Observing Banned Books Week With an Internet Tour

Comstockery and bowdlerism have been menacing artistic expression since long before the eras of either Anthony Comstock or Thomas Bowlder, the men whose names became wedded to literary censorship. Bowlder published a G-rated volume of Shakespeare in 1818, and Comstock, as secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice in the 1870s, helped destroy 160 tons of literature and pictures he deemed immoral.

With efforts continuing around the country and around the globe to bowdlerize school libraries and commit flagrant Comstockery in the name of virtue and religion, bibliophiles and libertarians are celebrating the freedom to read during Banned Book Week.

The observance, sponsored by the American Library Assn., highlights the importance of the 1st Amendment right to choose to read all books, including banned and challenged ones and other literature considered by some to be objectionable.

The Internet--which has had its own problems with censorship and freedom of speech issues--is, nonetheless, a vast expanse where the 1st Amendment righteous can learn lots about the history of censorship and read reams of banned literature.

For the past 18 years, the American Library Assn., along with the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression and the Assn. of American Publishers, has been observing this week in awareness of attempts to ban books ranging from works by Dr. Seuss to "The Origin of Species" to the Bible.

Its Web site, at http://www.ala.org/bbooks/, explains the need for such an observance, along with highlighting famously and lesser-known banned and challenged books. The site discusses intellectual freedom, censorship motives and tactics, and notable 1st Amendment cases. The site also explains the difference between banning and challenging a book (which is an attempt to ban a book).

The site says that during the '90s, more than 5,000 books have been challenged in the United States, as recorded by the library association's office for intellectual freedom. Sexual explicitness was the primary reason for a challenge, followed by offensive language, unsuitability to a particular age group, occultism and homosexuality.

Last year, the site reports, the most frequently challenged book was Robert Cormier's "The Chocolate War" (for explicit sexuality), followed by John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" (for offensive language).