Observing Banned Books Week With an Internet Tour

Comstockery and bowdlerism have been menacing artistic expression since long before the eras of either Anthony Comstock or Thomas Bowlder, the men whose names became wedded to literary censorship. Bowlder published a G-rated volume of Shakespeare in 1818, and Comstock, as secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in the 1870s, helped destroy 160 tons of literature and pictures he deemed immoral.

With efforts continuing around the country and around the globe to bowdlerize school libraries and commit flagrant Comstockery in the name of virtue and religion, bibliophiles and libertarians are celebrating the freedom to read during Banned Book Week.

The observance, sponsored by the American Library Assn., highlights the importance of the 1st Amendment right to choose to read all books, including banned and challenged ones and other literature considered by some to be objectionable.

The Internet--which has had its own problems with censorship and freedom of speech issues--is, nonetheless, a vast expanse where the 1st Amendment righteous can learn lots about the history of censorship and read reams of banned literature.

For the past 18 years, the American Library Assn., along with the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Assn. of American Publishers, has been observing this week in awareness of attempts to ban books ranging from works by Dr. Seuss to “The Origin of Species” to the Bible.

Its Web site, at https://www.ala.org/bbooks/, explains the need for such an observance, along with highlighting famously and lesser-known banned and challenged books. The site discusses intellectual freedom, censorship motives and tactics, and notable 1st Amendment cases. The site also explains the difference between banning and challenging a book (which is an attempt to ban a book).

The site says that during the ‘90s, more than 5,000 books have been challenged in the United States, as recorded by the library association’s office for intellectual freedom. Sexual explicitness was the primary reason for a challenge, followed by offensive language, unsuitability to a particular age group, occultism and homosexuality.

Last year, the site reports, the most frequently challenged book was Robert Cormier’s “The Chocolate War” (for explicit sexuality), followed by John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men” (for offensive language).

If you’re curious to learn what the earliest banned tomes were, or if you’re eager to know who’s banned any good book lately, one swell source organizes it all for you at https://simr02.si.ehu.es/FileRoom/documents/CategoryHomePage.html. This site is an international, historical overview of censorship that cites particular cases, organized by location, date, grounds for being censored and medium (the censors’ tentacles reach radio, TV and art as well as literature).

If you wish to speedily surf the texts of a smattering of suppressed literature, go to Banned Books On-Line at https://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/banned-books.html. There you can feast on free expression with the likes of Whitman and Joyce, Chaucer and Margaret Sanger, whose book “Family Limitation” was squelched by Comstock.

If you prefer a more pictorial tour of verboten reading, web trot toward Bonfire of Liberties at https://www.humanities-interactive.org/bonfireindex.html. This is an interactive gallery of the history of suppression with photos, illustrations and political cartoons. Hit automatic slide show and sit back and watch a slew of fires, literal and figurative.

Another educational locale is the Free Speech Museum at https://www.spectacle.org/musm.html. The site features a Gallery of Indecency, with the naughty bits from Freud, Henry Miller and Radclyffe Hall, whose 1928 novel “The Well of Loneliness” was banned for indecency (lesbianism) for this one sentence: “And that night they were not divided.”

Delve still deeper into the subject matter with a comprehensive survey of censorship and book banning at https://www.suite101.com/articles.cfm/censorship_books. Here, there’s an abundance of articles, as well as links and an ongoing bulletin board for reader discussion. Articles range from titles such as “Did Censorship Create Revisionist History?” to “The Anti-Art Effect: How Censorship Forces Talent Away” to “Killing ‘Thrill Kill’: Censorship Arrives in the Video Game Industry.”

In 1997, the United States Supreme Court declared the Internet to be deserving of the highest 1st Amendment protection. In the coming months, the American Civil Liberties Union will be battling an array of appeals to this law. For much more about cyber-liberties and free speech online (as well as availability of the blue-ribbon T-shirt!), check out the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s campaign for online free speech (https://www.eff.org/blueribbon.html).

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Erika Milvy writes about entertainment and culture from her home in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected].