ON BOOK BANNING

Don’t burn this book!

For as long as there have been books, people have wanted to censor them. From Roman emperors through popes and kings, from temperance evangelists to Moms for Liberty, there has always been a book police. Civic and religious groups have worried about exposing children to potentially harmful ideas—even if those ideas promote inclusion and diversity. By contrast, university professors and intellectual elites see weapons in old terms for racial discrimination and gender difference. Ira Wells wants a middle ground, where we recognize that not all books are right for everyone. He recognizes that notions of appropriateness, obscenity, offensiveness, and blasphemy change over time. Literature cannot be separated from the social worlds in which it is written and read. And yet, Wells also wants a world in which there are works of lasting value. Book banning, he writes, “thrives in an intellectual culture in which art is not analyzed for its inevitable political assumptions but reduced to them….It also thrives when people fail to articulate why reading imaginative literature matters.” In the end, though, this book is really less about literature or even free speech than it is about public libraries. “Libraries have long provided vital intellectual infrastructure to liberal democracies,” he writes. These days, they serve a broader social function, often providing classes in language and citizenship, workshops on literacy and finance, and internet access for those who cannot afford it at home. Wells wants a world in which a well-informed public can access and judge books on their own and thus can appreciate, and argue with, the literary past: “Expressive freedom is the condition that makes both art and democracy possible.” That seems like a reasonable position. Unless you don’t believe in art and democracy.

A thoughtful, conversationally written reflection on why banning books damages the fabric of social belonging.