Its Banned Book Week...read a book today, tomorrow it could be banned... Back in 1979, Ray Bradbury added a Coda to Fahrenheit 451, in which he discussed attempts by people to get him to make his stories better. About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles. But, she added, wouldnt it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more womens characters and roles? A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didnt I do them over? Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped. Two weeks ago my mount of mail delivered forth a pip-squeak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story The Fog Horn in a high school reader. In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a God-Light. Looking up at it from the viewpoint of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in the Presence. The editors had deleted God-Light and in the Presence. ... Do you begin to get the damned and incredible picture? How did I react to all of the above? By firing the whole lot. By sending rejection slips to each and every one. By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell. The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. ala.org/bbooks/top-100-bannedchallenged-books-2000-2009
Posted on: Wed, 24 Sep 2014 22:20:47 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015