“By the end of 2020, Newsweek reported that videos of people burning Harry Potter books were spreading like wildfire across TikTok. Historically, Harry Potter has been burned by right-wing fundamentalists who accuse J. K. Rowling of promoting witchcraft.” (p. 2)
“When Toni Morrison, the first African American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, gave the Tanner Lectures at the Univserity of Michigan in 1988, she placed William Shakespeare, Henry James, and Herman Melville on the list of authors she could never live without.” (p. 47)
“Ray Bradbury’s 1953 masterpiece [Fahrenheit 451] was itself silently rewritten by his publisher, without his knowledge, because it, too, offended some readers. His publisher was ‘fearful of contaminating the young.’ For six years, the censored edition was the only paperback edition in print.” (p. 84)
Adam Szetela’s That Book is Dangerous! explores the pressures exerted by groups on publishers to “modify” or simply not publish books that “offend” them. Szetela’s cites a dozen examples of books dropped by publishers because of social media hostility. And, we’re all too familiar with groups that attack books in school libraries that they claim are pornography or ideological.
I learned that most publishers today employ “sensitivity” readers to advise them on which books might generate negative reaction on TikTok or other social media platforms. Publishers are willing to go to great lengths to satisfy those “sensitive” readers–and to avoid confrontations. The result, of course, is censorship, thought-policing, and blatant editing of themes, characters, and situations that might be “provocative.”
Publishers are under intense pressure and scrutiny by groups threatening boycotts, public exhibitions like book burnings, and social media trashing. I knew publishers faced a lot a problems but That Book is Dangerous! shows in detail just how bad the situation is for authors, publishers…and readers today. Plus, if William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Henry James, and Herman Melville are considered “Dangerous” by these wacky groups, we are in deep shit. GRADE: A
Adam Szetela earned his Ph.D. in English from the Department of Literatures at Cornell University. Before that, he was a visiting fellow in the Department of History at Harvard University. He writes for The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, and other publications.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Welcome to the Sensitivity Era — 1
1 The Ideas of the Sensitivity Era — 9
2 The Behavior of the Sensitivity Era — 65
3 The Political Economy of the Sensitivity Era — 123
4 The Future of the Sensitivity Era — 169
ACKNOWLEGEMENTS — 197
NOTES — 206
INDEX — 259
Not that this excuses the expurgations/re-edititng, but the 1967 “Bal-Hi” edition of F 451 was “aimed” at high-school libraries…I have to wonder how many of the other Bal-Hi editions were sanitized for school boards’ “protection”…
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/publisher.cgi?21049
Todd, publishers sometimes don’t tell the authors they’ve “modified” their books.
Ballantine was usually Trying to be better than some that way. But I’m not surprised that as money grew tight for them in the latter ’60s and they came up with the notion of a high school-aimed line, that they would’ve played these stupid (but probably profitable) games.
However, if this is presented by Szetela as a Recent/New Threat to intellectual freedom, that is, to put it mildly, misleading.
Another Bal-Hi edition includes this reference to the “Notes to Teachers and Parents” in the Bal-Hi editions, which suggests the entire series might well have been trimmed when that was seen as “prudent”–from the book’s text posted in/by Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/victorianchaisel0000lask/page/n1/mode/2up
Richard Tyre, who wrote the preface here, is credited with other school-related jobs in other prefaces in the Bal-Hi series…I’m blithely assuming he was a long-term consultant to Ballantine (at least) in shaping the Bal-Hi series and its protocols.
Todd, you’re right about Richard Tyre.
For example, Tyre with this preface– https://archive.org/details/bwb_T3-BYK-585/page/n3/mode/2up –was Chair of the English Dept. at Germantown Friends School in DC, while for the one cited above, was Coordinator of Humanities at Abington (PA) High School. The (Appropriate Content) Walls of Tyre…
Todd, thanks for clearly that up!
Todd, Szetela maps out the growth of this kind of sanitizing behavior. What he is stressing is the increase in volume today.
I can believe that…and how much more easily national/international rather than hyper-local Content Researchers and Protestors can interact.
There was some chatter a few weeks ago when Amazon began removing certain books from its affiliate program (if you purchased the book through a website that is part of the program, they receive a small—very small—percentage of the purchase price), and many of the books were romances (whether explicit “open door” sex scenes or not). Apparently, it was an A.I. bot gone rogue—if you believe Amazon’s (undoubtedly bot-generated) response. It’s like the death of a thousand cuts: bots, book burnings, astroturfed outrage, boycotts, etc., all to prevent people from reading anything perceived to be “dangerous”.
Or simply to leverage power of sales approval. I take dreed to be the usual motivating factor in these sorts of things, though power-madness of other flavors can be just as “sweet”…
Or, even, greed.
Todd, the introduction of Artificial Intelligence makes the oppression of dissent even more tricky.
Though current “AI” remains mostly at the level of more-sophiticated search engines.
Deb, well said! The enemies of Reading are not typically readers. They’re political.
And also those who want to Own All the “Intellectual Property” they can survey/buy. Their politics is one of We Get To Do What We Want To, and you take it and like it.
In may cases, sensitivity is a synonym for stupidity and, sadly, stupidity has been and always will be with us. I revel in my status as a curmudgeon because it means that I don’t have to talk to stupid people. Also, that i can seek out and read what I damned well want
And then there are Clashing Sensitivities…some want X (say, sexual explicitness) censored or at least warning-labeled but have no problem with Y (critique of stereotyping, for example), while others would take the opposite or similar variant tacks (down on critique of any religious belief or simply their own beliefs thus, but have no problem with advocating equal rights for free expression…as long as that expression doesn’t ruffle any of their feathers).
Todd, anything homosexual or trans triggers these book censoring groups.
Jerry, given your definition of curmudgeon, I think I qualify, too.
Yes, we are in deep shit, but you and I and Jerry are old and don’t have to give a shit what these morons think (sic).
Whenever you hear Trump on one of his minions talk about “immoral” it’s time to dodge the lightning.
Jeff, Trump is threatening the NY TIMES and WALL STREET JOURNAL over their Iran War coverage. Trump claims we won the War…but we’re still there spending a Billion Dollars A Day!
“What do you mean ‘We’, Kemosabe?”