The Angry Mob

            There is an old saying in Hollywood: “It doesn’t matter what they say about you as long as they’re talking about you.” In other words, criticisms and controversy end up functioning as publicity. That being the case, it is always in an actor’s interests to get arrested, behave erratically in public (especially in front of the paparazzi), and say something outlandish while being interviewed on late night TV.

            A similar phenomenon happens with authors and their books: if the work is controversial, offended someone, was banned and hard to find, it is going to fuel interest. The reasons books are banned range wildly; some contain language that some view as offensive and others are an outright threat to an organization.           

            In Falling into Theory, David H. Richter describes author Allan Bloom’s concerns about literature –particularly what he feels people should read and what he had deemed offensive:

From the right wing, the opening guns were sounded in a book called The

Closing of the American Mind (1987) by Allan Bloom, which became a

runaway best-seller by arguing that America was bringing itself into

spiritual danger by neglecting the Great Books (Plato and Aristotle,

Aquinas and Hobbes) and allowing its youth to drug their collective mind

with relativistic philosophies like those of Max Weber, Friedrich

Nietzsche, and John Dewey, which Bloom considered almost as

soul-destroying as contemporary literature and rock music. (21)

Several points strike me here: First, 1987 was around the time that the Christian right in the U.S. was waging a war against heavy metal. Second, the title, The Closing of the American Mind, is ironic considering Bloom was suggesting that writers he did not agree with should be avoided. Third, I am personally going to be attracted to literature which is referred to as “as soul-destroying as contemporary literature and rock music.” I do not advocate neglecting Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas or Hobbes, but I’ll read Nietzsche while listening to Led Zeppelin and spiritual danger sounds intriguing.

            A part of the American Library Association’s mission is to raise awareness regarding banned books and encourage freedom in our reading choices. Banned books, and the reasons they are banned, are listed on their website. In addition, we are able to report any banning –angry parents or organizations that attempt to remove literature from schools or libraries- and it is taken seriously. The ALA organizes a “Banned Book Week,” which will take place September 27-October 3 this year http://www.ala.org/bbooks/. Banning literature should be archaic –I picture an angry mob with torches and pitchforks- and it is alarming that it still happens. The good news is that every time a controversy is raised over a book for whatever reason, it just promotes it.