Writers of speculative fiction are visionaries, that’s well known. Jules Verne and H.G. Welles proved that early on. But I never thought I’d see the day when one of Ray Bradbury’s darker visions would become a fact in the United States of America. The Spotsylvania County, Virginia school board met and voted 6-0 to remove “sexually explicit” books from the library and the suggestion was made by one member, “I think we should throw those books in a fire.”
This is in a state where Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governorship last week. Is this the shape of things to come? The Free Lance-Star
Monday evening’s discussion was spurred by parents of a Riverbend student, who brought their concerns to the meeting.
The mother said during public comments that she was initially alarmed by “LGBTQIA” fiction that she said was immediately made available upon accessing the library app. After doing more research, she discovered a book in the collection that she found more upsetting.
The book, “33 Snowfish” by Adam Rapp, concerns three homeless teenagers attempting to escape from pasts that include sexual abuse, prostitution and drug addiction.
Publisher’s Weekly described “33 Snowfish,” which the American Library Association named a Best Book for Young Adults in 2004, as a “dark tale about three runaways who understand hatred and violence better than love” and noted “readers may have trouble stomaching the language” and the subject matter.
The review recommends the book for ages 15 and up.
Darnela Sims, director of teaching and learning for the school division, said Riverbend High School Principal Troy Wright and school librarians have been looking into the parents’ concerns since they were raised with the school last week.
There is nothing wrong with oversight of reading material as long as long as the oversight is done along established guidelines that people agree to. A second point to be made, is that in the real world, kids are going to read anything they want to, and making this kind of information/literature “forbidden fruit” may only enhance its appeal.
We live in a day and age of the internet and people are able to access a lot of questionable material online and all manner of books and movies are for sale and easily obtained.
In no event, whatsoever, should a book be burned. I sincerely hope that we don’t reach that level, but it looks like we are one match throw away from it.
Harkening back to Fahrenheit 451, you recall that in the story people became a book. They memorized it and recited it. That intrigued me. I asked myself many years ago what book I would be and I decided that my book would be “The Master And Margarita” by Mikhail Bulgakov. It’s a brilliant flight of fantasy with political overtones, which was banned in Russia and smuggled out. It’s about Satan showing up in St. Petersburg and playing with human nature along with flying pigs and an enormous black cat that walks on his haunches and shoots a gun.
There’s a scene in it where Satan throws a bunch of manuscripts into the fire but they don’t combust. In exasperation he comments, “Ideas don’t burn.” No, they do not. The paper they’re printed on can be destroyed or censored, but they cannot. They endure and they show back up again and are reduced to writing once more. Ideas endure.
Just another flashpoint in the culture war, but an ominous one indeed.
Tell them to start with their favorite books: the bible and Ayn Rand.
“South Park” kind of got it right. In an episode (“The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs”), Mr Garrison tells his class they’ve got to read “Catcher in the Rye,” a book that, as Garrison notes, is considered very controversial. At first, none of the kids wants to read but, after being told of the book’s “offensive” nature, they all want to start reading it immediately (but Garrison tells them they’ll have to do it when they get home). Later, the boys are seen reading the book and wondering what the fuss is all about. Cartman comes in, absolutely fuming, that there wasn’t anything that he found offensive and, more importantly, he’d finished reading a book for nothing. So, they concoct a scheme to write a book that is absolutely offensive and foul.
Stan’s mom is cleaning up and runs across the book and starts reading it and she starts throwing up. She stops reading to clean up (noting how disgusting it is) and then starts reading again. After finally finishing the book, she declares it’s the most disgusting thing she’s ever read–and LOVES it. She runs off and shows it to her husband who, like her, starts throwing up after he starts reading it but, ultimately, he agrees with her that it’s the best thing he’s ever read. They confront the boys who claim that their friend Butters had actually written it and, soon, the book becomes a nationwide best-seller, causing readers to throw up while reading it, but utterly confounding Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny–especially as critics start trying to read in things on all sorts of social topics (the book was considered to both support and condemn abortion as well as being hailed by both conservatives and liberals as exemplifying their respective viewpoints).
The episode first aired in March of 2010.
There are mysteries wrapped in egnimas baked in paradox. “There are more things in heaven & earth, Horatio,, than dreamt of in your philosophy.” Hamlet Act 1, Scene 5. The Trojan horse of certainty, including fascism.
As a society we never learn from history at all. Therefore we are constantly repeating it, and regretting it.