Quote:
Originally Posted by drjenkins
http://www.newsweek.com/harry-potter...-threat-669682
As a teenager I would try my best to find copies of "banned books" just to see what the fuss was. As an altar boy my best source of books to seek out was the Librorum Prohibitorum, the Prohibited Books list. Our school library and small local branch library had few of the tantalizing tomes. Since this was decades before the internet I would have to hitch rides with my older friends to get to larger libraries and used book stores.
Was I the only teenager in the 1966-1971 era to do this?
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I was in high school when Grace Metalious' book "Peyton Place" was published. I was the kid who always had a paperback in my hip pocket, for which I received not a little kidding. For those of you too young to remember "Peyton Place" was a terribly scandalous book in the 1950s. Probably it generated more scandal in it's day than any book since.
Anyway a teacher noticed it in my hip pocket and sent me to the principal, who made me leave school and said i couldn't come back till my parents came with me and talked to him. Which they did the next morning.
This was actually my parent's paperback, which they'd already read. I nearly always got my books from them. They were really upset that I was sent home because of that book. Finally they reached a compromise. I could come back to school only if I promised not to carry paperbacks in my pocket. I promised. I came back to school. I completely ignored that promise but only after I'd finished "Peyton Place". They never said anything about the books in my pocket after that so I guess they were a little embarassed.
I realize a lot of you were born after those days and probably haven't read "Peyton Place". By today's standards it would be family reading. But in those days it told what the author saw as the truth and it did it beautifully and that's an unbearable combination. I really think it's one of the best books written in that era and there were a lot of very fine books written then. It's probably a good candidate for the great American novel. It's a truly beautiful book by a very talented writer.
By the way, counting the book, the 2 movies made from it and the TV series it was also the most money making book of the 20th century.
I'm sure it was heavily banned. That speaks well of banned book lists. I've never sought out banned books to read or even banned book lists but I have run across a lot of those lists and they do contain a lot of books I've read, some of them favorites.
I did once do a search on Youtube for banned cartoons, having heard that that had become a thing there and i was surprised at how good a lot of those banned cartoons were. I suggest doing that search if you're at all interested in animation.
Movies and TV have some good examples of the banning of beautiful things: the Amos and Andy show was banned because it was racist. The network had continuously shown reruns for about 30 years and the show was popular till it was banned for being racist. There was nothing racist about that show. It was about black people. That was true of a lot of the banned cartoons as well. Yes they talked like black people so I suppose that was taken as stereotyping, but so do 90% of the black people I ever met. Should they also be banned?
The sad thing about banning isn't what it does to the books, shows and movies that are banned, it's what it says about us. And those of us who resent banning are still, like it or not, part of us!
Barry