Adam's Rap on Off-Broadway

Since we've been thinking a lot of works inspired by other works since Issue 46, we were interested in this article about Adam Rapp's new play The Metal Children. It was inspired by Rapp's own experiences with the reception of his young adult novel in a Pennsylvania suburb. It touches on a lot of other issues we love: censorship and the relationship of writer to reader. We wish Mr. Rapp luck.

Banned Books Week

Next week is Banned Books Week. I am trying to take more notice of this “holiday” this year. It’s perfectly fine to wear your pins with Huck Finn on them and give another pin wearer a “Rock on” and a nod (or maybe a high-five) during the day as this week goes on. But as writers, we should never forget that when people talk about banned books, they are talking about banning us. That is, they are preventing writers from writing and readers from reading, though in some cases they haven't even read the book they are banning.

Writers are often among first ones imprisoned in a repressive regime. You can take a look at Pen American Center’s list of authors that have been imprisoned or tortured for their work here. Also PEN lists five things you can do to protect freedom of expression abroad and at home. Free speech is only as strong as those who will defend it. Get involved, so that in the United States the right to write, publish, and read what you want remains for you and your readers. We’re always saying it’s all about the work, right? So let’s protect it.

You can check out more of the American Library Association’s excellent Banned Books Weeks site at the link above. One of my favorites is this page of 100 banned classics. You can also check out the American Booksellers for Free Expression. And you can’t forget the ACLU. They have their own top 100, a list of the books most frequently challenged in the last 15 years. Still think we’re not in trouble? Don’t blame me when they come for your copy of Song of Solomon.

News Around the 'Net

Thoughts from David L. Ulin at the LA Times about Banned Books Week.

Poet Mary Biddinger asks if there is a right (or wrong) time to begin publishing your work.

American literature dissed by Nobel Literature Chief.

To promote Sony Reader, speed reading man will read in Manhattan storefront for a month.

Poet and critic Hayden Carruth dead at age 87.

Fayetteville, Arkansas' Nightbird Books celebrates Banned Books Weeks with photos of customers with their favorite books (banned and otherwise).

Forbes reports on world's richest authors.

Literary Controversy on Film

In light of banned book week, we here at HFR thought it would be a good idea to highlight some of our country’s own literary struggles that aren’t as old as you might think. Here are two that have made it onto film recently.

Paperback Dreams


This independent film debuted back in August and is the true account of two pioneering bookstores in the San Francisco/Bay area. Established during the book boom of the 1950s, Cody’s and Kepler’s dedicated themselves to providing a haven for the controversial works that larger booksellers found too risky. They were on the frontlines of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s and suffered firebombings, vandalism, and harassment of imaginative diversity. But it was not until the 1990s, along with half the independent booksellers in the country, that the cold threat of foreclosure and bankruptcy began to loom on the horizon, coming to fruition in 2005 for 40 days (for Kepler’s) until dedicated customers offered their own bail out package and saved the store from closing permanently.

Obscene

This book turned film opened last Friday, 26 September, to great expectation. It is the story of Barney Rosset, the saving grace and bane of Grove Press and the scandalous Evergreen Review. Rosset locked horns against obscenity charges for Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer and emerged victorious. He challenged the standards that left controversial books, such as D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, banned or censored by providing the first unabridged, legitimate printing in the United States. Unfortunately, as Grove Pres grew in respectability, he, who had brought it to that position, was ousted for the very values he had brought to the press when he bought it in the 1950s.

The world is so full of wonderfully incisive authors who challenge the status quo but their voices would die unsung if they were not first supported by the truly brave cavalry that are the publishers and booksellers. Writers depend on the protection and support—both financially and artistically—of those responsible for putting their words into the hands of those readers (revolutionaries?) who will listen. We in the United States have a great deal to be grateful for, and not just among the novelists. The few real investigative journalist we have (Anderson Cooper and Christiana Amanpour come to mind but there are perhaps dozens more who put themselves in very real danger every day and not just in “sexy” warzones) don’t “disappear” or turn up “mysteriously” murdered. Writers of every genre have their struggles but they would be suffered in vain if it were not for the fearless publishers and distributors—Rosset, Cody, and Kepler to name only a few— who push back.

Banned Books Week: The Grapes of Wrath

In honor of Banned Books Week, National Public Radio featured this story on Morning Edition about the contentious history of The Grapes of Wrath and the famous photograph of a copy being burned. Rick Wartzman's book, Obscene in the Extreme, explores the complete history of the novel's banning. To hear the whole radio story, read an excerpt from Wartzman's book, and see the photograph, head on over to NPR.

Banned Books Week (and anti-Palin propaganda)

Banned Books Week is coming: Setpember 27-October 4. Have you scheduled your banned books barbeque?

Banned Books 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. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

To learn how to support this important week, see a list of frequently challenged books, or find out about celebratory book events in your area, see the Banned Books Week website or the American Library Association website.

This is not a political blog, but so help me, I feel like it's my moral obligation to banned books to mention the following nugget about (terrifying) Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin. According to this article in Time magazine, Palin asked a librarian "how she could go about banning books... because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them." Did you need another reason to get out and vote?