“The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” “The Great Gatsby.” “The Catcher in the Rye.” That’s not a suggested reading list for English 101 at Pepperdine. It’s an excerpt from a long list of books currently or previously banned from American schools and public libraries for their themes and content.
The American Library Association (ALA) sets aside the last week of September each year to celebrate intellectual freedom. Banned Books Week Celebrating the Freedom to Read has been a literary tradition since 1982. This year it will be observed Sept. 26 through Oct. 3.
According to the ALA Banned Books Week Web site the week “celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them.”
In 2008 520 challenges to certain books in schools and public libraries were reported to the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom which orchestrates and executes ALA policies concerning censorship of literature. The OIF reports that more than half of challenges are initiated by parents of students.
An official Banned Books Week Read-Out! will be held Saturday Sept. 26 in Chicago in association with the ALA’s Office of Intellectual Freedom (OIF) the McCormick Freedom Museum and Chicago’s Newberry Library. The event will feature speeches readings and book signings by frequently challenged authors including Stephen Chbosky author of “The Perks of Being a Wallflower.”
Dean of Libraries Mark Roosa said that “to examine some of the books that have been banned by censors since the invention of the printing press is to look at works that have significantly influenced generations of readers. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said ‘If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody there would be very little printed.’ The same is true today. We are fortunate to live in a democracy where respect for the creative human spirit is honored as are libraries which provide citizens with unfettered access to knowledge.”
“What’s interesting about Banned Book Week Melinda Raine, associate university librarian for public services and programs said, is that historically when you see what’s been banned now it’s commonly read.”
Ironically many of the books that the ALA cites as most often challenged are also considered some of the most valuable to the school of modern American literature. Forty-two including the top nine are featured on the Radcliffe Publishing Course Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century which the ALA cites as a pre-eminent standard for important reading material. Among these American classics are “Catch-22” by Joseph Heller “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison and “Lolita” by Vladimir Nabakov.
English Professor Frank Novak will teach all three of those novels this semester in his Modern American Novel class.
Novak said that books like “Lolita with risqué content and themes, can have other intrinsic value that makes them readable and important.
Artistically it’s a tour de force. The book raises moral questions he said. It causes the readers to question their own moral views. You can’t redeem the moral problem there but as a work of art he [“Lolita” author Nabakov] sets up interesting questions.”