September is my most favorite month of the year. On
the 30th which will be my 67th birthday, that is
International Blasphemy Rights Day!
But, from the 21st to the 27th is Banned Books Week!
Your local public library will be putting books on display
that people have tried to have banned in the past
I have read Catcher in The Rye, Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984,
also Slaughter House Five and Fahrenheit 451.
Please everybody! Tell me what banned books you
have read so far.
Thank you.
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Catcher in The Rye, Animal Farm, and 1984.... Yep, read those several times over the years. Sadly, though, I am not familiar with what other books I have read that may have been on the attempted banned list. Basically, I would have to have a list of potentially banned books to see to determine which ones I have read. Any chance you could put a list together of some of the stuff the library might display?
I read "Sons and Lovers" by DH Lawrence, which has been banned or challenged ever since it was written. Our English teacher chose it as a class text when I was in high school. I don't think I've ever hated any book more than that one. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" by the same author was even more controversial, and even more boring IMHO. "Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe, which was banned in Victorian times, is much more entertaining.
The greatest book ever banned in my opinion is "Canterbury Tales." The stories, the characters, the wit are timeless. It completely destroys the credibility of the church.
@Algebe
I know we read parts of "Canterbury Tales" in high school, but it has been so long ago that I remember very little of it. Now I am curious to go get it to read and refresh my memory.
@Tin-Man
Pasolini's movie version captures the atmosphere very well IMHO. My favorite part (book and movie) is the "Miller's Tale", which involves lots of illicit sex, predictions of another Noah flood, moderate farting, and some low-level violence with a red hot poker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRuxFjcb7NE
I am like Tin-Man. I could not even know without seeing a list.
rmfr
From memory Catch-22 was banned along with Lady Chatterly. As was the Borstal Boy. Richard Burton's (explorer not the actor)translation of the Karma Sutra too. Acutally all of Burtons writings concerning sexual curiosities and practices of native populations in the Middle East and Africa were on the banned list a some point or other.
Disney comics were and maybe still are banned in Papua New Guinea because the government thought Donald Duck's temper tantrums were a bad example for the combative native groups in the highlands and they didn't need the encouragement.
And happy birthday BFH, have a good one.
The bible was the first banned book I read.
I want to ban the Evil Harry Potter books during Banned book week.
This is a small list of books banned in Oz, mostly from the 1950's and up until the 1970s for some. They were deemed unfit for consumption for decent folks and I am pleased to say I have read all on this list and many others.
The curious thing about most banned books is that they have all been made into movies.
Portnoys Complaint, Phillip Roth
A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
Another Country, James Baldwin
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (this one stands out. Despite being banned, lecturers at Sydney Uni got permission to allow students of American literature to read it but only under observation by appointed government officials, apparenly in a bid to keep the students morals from harm. It was a strange world back then.)
Forever Amber, Kathleen Winsor
The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins
Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Decameron, Boccaccio
Last Exit to Brooklyn, Hubert Selby Jr
The Spy Who Loved Me, Ian Fleming
The Story of O, Pauline Reage
@Grinseed: There's a lot of books on that list that no sane person would even pick up if they weren't banned. Getting a book banned for while is a very good commercial move for publishers.
In the 1960s New Zealand streamlined its book banning regime by simply banning all books with a female name in the title. Customs officials were confiscating "Jane Eyre" and "Emma" at airports for a while. Plenty of copies of "Fanny Hill" made it into the country though.
A lot of times, when some people have tried to
ban books, it often backfires!
It only serves to make a book even even more popular
because more people will want to read it
out of curiosity.
@Big Fat Heretic
For sure. I probably would have never even heard of (or read) many of the books listed in the thread, other than curiosity from them being suppressed.
So which book did we ban? It's the 26th and I still have all my books. I was looking forward to burning one of them.
Speaking of supressing books causing them to become more popular, Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Cheri, and all other such literature were always banned in my house when I was a kid. As such, I ended up doing a fair amount of "covert research" during my youth to determine exactly why they were banned. After discovering the reasons for the ban, those particular types of books became incredibly popular and were always in demand within the clandestine group of dedicated literary investigators that was me and my buddies. Hey, it was a dirty job, but somebody had to do it. *chuckle*
@Tin-Man: Playboy, Penthouse, Hustler, Cheri
They had great articles, didn't they.
Those magazines were extremely popular in Japan, too. Pornography was defined basically as anything that revealed pubic hair, so the customs bureau employed armies of university students to go through every copy imported and blank out the pubic bits with black ink. Then some evil fellow developed a way to remove the ink using margarine, so they switched to sandpaper. I don't know what repeated sanding of women's naughty bits did to the sanity of those students.
I once saw a European porn magazine that had been censored in Japan. The centerfold picture was completely blacked out except for a small square in one corner that showed a person's foot. Yet people paid top dollar for the stuff so they could salivate while imagining what was under the black ink. I guess it's like Christian fundies drooling over images of naked sinners in hell.
The law under which all this happened was called the public morality protection act or some such. So today the sex industry in Japan is called the "morality industry" (fuzoku-gyo), and ladies of the night are often called "morality girls".
What's really interesting about those titles is this. When I was a kid there was this old used book shop that would pay me nickles to quarters for those titles. The shop was run by this sweaty, greasy, fat guy. Well, while the other kids searched the neighborhood for pop bottles I was going through stacks of magazines for playboys, penthouse, and hustler. I would take my haul to the bookstore where this greasy fat turd would thumb his way through each book, expanding the centerfolds, and then start breathing heavy through his nose. Even as a kid it was the creepiest thing in the world to be in the presence of this guy as he went through the books breathing heavily through his nose as I stood there. It was like listening to Vogon poetry. Finally, I would get my money and head back out into the light of day. I don't think the book store was open for more than a year. Probably went belly up. I don't remember. But, I will confess this much, standing there watching that fat fuck thumb through those books and breath heavily through his nose completely turned me off of porn. I just equated all people who read such books to this grease-ball. My teenage years were ruined.
I have never purchased an x-rated book. I have been to an actual strip club twice in my life. Once for a bachelor party and I thought it was really dumb. Another time in Thailand.... *If you ever get a chance you gotta do it just once. The things I saw would be the makings of a nightmare equal to those following late night horror flicks.
I probably never will purchase an x-rated magazine and unless I am hanging out with a bunch of buddies my strip joint bar days are probably over as well. I don't get these places. I can go down the street to any local bar and I am going to score. Why watch when I can do? That seems to be my philosophy anyway.
Naked Lunch
Tropic of Cancer