As a public librarian whose responsibility covers buying all adult fiction and non-fiction books for the library, I can tell you these have been the hardest years of my career. I do my level best to keep things ideologically neutral as possible and keep my leftist bias out of it -- and I do think many of my colleagues have a left leaning…
As a public librarian whose responsibility covers buying all adult fiction and non-fiction books for the library, I can tell you these have been the hardest years of my career. I do my level best to keep things ideologically neutral as possible and keep my leftist bias out of it -- and I do think many of my colleagues have a left leaning bias. For example, in my large regional consortium, our library is the only one that has Richard Reeves' new book, "Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it." There is currently 10 holds in the system for the one copy -- it's insane that I am the only library who has it in the system -- it's an important book that makes cogent arguments. I bought Pence's new book. I bought Tom Cotton's new book. I bought the new bio on Limbaugh that borders on hagiography. I buy more books on religion, prayer, Christianity etc. than any other library in our consortium.
The only thing I will not buy, no matter how many public requests for it I get, are books that are devoid of facts. I will not buy books that "prove" the 2020 election was stolen, any more than I would buy books that "prove" the Earth is flat.
Hang in there. Your purchases show you uphold the intellectual freedom guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. That's your job and your doing it well.
My former high school library, in a very liberal city, included books by Bill O'Reilly and Larry Elder. I despise Larry Elder's rhetoric, but he was invited to speak to the students.
I applaud your first paragraph. I wonder about the second. While I grant you the two examples as being devoid of facts, I get worried about the concept of various people and groups deciding which books are devoid of facts and which aren't. I consider the book of Genesis to be pretty devoid of facts. Should that be on my list of books to refuse to put in a library? (yes, I know it isn't typically a stand-alone work).
Religion and religious texts, by their definition, are works of faith with unverifiable claims. The decider of what books are devoid of facts in this case, is me. I always remain open, however, to revising my views. If compelling scientific evidence was put forward that the Earth is flat, I would reconsider my approach to the topic. But, as of 2022, all of our best science indicates that the Earth is not flat. Or that the election of 2020 was stolen -- but again, if proof/evidence was offered that was compelling, I would reconsider.
I hear you, and I get where you are coming from. I just don't like the sound of "The decider ... is me" and, "If proof was offered ..." when I imagine them in other people's voices.
I also don't like factual soundbites like, "My book is only carried in 1% of libraries because those with a leftist bias have taken it upon themselves to decide what is factual enough for you to read."
No, it matters if we establish politics as a deciding factor. I haven't been very clear apparently in my expressing myself, so I'm going to lay a few things out at the start.
1. I detest DJT.
2. I don't believe even a tiny bit of the "Big Lie"
3. I don't support any bit of the agenda of those who do.
That out of the way, millions upon millions do. And they do so politically. Which is one of the highest bars we have when it comes to any hint of restriction by the government on speech. A librarian refusing to buy any books 'proving' that 2020 was stolen would be seen through a political lens. Protestations that they were reviewed and found devoid of facts aren't going to matter. Now put the shoe on the other foot and think of what DJT's fan-base would decide to exclude based on their warped view of the same criteria.
My point isn't on who decides what is devoid of fact, what is political vs. fantasy, etc. It is concern about the concept of anyone deciding that on a whole class of books. I don't like the precedent set if there are say two dozen books on the subject by prominent idiots (D'Souza as one example) that are ALL not to be found in a public library. If some library somewhere decided not to include a single book on the possibility of a connection between Russia and Trump because it was all a hoax, would we be quite so sanguine about it?
TBH, I haven't been to a library in decades... and I am no longer sure how important or used libraries (especially public rather than academic libraries) are--given what appears (to me) the general drop in literacy and reading and the advent of the internet.
Libraries used to be important. I spent a LOT of time in one as a kid and as a student. Because I have money and access to things, I no longer use them.
And that was what MADE them important--access to information and things that you could not afford to access. People think that the internet is the same/similar--but it isn't.
In all libraries, public and school, the decider IS the librarian. The board governing the library gives that authority to the librarian along with guidelines on making purchasing decisions. (And who authorizes those boards? The voters. You know, consent of the governed.)
Those boards also have official challenge procedures for individuals who object to a title the librarian has purchased. The library serves the whole community, not just a small group of parents.
Librarians are trained to monitor their own personal bias in selecting, or not, titles for their collections. She's doing her job and doing it well as far as I can see.
Our local and state taxes support our libraries. I would not have it any other way. I am always impressed at the resources provided at my local library as well as the network it belongs to. I have volunteered and worked for the system when I was a college student when they started database computerization in 1988-1989. I did not realize that all libraries were not the same until I travelled below the M-D line.
I don't disagree that she's doing her job well. My point is that the hairs raise a bit on the back of my neck when she's excluding various political books. Yes, I agree those books are garbage.
I also acknowledge that every book can't make it in and that decisions have to be made. I just worry about similar logic twisted to negative purposes by those all around us. I also worry about the impact on the impressionable when a truthful statement can be made, "You won't find a single book in the library about the 2020 election theft." Said impressionable goes and does their own research and finds that it is true. Confirms that 'they' are trying to suppress the 'truth'.
It is much the same as the concept of not banning the Nazi rally on the town square. It is hateful and repugnant, but it is also political speech; and both letting it be seen for what it is, and not going down the road of suppressing that which we disagree with are important concepts.
“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
- Not Voltaire's exact words, but his presumed sentiment.
Thanks for the clarification on "not Voltaire's exact words." But who are you quoting when you wrote "You won't find a single book in the library about the 2020 election theft"? That's not what mjdlight said. He or she (I think mjd is a woman) said she would "not buy books that 'prove' the 2020 election was stolen."
I myself would read such a book and probably purchase it, even though I myself am sure there is no such proof. I might display it along with a number of reviews from non-partisan publications like Kirkus or Publisher's Weekly that evaluate whether the claim (it was stolen) was proved or not. Or with other books that prove, with the abundance of evidence publicly available, it was fair and square.
Yes, I can see a scenario where the impressionable make such a case if a particular book is not in the collection. Still, there are procedures (authorized by the voters' representatives) for investigating a librarian's purchasing decisions. The impressionable can claim whatever they want. Do they utilize the procedures? Probably not. In which case what they say can be ignored, unless you are another impressionable who has already bought the Big Lie.
Easy now. I'm not making the case for the big lie. When I make a quote up about "You won't find a single book in the library about the 2020 election theft" I'm speculating about the words that those in support of Trump will use.
As for ignoring the impressionable who do not utilize proper procedure, I think they are too dangerous to ignore, and I'd suggest the events of January 6th as evidence of that.
As far as I can tell from past interactions and postings, you and I agree for the most part on various topics. I am making a small distinction about being careful using what can be seen as a political lens to decide which books to have in a library.
This is why Librarian is a professional degree. This is a public trust. There are many issues to be considered when curating a town's reading, and many different aspects of law and community standards, not to mention funding. It is not undertaken by people without education on the dangers of it. And it's also why we shouldn't leave these decisions to Moms for Trump or whomever is pushing and funding book bans. It's not a decision for one "Mom" to make for the entire town. The training to make these decisions is expensive and extensive, but as always in America, we're not going to learn what librarians do, we're just going to assume we do it better than them.
"we're not going to learn what librarians do, we're just going to assume we do it better than them."
When the Mom's for Trump take over those decisions, they get to ignore everything you are talking about and do it their way. They'll make similar sounding arguments that you and I would see through as complete bullshit, but at the end of the day, we'll just have a different flavor of promoted and suppressed books.
I have to disagree, knowltok. I don't think they're just 2 sides of the same coin, a different flavor, one might say. One side bans books due to their content being "groomer" content, and the other side, the public librarians, make hard choices about how to spend your taxpayer money. If you feel that the librarians are shadow banning books in your area, talk to them! Did you know that you can request any book you want, and that public libraries take those requests into account when buying books?
At the end of the day, the public librarian is there to serve you. The books that are weeded from your library are taken out due to age and nobody checking them out. If you think something different is going on near you, you can talk to your public librarian about it. Because it's a public trust. Good luck getting Moms for Liberty to listen to you.
I wish I had decided to train to be a librarian rather than a nurse. I love the community focus. Nursing is very different. We are there for the patients but frequently put in positions where they are at risk d/t staffing and suffer moral injury in the process.
I don't view them as 2 sides of the same coin. I fully agree that Republican efforts to actually ban books is far, far worse than any bookstore choosing not to sell something.
I also understand and support what libraries do as well as the difficult nature of the work and choices.
My point is about being cautious letting any hint of politics into the decisions. My concern is that coming up with very valid reasons to exclude categories of books on what would appear to be political grounds is something of a slippery slope that the Mom's for Trump will happily charge right down. Bad metaphor on my part saying that it would be a different flavor. They'd say it is just a different flavor, like vanilla vs. chocolate. You and I would recognize it as vanilla vs. cyanide. My point is that we don't want any flavor picking by anyone. If we have a firm line there that no one can cross, we're safer from being fed cyanide and told it is just another flavor.
The decider is always you.. or, if you abdicate the responsibility, whoever you abdicated the responsibility to. Many, many people abdicate the responsibility or they usurp it (in the case of banning books).
You choose to read/not read particular books, to believe them or not believe them. The existence/availability of a book is nice, but it is not a guarantor of ANYTHING. Because, in the end a lot of "me's" decide--and the basis of decision is more often not that good than good.
A lot of people would not know a fact if it hit them in the face. It is absurdly easy to lie to and mislead people because far too many people know VERY little about anything.
They had a chance to learn those things.
They had opportunities to learn those things.
In some cases they were supposedly required to learn those things.
But they didn't. They chose not too. It was too difficult or too boring or Twitter, TikTok or whatever social media they were glued to was too important for them to spend the time and effort.
I stopped being shocked or surprised at what my students didn't know many years ago (though I still complain about it). This ignorance is despite what they are taught, not because they are not taught it... because, in the end, the system doesn't actually REALLY require them to learn much of anything (except maybe long enough to pass a test).
Things have become even worse since the internet and the ability to google things rather than know things.
Totally get your concerns -- but at the end of the day, someone has to decide what to spend taxpayer dollars on. The "check" is that if I were to be found to be biased/not following the library's written policy on collection development, the Library's Board could fire me.
Genesis is a fine example of a bad example (its "factuality,", in this instance) and as such deserves to be studied, if for no other reason than to expose its disconnect from reality.
Paraphrasing here, Mark Twain said of the bible, it contains a smattering of history, a wealth of pornography and upwards of a thousand lies. Ol' Mark (and I) would heartily agree with approaching the bible in that way (as literature). But as a guide to living a productive, positive existence, it must be able to withstand close scrutiny which, when we're told that every word in it is "true" and above dispute, it falls more than a bit short, in Twain's view.
But anyone who studies Western literature after the 5th century CE needs to be familiar with either the Latin or Orthodox Bible.
In English literature, you need to be familiar with the King James version.
OTOH, if you look at the conservative christians online -- and folks like Trump -- they talk a lot about the Bible. Except they don't seem to have read it.
I am quite familiar with a variety of versions (I used to teach undergrad English Comp, Public Speaking, and taught HS ELA for 10 years).
Many people no longer read the type of literature that requires that background knowledge--except as a school assignment. It is my impression that a lot of people have selectively studied and twisted scripture--but few of them have actually READ it.
Many read right past/through an allusion of quotation and don't even really notice it.
As writer today, scriptural allusion is probably not a pathway to clear understanding.
Much of the Old Testament is folklore, tribal tales and genealogy with some verifiable history thrown in for good luck. In much the same way, courts now accept relevant First Nations creation stories and tales when considering land claims. Tribal tales have been around for many more thousands of years than what has been written down and, in context, is more accurate.
You mean like when they say, "Two Corinthians..." or hold it forth, upside down while standing in front of the doors of a church, as a repellant to vampires or queers, I guess.
The "reason(s)" offered up for the banning of any book written for general distribution all have, as the original, underlying justification, a direct link to religion. Mark Twain self-censored "Letters From the Earth," forbidding its publication until 50 years after his death, because he believed that his surviving heirs would suffer the repercussions the outrage its mocking of religion would provoke from those too self-righteous to see and accept the truths he described. That this book is also hilariously funny serves only to further infuriate the devout.
"Letters From the Earth" was assembled by Bernard de Voto, a scholar of Twain's works, from among thousands of pages of Twain's essays, short stories and fragments of longer pieces, among them the portions that Mark intentionally withheld from publication until after his death. Most of the pieces in LFtE are great, innocent fun, but he does a side-splitting job of skewering religion. Clara Clemens, Twain's only surviving offspring was also against the publishing of some of Twain's works but eventually relented and gave "Letters" her approval. She died the same year, 1962, only months after "Letters" was published. Her daughter, Nina, Twain's sole grandchild died in 1966, childless, ending that branch of the Samuel Clemens family.
As a public librarian whose responsibility covers buying all adult fiction and non-fiction books for the library, I can tell you these have been the hardest years of my career. I do my level best to keep things ideologically neutral as possible and keep my leftist bias out of it -- and I do think many of my colleagues have a left leaning bias. For example, in my large regional consortium, our library is the only one that has Richard Reeves' new book, "Of Boys and Men: Why the modern male is struggling, why it matters, and what to do about it." There is currently 10 holds in the system for the one copy -- it's insane that I am the only library who has it in the system -- it's an important book that makes cogent arguments. I bought Pence's new book. I bought Tom Cotton's new book. I bought the new bio on Limbaugh that borders on hagiography. I buy more books on religion, prayer, Christianity etc. than any other library in our consortium.
The only thing I will not buy, no matter how many public requests for it I get, are books that are devoid of facts. I will not buy books that "prove" the 2020 election was stolen, any more than I would buy books that "prove" the Earth is flat.
Hang in there. Your purchases show you uphold the intellectual freedom guaranteed by the 1st Amendment. That's your job and your doing it well.
My former high school library, in a very liberal city, included books by Bill O'Reilly and Larry Elder. I despise Larry Elder's rhetoric, but he was invited to speak to the students.
I applaud your first paragraph. I wonder about the second. While I grant you the two examples as being devoid of facts, I get worried about the concept of various people and groups deciding which books are devoid of facts and which aren't. I consider the book of Genesis to be pretty devoid of facts. Should that be on my list of books to refuse to put in a library? (yes, I know it isn't typically a stand-alone work).
Religion and religious texts, by their definition, are works of faith with unverifiable claims. The decider of what books are devoid of facts in this case, is me. I always remain open, however, to revising my views. If compelling scientific evidence was put forward that the Earth is flat, I would reconsider my approach to the topic. But, as of 2022, all of our best science indicates that the Earth is not flat. Or that the election of 2020 was stolen -- but again, if proof/evidence was offered that was compelling, I would reconsider.
I hear you, and I get where you are coming from. I just don't like the sound of "The decider ... is me" and, "If proof was offered ..." when I imagine them in other people's voices.
I also don't like factual soundbites like, "My book is only carried in 1% of libraries because those with a leftist bias have taken it upon themselves to decide what is factual enough for you to read."
Someone has to decide. Does it matter if it's one or ten?
No, it matters if we establish politics as a deciding factor. I haven't been very clear apparently in my expressing myself, so I'm going to lay a few things out at the start.
1. I detest DJT.
2. I don't believe even a tiny bit of the "Big Lie"
3. I don't support any bit of the agenda of those who do.
That out of the way, millions upon millions do. And they do so politically. Which is one of the highest bars we have when it comes to any hint of restriction by the government on speech. A librarian refusing to buy any books 'proving' that 2020 was stolen would be seen through a political lens. Protestations that they were reviewed and found devoid of facts aren't going to matter. Now put the shoe on the other foot and think of what DJT's fan-base would decide to exclude based on their warped view of the same criteria.
My point isn't on who decides what is devoid of fact, what is political vs. fantasy, etc. It is concern about the concept of anyone deciding that on a whole class of books. I don't like the precedent set if there are say two dozen books on the subject by prominent idiots (D'Souza as one example) that are ALL not to be found in a public library. If some library somewhere decided not to include a single book on the possibility of a connection between Russia and Trump because it was all a hoax, would we be quite so sanguine about it?
TBH, I haven't been to a library in decades... and I am no longer sure how important or used libraries (especially public rather than academic libraries) are--given what appears (to me) the general drop in literacy and reading and the advent of the internet.
Libraries used to be important. I spent a LOT of time in one as a kid and as a student. Because I have money and access to things, I no longer use them.
And that was what MADE them important--access to information and things that you could not afford to access. People think that the internet is the same/similar--but it isn't.
In all libraries, public and school, the decider IS the librarian. The board governing the library gives that authority to the librarian along with guidelines on making purchasing decisions. (And who authorizes those boards? The voters. You know, consent of the governed.)
Those boards also have official challenge procedures for individuals who object to a title the librarian has purchased. The library serves the whole community, not just a small group of parents.
Librarians are trained to monitor their own personal bias in selecting, or not, titles for their collections. She's doing her job and doing it well as far as I can see.
Our local and state taxes support our libraries. I would not have it any other way. I am always impressed at the resources provided at my local library as well as the network it belongs to. I have volunteered and worked for the system when I was a college student when they started database computerization in 1988-1989. I did not realize that all libraries were not the same until I travelled below the M-D line.
I don't disagree that she's doing her job well. My point is that the hairs raise a bit on the back of my neck when she's excluding various political books. Yes, I agree those books are garbage.
I also acknowledge that every book can't make it in and that decisions have to be made. I just worry about similar logic twisted to negative purposes by those all around us. I also worry about the impact on the impressionable when a truthful statement can be made, "You won't find a single book in the library about the 2020 election theft." Said impressionable goes and does their own research and finds that it is true. Confirms that 'they' are trying to suppress the 'truth'.
It is much the same as the concept of not banning the Nazi rally on the town square. It is hateful and repugnant, but it is also political speech; and both letting it be seen for what it is, and not going down the road of suppressing that which we disagree with are important concepts.
“I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”
- Not Voltaire's exact words, but his presumed sentiment.
Thanks for the clarification on "not Voltaire's exact words." But who are you quoting when you wrote "You won't find a single book in the library about the 2020 election theft"? That's not what mjdlight said. He or she (I think mjd is a woman) said she would "not buy books that 'prove' the 2020 election was stolen."
I myself would read such a book and probably purchase it, even though I myself am sure there is no such proof. I might display it along with a number of reviews from non-partisan publications like Kirkus or Publisher's Weekly that evaluate whether the claim (it was stolen) was proved or not. Or with other books that prove, with the abundance of evidence publicly available, it was fair and square.
Yes, I can see a scenario where the impressionable make such a case if a particular book is not in the collection. Still, there are procedures (authorized by the voters' representatives) for investigating a librarian's purchasing decisions. The impressionable can claim whatever they want. Do they utilize the procedures? Probably not. In which case what they say can be ignored, unless you are another impressionable who has already bought the Big Lie.
Easy now. I'm not making the case for the big lie. When I make a quote up about "You won't find a single book in the library about the 2020 election theft" I'm speculating about the words that those in support of Trump will use.
As for ignoring the impressionable who do not utilize proper procedure, I think they are too dangerous to ignore, and I'd suggest the events of January 6th as evidence of that.
As far as I can tell from past interactions and postings, you and I agree for the most part on various topics. I am making a small distinction about being careful using what can be seen as a political lens to decide which books to have in a library.
This is why Librarian is a professional degree. This is a public trust. There are many issues to be considered when curating a town's reading, and many different aspects of law and community standards, not to mention funding. It is not undertaken by people without education on the dangers of it. And it's also why we shouldn't leave these decisions to Moms for Trump or whomever is pushing and funding book bans. It's not a decision for one "Mom" to make for the entire town. The training to make these decisions is expensive and extensive, but as always in America, we're not going to learn what librarians do, we're just going to assume we do it better than them.
Agreed, but that almost makes my point.
"we're not going to learn what librarians do, we're just going to assume we do it better than them."
When the Mom's for Trump take over those decisions, they get to ignore everything you are talking about and do it their way. They'll make similar sounding arguments that you and I would see through as complete bullshit, but at the end of the day, we'll just have a different flavor of promoted and suppressed books.
I have to disagree, knowltok. I don't think they're just 2 sides of the same coin, a different flavor, one might say. One side bans books due to their content being "groomer" content, and the other side, the public librarians, make hard choices about how to spend your taxpayer money. If you feel that the librarians are shadow banning books in your area, talk to them! Did you know that you can request any book you want, and that public libraries take those requests into account when buying books?
At the end of the day, the public librarian is there to serve you. The books that are weeded from your library are taken out due to age and nobody checking them out. If you think something different is going on near you, you can talk to your public librarian about it. Because it's a public trust. Good luck getting Moms for Liberty to listen to you.
I wish I had decided to train to be a librarian rather than a nurse. I love the community focus. Nursing is very different. We are there for the patients but frequently put in positions where they are at risk d/t staffing and suffer moral injury in the process.
I think you are misunderstanding what I'm saying.
I don't view them as 2 sides of the same coin. I fully agree that Republican efforts to actually ban books is far, far worse than any bookstore choosing not to sell something.
I also understand and support what libraries do as well as the difficult nature of the work and choices.
My point is about being cautious letting any hint of politics into the decisions. My concern is that coming up with very valid reasons to exclude categories of books on what would appear to be political grounds is something of a slippery slope that the Mom's for Trump will happily charge right down. Bad metaphor on my part saying that it would be a different flavor. They'd say it is just a different flavor, like vanilla vs. chocolate. You and I would recognize it as vanilla vs. cyanide. My point is that we don't want any flavor picking by anyone. If we have a firm line there that no one can cross, we're safer from being fed cyanide and told it is just another flavor.
The decider is always you.. or, if you abdicate the responsibility, whoever you abdicated the responsibility to. Many, many people abdicate the responsibility or they usurp it (in the case of banning books).
You choose to read/not read particular books, to believe them or not believe them. The existence/availability of a book is nice, but it is not a guarantor of ANYTHING. Because, in the end a lot of "me's" decide--and the basis of decision is more often not that good than good.
A lot of people would not know a fact if it hit them in the face. It is absurdly easy to lie to and mislead people because far too many people know VERY little about anything.
They had a chance to learn those things.
They had opportunities to learn those things.
In some cases they were supposedly required to learn those things.
But they didn't. They chose not too. It was too difficult or too boring or Twitter, TikTok or whatever social media they were glued to was too important for them to spend the time and effort.
I stopped being shocked or surprised at what my students didn't know many years ago (though I still complain about it). This ignorance is despite what they are taught, not because they are not taught it... because, in the end, the system doesn't actually REALLY require them to learn much of anything (except maybe long enough to pass a test).
Things have become even worse since the internet and the ability to google things rather than know things.
Totally get your concerns -- but at the end of the day, someone has to decide what to spend taxpayer dollars on. The "check" is that if I were to be found to be biased/not following the library's written policy on collection development, the Library's Board could fire me.
Double, triple LIKE!
Genesis is a fine example of a bad example (its "factuality,", in this instance) and as such deserves to be studied, if for no other reason than to expose its disconnect from reality.
Many people study the Bible as a cultural/literary work of art as well.
Paraphrasing here, Mark Twain said of the bible, it contains a smattering of history, a wealth of pornography and upwards of a thousand lies. Ol' Mark (and I) would heartily agree with approaching the bible in that way (as literature). But as a guide to living a productive, positive existence, it must be able to withstand close scrutiny which, when we're told that every word in it is "true" and above dispute, it falls more than a bit short, in Twain's view.
Not as many as those who take it as the basis of belief in a supernatural entity.
Maybe.
But anyone who studies Western literature after the 5th century CE needs to be familiar with either the Latin or Orthodox Bible.
In English literature, you need to be familiar with the King James version.
OTOH, if you look at the conservative christians online -- and folks like Trump -- they talk a lot about the Bible. Except they don't seem to have read it.
I am quite familiar with a variety of versions (I used to teach undergrad English Comp, Public Speaking, and taught HS ELA for 10 years).
Many people no longer read the type of literature that requires that background knowledge--except as a school assignment. It is my impression that a lot of people have selectively studied and twisted scripture--but few of them have actually READ it.
Many read right past/through an allusion of quotation and don't even really notice it.
As writer today, scriptural allusion is probably not a pathway to clear understanding.
Much of the Old Testament is folklore, tribal tales and genealogy with some verifiable history thrown in for good luck. In much the same way, courts now accept relevant First Nations creation stories and tales when considering land claims. Tribal tales have been around for many more thousands of years than what has been written down and, in context, is more accurate.
You mean like when they say, "Two Corinthians..." or hold it forth, upside down while standing in front of the doors of a church, as a repellant to vampires or queers, I guess.
Precisely.
Or like the guy who just told me yesterday that being Christian doesn't mean you have to help the poor.
"Jesus never said you have to give away all your stuff."
Ummmh, according to Matthew that's exactly what He said.
(Given when Trump pulled his stunt with the Bible, he must think it repels black people too.)
Or Aramaic.
The joys of a junk drawer memory.
🙃
The "reason(s)" offered up for the banning of any book written for general distribution all have, as the original, underlying justification, a direct link to religion. Mark Twain self-censored "Letters From the Earth," forbidding its publication until 50 years after his death, because he believed that his surviving heirs would suffer the repercussions the outrage its mocking of religion would provoke from those too self-righteous to see and accept the truths he described. That this book is also hilariously funny serves only to further infuriate the devout.
I'm unaware of this. He cared more about his heirs than publishing one of his books!
Somehow, the devout and humor don't go together . . .
"Letters From the Earth" was assembled by Bernard de Voto, a scholar of Twain's works, from among thousands of pages of Twain's essays, short stories and fragments of longer pieces, among them the portions that Mark intentionally withheld from publication until after his death. Most of the pieces in LFtE are great, innocent fun, but he does a side-splitting job of skewering religion. Clara Clemens, Twain's only surviving offspring was also against the publishing of some of Twain's works but eventually relented and gave "Letters" her approval. She died the same year, 1962, only months after "Letters" was published. Her daughter, Nina, Twain's sole grandchild died in 1966, childless, ending that branch of the Samuel Clemens family.
Thx! Very sad that he has no descendants.
Well, there *is* Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.
😊