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What would George Orwell think 39 years after that nightmarish title year of his passed us by? Like so many of my friends, I read his novel 1984 in my teens and never forgot "Big Brother" or phrases like "doublethink" that still have a sad applicability in today's world. I mention this because I noticed recently that, among the 450 books banned in various schools and school libraries in Iowa, were Orwell's 1984 (in which censorship played such a role and which, in my childhood, was indeed banned in countries like Russia) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I can hardly imagine myself growing up and not reading such dystopian fiction. Those were crucial documents in my youth, a significant enough part of which I spent" yes, reading! (As it happens, another book banned by some schools is Art Spiegelman's MAUS, of which I was the editor in another lifetime.) And of course, what's going on in that state is also increasingly happening across significant parts of the rest of the country.
Here's what I remember about libraries when I was young (other than that my Aunt Hilda, a high school librarian, could stop any student in his tracks with a voice that could penetrate steel): there was only one key question. Would the librarian let you out of the children's section? In those days, kids' after-school lives weren't as organized (or over-organized?) as they are today. I would come home alone. My dad would be out and my mother, a professional caricaturist, would be at her easel in the living room, drawing some political or theatrical figure for one of New York's newspapers or magazines. I would go to my room and -- with no social media, smartphones, or video games available then -- what else was there to do but read?
And here's what made all the difference to me. From a young age, the librarian at my local library let me out of the children's section. She allowed me to take out adult books. I often had little idea what I was doing, but it was always a distinct adventure of some strange sort. I can still remember, for instance, taking down Annemarie Selinko's novel De'sire'e about Napoleon's first love (perhaps because in 1954 it had been made into a film starring Marlon Brando and the name stuck in my head). And then there were all those Civil War histories by Bruce Catton, at a time when the American past and that war in particular riveted me. Books, in other words, were all too literally as well as literarily, the company I kept. Honestly, what would I have done without librarians who let me explore the bookish world I found myself in, instead of cutting me off from the best parts of it? I can't even imagine a world of reading in which possible futures, however grim, were unavailable to me because Orwell and Huxley included sex scenes in those classics of theirs.
Yes, the MAGA-fied urge to keep kids "pure" and ignorant has, as TomDispatch regular Rebecca Gordon makes all too clear today, taken hold big time in the version of this country Donald Trump and crew are doing their best to sell to Americans. And honestly, if it weren't so serious, given The Donald himself, that would be the joke of the century. Tom
Banning What Matters
Public Libraries Under MAGA Threat
When my mother died in 2000, I inherited all her books. Sadly, after several moves and downsizings over the decades, her collection had shrunk. Still, it remains considerable and impressive in its own way. Her legacy to me included some special volumes like a first edition of Frederick W. Taylor's The Principles of Scientific Management, a famed codification of time-management practices and an origin point for concepts that helped shape work in the last century -- and this one, too.
Oh, and there's also a first American edition of E.M. Forster's novel Howards End. On the flyleaf, she inscribed this note: "Stolen by Suzanne Gordon." As the bookplate on the cover's interior indicates, it was indeed stolen from (or at least never returned to) The Free Library of Philadelphia. When did this bit of larceny occur? It would certainly have been after she married my dad in 1949, when she acquired his surname Gordon, so probably sometime in the 1950s. The good news is that the Philadelphia library still has several copies of Forster's book on its shelves today, along with audio books and film DVDs of the work. The bad news is that it's among the many books on the American Library Association's list of most frequently banned classics.
Of course, the all-American penchant for banning books didn't begin in the Trump era. Just ask almost anyone who lived through the Red Scare days of the 1950s (not to speak of the first Red Scare of 1917-1920). But the last few years have seen a remarkable acceleration of attempts to keep certain books off the shelves of public and school libraries. The American Library Association reports an almost four-fold increase in the number of banning attempts between 2003 (458) and 2022 (1,269), most of that increase coming between 2020 and 2022. That this new passion for book banning coincides with the rise of Donald J. Trump, MAGA Republicanism, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's failed "anti-woke" presidential campaign is no accident.
The Most Benign Institution
Name any public institution -- the U.S. military, say, or a county welfare office - and it's bound to have its negative aspects. Maybe you appreciate that the military is one of the most racially integrated bodies in the country. At the same time, perhaps you're distressed by its recent turn to U.S. universities as a locus for the development of A.I.-powered autonomous lethal weaponry. Perhaps you appreciate that your county welfare office helps people get access to benefits they're entitled to like SNAP (formerly food stamps) and health insurance. At the same time, you may not admire the mental and emotional burden the welfare system places on people working to secure those benefits or the racial animus and disrespect they may encounter in the process.
I'd like to argue that there is, however, one institution that's almost entirely benign: the public library. As I wish one could say about our medical system, it does no harm (though many right-wingers disagree with me, as we shall see).
What could be more wonderful than a place that allows people to read books, magazines, and newspapers for free? That encourages children to read? That these days offers free access to that essential source of information, entertainment, and human connection, the Internet? It's even a place where people who have nowhere to live -- or who are regularly kicked out of their homeless shelters during daylight hours -- can stay dry and warm. And where they, too, can read whatever they choose and, without spending a cent -- no small thing -- use a bathroom with dignity.
Free public libraries first appeared in this country in the late 1700s or early 1800s, depending on how you parse that institution's defining characteristics. It's generally agreed, however, that the first dedicated, municipally funded public library in the world opened in 1833 in Peterborough, New Hampshire. A century earlier, Benjamin Franklin had founded the Philadelphia Library Company, a private, subscription-based outfit, funded by members who paid annual dues.
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