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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn 1973, a school board head decide to burn Kurt Vonnegut's books. Vonnegut sent him a letter:
In October of 1973, Bruce Severy a 26-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North Dakota decided to use Kurt Vonnegut's novel, Slaughterhouse-Five, as a teaching aid in his classroom. The next month, on November 7th, the head of the school board, Charles McCarthy, demanded that all 32 copies be burned in the school's furnace as a result of its "obscene language." Other books soon met with the same fate.
On the 16th of November, Kurt Vonnegut sent McCarthy the following letter. He didn't receive a reply.
November 16, 1973
Dear Mr. McCarthy:
I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.
Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.
I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?
I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.
If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really dont damage children much. They didnt damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, Yes, yesbut it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community. This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.
I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans cant stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.
If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the eduction of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned booksbooks you hadnt even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.
Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.
Kurt Vonnegut
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html
Good on Kurt Vonnegut!
BTW "Letters Of Note" has been issued in book form. It is a fascinating read.
In_The_Wind
(72,300 posts)IllinoisBirdWatcher
(2,315 posts)The Minot, ND Daily News had this follow-up in 2008.
According to a 2004 review of the book "100 Banned Books: Censorship Histories of World Literature," by the College Review, there was an out of court settlement in the Drake case that resulted in permission being granted for "Slaughter-House Five" to be taught to high school juniors and seniors, while Severy received a settlement of $5,000. Vonnegut's letter to the Drake school board was reportedly reprinted in his autobiography "Palm Sunday."
Makes me want to sit down and again watch the original Footloose with Kevin Bacon and John Lithgow, and after that re-read Ray Bradbury's classic Fahrenheit 451.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)Or that wasn't the sole copy.
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)kept a copy.
All of his books were burned. The letter came later so I have no idea what was done with it.
joanbarnes
(1,723 posts)zeemike
(18,998 posts)But then it is from one of the best writers of our time so what else would you expect.
Slaughterhouse Five is one of the best Si Fi books ever, and Catch 22 one of the best anti war books right there with it....and the movies made from them were the best ever.
1monster
(11,012 posts)THE PEARL came up before the school board for banning due to its "immoral" content.
The reason it was considered immoral? The main couple in the novel were married common law and had a child. Since the village they lived in only saw a priest once every three to five years, it was common for couples to pledge to each other by thier community standards and then to have a priest bless their union when his circuit made it to their village.
I don't remember how the issue was settled. I had already read the book in my sophomore year. I just know that even then, I thought those who wanted to ban the book on those grounds were ridiculous. (If I were to ban it, or any of Steinbeck's works, it would have been on the grounds that his writings were always so suicidally depressing. )
Jim__
(14,083 posts)merrily
(45,251 posts)SoapBox
(18,791 posts)a good old fashioned book burning.
Maybe a few burning-at-the-stake of some homosexuals and Mooselams too!
...this why the past cannot be forgotten.
malaise
(269,157 posts)They would burn people at a stake.
KeepItReal
(7,769 posts)K&R
REP
(21,691 posts)I've always thought these bannings were because an American veteran and POW of WWII - "the good war" - dared to write a book that criticized American and Allied actions and war in the general (the full title is "Slaughterhouse 5 or The Children's Crusade" .
"Get out of the road, you dumb motherfucker." - the line usually cited as the cause for banning
Bolo Boffin
(23,796 posts)burning that book seems especially egregious.
Martin Eden
(12,875 posts)40 years later, ignoramusus still sit on school boards