Alanis Morissett's song "Isn't It Ironic" & The Banning of Ray Bradbury's "Farenheit 451"

are all the proof you need that

 most people really do not understand the definition of the word "irony!"

BANNED BOOKS WEEK . . . BANNED BOOKS WEEK . . . BANNED BOOKS WEEK

The list of banned books always surprises me. (Examples courtesy of Controversial & Banned Books) 

A book celebrating the many types of families that actually exist in this country, A dictionary, the quintessential book about censorship! This last one is proof that the folks banning books need to check those banned dictionaries for the word "irony."

Families

by Meredith Tax A young children's book that creatively describes different family structures, was finally removed by the Fairfax County school board. Meredith Tax's beloved book had been under attack for a long time, during which many individuals and organizations rose to its defense. What's more, Families was praised by the board's own review committees.

 

American Heritage Dictionary (1969)

In 1978, an Eldon, Missouri library banned the dictionary because it contained 39 "objectionable" words. And, in 1987, the Anchorage School Board banned the dictionary for similar reasons, i.e., having slang definitions for words such as "bed," "knocker," and "balls."

 

Fahrenheit 451

by Ray Bradbury This book is about censorship and those who ban books for fear of creating too much individualism and independent thought. In late 1998, this book was removed from the required reading list of the West Marion High School in Foxworth, Mississippi. A parent complained of the use of the words "God damn" in the book. Subsequently, the superintendent instructed the the teacher to remove the book from the required reading list.

A SERIOUS QUANDRY

Which Poem Would YOU Ban from the School Syllabus?

"In these uncertain times when it’s hard for some people to distinguish between a poem and a random act of violence, it is comforting to know that we have the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA) to protect us from harm. You might recall that the AQA made the decision to pulp an anthology of poems for an English Literature examination because it contained a poem, Education for Leisure by Carol Ann Duffy, in which a teenager flushes a goldfish down a toilet and then carries a bread knife onto the streets."

"One thing is certain: today’s poetry-reading adolescents become tomorrow’s deviant adults. We must make sure that poems taught in our classrooms are uniformly bland and as irrelevant to their readers as possible."

 

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE COMMENTS
AT THE LINK ABOVE.
THEY ARE TRULY EDUCATIONAL!

"my poem to be decisively pulped would be DylanThomas’ do not go gently into the night…and the reason:

i think, particularly with the ongoing swine flu epidemic and rising OAP population, people should be encouraged to lie down and give in. no more heroics or indoctrinating the young to take responsibility for the care of elders. Encouraging the nation to buck up, be healthy and look after ourselves is at best irresponsible, at worst dangerous."

Oh goody! A challenge that's right up my ally. AND . . . A THOUGHT.

 

Banned Book Challenge 2010

The Pelham Public Library is issuing the fourth annual "Banned Book Challenge." Set a challenge for yourself to read x number of challenged or banned books between February 21 (Freedom to Read Week in Canada) and June 30. 

I just found this, so it is a bit late in the game for me. But there are still three weeks left.

Because of some comments left on my blog about banned books, the subject has been on my mind lately and I have reread a few old classics. Yes, my library is rife with the critters, as would be any diverse library.

It always surprises me the number of people who have no problem with ripping books out of the hands of others and forbidding certain thoughts and ideas be expressed in daylight. You see, as many of you may already know, religious texts are among the most challenged and banned out there. the Bible, the Koran, the writings of Confucious and Martin Luther, as well as many others.

Is it ironic then that promoters of censorship tend to hold 'teachings' from these books as their reasoning and justification? Just a thought.

IRONY AND CENSORSHIP

Fahrenheit 451, (1953)

Ironically, Bradbury's indictment of censorship has itself been repeatedly censored. Fourteen years after its initial release, some educators succeeded in persuading its publisher to release a special edition. This edition modified more than 75 passages to eliminate certain words, and to "cleanup" two incidents in the book (a minor character, for example, was changed from "drunk" to "sick").

When Bradbury learned of the changes, he demanded that the publishers withdraw the censored version, and they complied. Since 1980, only Bradbury's original text has been available.

As a result, some schools have banned the book from course lists. Through all these attempts to sanitize or banish it completely, Bradbury has remained diligent in his defense of his masterpiece, writing in a coda that appears in some editions of the book:

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib / Republican, Mattachine / FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse….Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by the minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the library closed forever. ..."

"Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony."

Do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung-deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.