Burning Poe's Books Without Really Reading Them

Update 6/24/24: I would like to thank Steve in Manhattan for including this article at the Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-up... except that, uh, um... he made the link there to a Clippy YouTube video instead. Sigh. It's been that kind of a Monday already.

Irony in America lost its humor a long time ago. That is what makes this current round of book banning across the nation both pathetic and horrifying. Even at the point that the literacy haters in Florida are going after the books about book bans (via Erum Salam at the Guardian (US)):

Ban This Book, a children’s book written by Alan Gratz, will no longer be available in the Indian River county school district since the school board voted to remove the book last month.

Gratz’s book, which came out in 2017, follows fourth-grader Amy Anne Ollinger as she tries to check out her favorite book. Ollinger is told by the librarian she cannot, because it was banned after a classmate’s parent thought it was inappropriate. She then creates a secret banned-books library, entering into “an unexpected battle over book banning, censorship, and who has the right to decide what she and her fellow students can read”, according to the book’s description on Gratz’s website...

So of course a parent objected.

Pippin’s opposition is what prompted the school board to vote 3-2 in favor of removing it from shelves. The vote happened despite the district’s book-review committee vetting the work and deciding to keep it in schools.

Indian River county school board members disagreed with how Gratz’s book referred to other works that had been taken out of school, and accused it of “teaching rebellion of school-board authority”, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Pippin is also the chair of the local Moms for Liberty chapter, a far-right organization that has been behind many of the book bans that have swept across the US in recent years. According to a 2023 PEN America report, 81% of school districts that banned books between July 2022 and June 2023 were within or adjoined a county with a local chapter of a group such as Moms for Liberty...

There is nothing liberating about what this Far Right organization is doing. It's restricting. It's limiting. It's taking away from other families their rights to choose what their kids can read. It's taking away from those children the ability to recognize when free thought and free speech - some of the most essential human rights - are denied.

In a statement to the Tallahassee Democrat, Gratz noted the irony of his book being banned.

“They banned the book because it talks about the books that they have banned and because it talks about book banning,” he said. “It feels like they know exactly what they’re doing and they’re somewhat ashamed of what they’re doing and they don’t want a book on the shelves that calls them out.”

Reading as a skill gives us comprehension. Reading from diverse points of view, reading about different cultures, reading about the thrills and dangers of the real world. We read about what's fiction and we read about what's nonfiction and we read about what's human. 

These are things that the book banners would take away, to narrow and limit our skill to comprehend. They want to take away the skill to think, to interpret, to question, to decide in favor of worldviews that the book banners fear and hate.

We've already got problems in the United States when it comes to adult comprehension and decision-making skills, things that a strong literary education could have solved. And now we're dealing with factions in our nation happily denying literacy to our children, to guarantee that freedom of thought and freedom of speech can be easily taken away.

If you don't want your kid to read a book, tell your kid not to read it, and find something else that the kid could enjoy reading without denying that right to thousands of other families.

Defend your libraries, America.

I read Ray Bradbury growing up. I remember his short stories, masterpieces of horror, and recall a story from the Martian Chronicles titled "Usher II" (it was a separate magazine short story from 1950 but reworked to be part of the novel):

“Garrett?” called Stendahl softly. Garrett silenced himself. “Garrett,” said Stendahl, “do you know why I’ve done this to you? Because you burned Mr. Poe’s books without really reading them. You took other people’s advice that they needed burning. Otherwise you’d have realized what I was going to do to you when we came down here a moment ago. Ignorance is fatal, Mr. Garrett.”

And if you've read Edgar Allan Poe in school (or if the book banners would let you), you'd know what Stendahl was doing to Garrett.

Yes, for the love of God!