabokov

First published in France by a pornographic press, this 1955 novel explores the mind of a self-loathing and highly intelligent pedophile named Humbert Humbert, who narrates his life and the obsession that consumes it: his lust for "nymphets" like 12-year-old Dolores Haze. French officials banned it for being "obscene," as did England, Argentina, New Zealand and South Africa. Today, the term "lolita" has come to imply an oversexed teenage siren, although Nabokov, for his part, never intended to create such associations. In fact, he nearly burned the manuscript in disgust, and fought with his publishers over whether an image of a girl should be included on the book's cover.



I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
By Maya Angelou

This 1970 memoir, the first of Angelou's five autobiographical works, angered censors for its graphic depiction of racism and sex, especially the passages in which she recounts being raped by her mother's boyfriend as an eight-year-old child. (In the book, which was later nominated for a National Book Award, Angelou alludes to the Bible, writing: "The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can't. The child gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator can't.") The American Library Association ranked it the 5th most challenged book of the 21st century. The book's title refers to the 1899 poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar, one of the nation's first prominent African American poets. In 1993, Angelou would read an original poem at Bill Clinton's presidential inauguration, becoming only the second poet in U.S. history to do so after Robert Frost's 1960 speech for J.F.K.



The Anarchist Cookbook
By William Powell

Powell was just 19 when he wrote this 1971 cult classic. The guerrilla how-to book managed to not only anger government officials, but anarchist groups as well. One such organization, CrimethInc., said the book misrepresents anarchist ideals and later released its own book of the same name. Other critics attacked the book for more practical reasons " some of the bomb-making recipes that Powell included turned out to be dangerously inaccurate. Ironically, an older and purportedly wiser Powell later tried to censor his own book. After converting to Christianity, Powell publicly denounced his work, writing in 2000 on Amazon.com that the book is "a misguided product of my adolescent anger at the prospect of being drafted and sent to Vietnam to fight in a war that I did not believe in." But even Powell couldn't successfully ban the book from print; he no longer owns the rights.



The Satanic Verses
By Salman Rushdie
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This book sparked riots across the world for what some called a blasphemous treatment of the Islamic faith (throughout the book, Rushdie refers to the Prophet Muhammad as Mahound, the medieval name for the devil). In 1989, five people died in riots in Pakistan and a stone-throwing mob injured 60 people in India. Although Rushdie issued an apology, Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini publicly condemned the Indian-British author to death, putting a $1 million bounty on his head (an Iranian assassin would get $3 million, Khomeini promised). While European nations recalled their diplomats from Tehran, some Muslim authors, like Nobel Prize-winner Naguib Mahfouz defended Rushdie and accused the Ayatollah of "intellectual terrorism." Meanwhile, Venezuelan officials threatened anyone who owned or read the book with 15 months of prison. Japan fined anyone who sold the English-language edition; a Japanese translators was subsequently stabbed to death for his involvement with the book. Two major U.S. booksellers " Walden Books and Barnes & Noble " removed the book from shelves after receiving death threats. And while Rushdie's publisher, Viking Penguin, denounced such "censorship by terrorism and intimidation," threats of violence forced the company to temporarily close its New York City office to improve security. Under the protection of British authorities, Rushdie himself lived in hiding for nearly a decade.



Harry Potter Series
By J.K. Rowling

In 2001, a group of parents in Lewiston, Maine staged an old-fashioned book-burning to torch a series of books they claimed were promoting violence, witchcraft and devil-worship. (The fire department intervened before the first match was struck, and the protest's organizer settled for a pair of scissors with which to mutilate the books.) Though Harry Potter was still in his literary infancy, the boy wizard's saga had already garnered its fair share of opponents; similar public displays of contempt occurred throughout the country. While Rowling has concluded the series, the book still prompts some unsettling displays of public emotion, although most now involve elaborate costumes and patient movie-ticket lines.