And now for something completely different

Well, from me anyway, although Snoopy does post any number of these "aren't some people just beyond belief?" pieces. Anyway, this is from The Tablet (again), of today's (7 September) date.

The title of the piece is "Authors respond to their books being banned", and is a collection of those authors own responses to this happening. As the writer of the article notes, "In honor of Banned Books Week, the good folks over at Flavorpill have assembled a list of their favorite author responses to their books being banned." The piece suggests that these are humorous, though only Mark Twain's comes across as witty: the others tend to be avoiding spitting nails while cutting the censors down to size.

Of course, as one of the banned authors notes (especially as we're talking about modern classics here, thus well-known), the most likely response from lively minds is to race off to the bookshop if the book is banned from the library, thereby enriching the author (and/or publisher, if the author is dead and out of copyright) by more than the sale of one or two copies to a library.

Ah well, the world is (over) full of self-important little nobodies who think they know better than the rest of us what is good for us, on, of course, absolutely no evidence at all.

The article is here. Read and follow the links, especially the next time you are tempted to make it impossible for others to read some work of literature.


By Brian Goldfarb.