Banned Books Month: Guest Post from Mark Stevens: Give it a Rest
Note to the would-be banners of books:
It isn’t going to work.
Follow-up note to the would-be banners:
In fact, it has never worked.
Sure, caused a fuss and raised a ruckus, but it didn’t work.
Midnight Ink, September 2015.
Final easy-to-understand note to the would-be banners:
Every time you step forward and demand that a book be kept out of a library or school, I think the following thought:
I wonder what that author has to say and wants us to hear?
You do know, don’t you, that there is no such thing as ‘banning’ books, right?
You can target a classroom or school.
You can target a public library.
But it’s not going to work.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, according to Wikipedia, THE CATCHER IN THE RYE was simultaneously the most frequently taught title in public high schools across the United States and the target of the most censorship campaigns. Today, J.D. Salinger’s novel has sold over 65 million copies and still sells roughly 250,000 copies each and every year.
Little, Brown and Company, Mass Market Edition, May 1991.
You’re after “sexually explicit” material? Offensive language? You don’t think a book is age appropriate? Too much violence? You think a book emphasizes, gasp, homosexuality?
Do you think banning a book from a library or school is going to stop the flow of information from creator to consumer?
Witness the mobile device, the World Wide Internet, the television, YouTube, podcasts and many other ways that an individual with something to say can express himself or herself and, in short, tell the world.
There is no longer any bubble of ignorance unless you really work at it—and I concede it’s possible for any individual to choose to encounter precious little, thought it may take work.
But that’s just it, it’s the individual’s choice—not the other way around.
My parents were both librarians. They both held master’s degrees, in fact, in library science. I was born in 1954 and hit the 1960’s at the perfect age, ten years old when we were cranking The Beatles in the back of the bus on the way to school. But even then, with hippies around the corner and free love, the taboos were sharply drawn. You got your hands on a copy of Playboy, you held onto it.
But no matter their spiritual outlook, my parents recognized that there was no stopping ideas.
They never took a book away from me—ever.
When I read THE CATCHER IN THE RYE, I met someone I would never have encountered in real life—and got deep inside his head. Reading CATCHER was one of those transcendent moments as a middle teenager, being swept away into a world and attitude that I could not and would not have experienced without those words on the page.
My family, suburban Boston parents and three boys, belonged to lots of places and groups—schools, church, Boy Scouts, you name it. I’d never encountered a guy like Holden who felt so alienated (though I guarantee it was only a feeling at the time, nothing I really understood). Reading that book was magic but I’m sure half of it sailed right over my head the first time around.
My parents didn’t care what I read—and I’m sure in some cases they didn’t really want to know.
They raised a kid to sort out the truth in a sea of information, not be fearful of certain truths.
Fiction or non, books are nothing more than ideas and experiences. You can’t limit expression.
Give it a rest, you book banners you.
Mark Stevens.
The son of two librarians, Mark Stevens was raised in Lincoln, Massachusetts. He graduated from Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School in the suburbs of Boston and from Principia College in Illinois. He worked as a reporter for The Christian Science Monitor in Boston and Los Angeles; as a City Hall reporter for The Rocky Mountain News in Denver; as a national field producer for The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour (PBS) and as an education reporter for The Denver Post. After journalism, he worked in school public relations before starting his own public relations and strategic communications business. He lives in Denver with his wife and has two grown daughters.
Mark is the 2015 Winner of the 2015 Colorado Book Award for Best Mystery, and the Colorado Author’s League Winner for Best Fiction.
Where to find Mark Online:
Official Website | Twitter | Facebook | Purchase the Allison Coil Mystery Series Online | Goodreads
