The war on art: Of Mice and Men
The school system in Burbank, California has added the following five books to its “banned in Burbank” list:
Until further notice, teachers in the area will not be able to include on their curriculum Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, Theodore Taylor’s The Cay and Mildred D. Taylor’s Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.
The reasons given seem to boil down to the allegation that they made a few students feel bad, and a student teased another student with a racial epithet and said he learned it from one of the books. Ah, so ban it rather than discuss it or deal with the problem – which is not the book. One might just as well ban Catcher in the Rye because of its role in motivating John Lennon’s assassin.
I know that poor old Atticus Finch and poor young Huck Finn have been on the chopping block for a long long time. I’m unfamiliar with two of the other books. But Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men I know, and I believe it is a masterpiece, and I was unaware till now of the fact that the censors have been after Of Mice and Men for a long time, too. And from that list of objections at the link I just gave – “‘promoting euthanasia’, ‘condoning racial slurs’, being ‘anti-business’, containing profanity, and generally containing ‘vulgar’ and ‘offensive language'” – it may even be that originally (the book was published in 1937) it was the right that had problems with it, although nowadays it seems that the left is leading the crusade.
I read Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men when I was very young, maybe eleven or twelve years of age. Whether or not it was a school assignment I can’t remember, but I do recall my reaction to it. It moved and devastated me. It’s very short, really more a novella than a novel, and I believe I read it in one fell swoop. To this day, the phrase “live off the fat of the land” can bring tears to my eyes.
I haven’t read the book in more than fifty years, but it’s one of those books that stay with you, although all the details don’t. Especially for a young teenager, it was a great work of art: easy to read, with vivid characters that I immediately cared about, describing a world that was altogether foreign to me and yet seemed real and comprehensible, full of pathos and cruelty and compassion and longing and ultimately tragedy.
I don’t know how I’d react to it now, and I don’t know how the kids of today would see it, if they’re allowed to see it. But I do know that banning it diminishes us. And I submit that what replaces it will be nowhere near as great, if indeed it is great at all.
[NOTE: I’ll add that I’ve seen a dramatic adaptation or two, and they don’t work for me. It’s the book that does it.]
“And at its root, it stems from a painful personal story. Destiny Helligar, now 15 and in high school, recently told her mom about an incident that took place when she was a student at David Starr Jordan Middle School. According to Destiny’s mother, Carmenita Helligar, a white student approached Destiny in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”
This is a quote from The LA Times coverage. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-11-12/burbank-unified-challenges-books-including-to-kill-a-mockingbird
We’re supposed to believe a student didn’t learn that word until they read it in class? Our collective intelligence is being insulted.
“And at its root, it stems from a painful personal story. Destiny Helligar, now 15 and in high school, recently told her mom about an incident that took place when she was a student at David Starr Jordan Middle School. According to Destiny’s mother, Carmenita Helligar, a white student approached Destiny in math class using a racial taunt including the N-word, which he’d learned from reading “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”
Has absolutely nothing to do with anything but Carmenita Helligar’s wish to make other people jump on command. They’re not doing anyone any favors by caving into her.
Carmenita Helligar is evidently some sort of event planner / caterer.
https://www.facebook.com/carmenhdesigns/
}}} Our collective intelligence is being insulted.
You’re coming to this conclusion only just now?
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL…
Yeah, I know. Couldn’t resist the straight line. 😀
So, any thoughts on when we will witness a book burning??
“Of MIce and Men” had a big effect on me also. It greatly saddened me. After reading it I picked up on the allusions to it in some Warner Brothers cartoons* that used to make me laugh, but now that I understood the reference they brought me down. “Flowers for Algernon” is another work I read around the same time (6th grade?) that also addressed the subject of mental retardation in a very effective and impactful way. That book haunted me as much, if not more, than, “Of Mice and Men.”
In the latter work I was saddened not only through understanding Lennie’s fate, but understanding that George was being a true friend by euthanizing him in as humane a way as possible. I felt tremendous anguish empathizing with them both.
“Flowers for Algernon” brilliantly addresses the subject of mental retardation in a series of letters written by Charlie, the eventual subject of a science experiment to improve intelligence in the mentally infirm. If memory serves, Charlie works as a janitor in the laboratory where the new medication is being developed and the book opens with his first diary entry, explaining that one of the scientists has asked him to start keeping a diary. The writing is childish with poor grammar and many spelling mistakes. Well, I assume all here know the story. The rhetorical device of having Charlie develop intelligence, and then giving him the insight to recognize how he appeared to others when he was mentally retarded, then to know his eventual fate through observations of Algernon, a lab rat ahead of him on the experimental drug regime. Then, we the readers begin to notice grammatical errors and spelling mistakes in the diary entries of the now brilliant Charlie… Painful. A brilliant device by the author. As brilliant as Steinbeck’s in, “Of Mice and Men.”
Both stories really stayed with me, heavily, for years, and still do.
Here’s a brief description I found on the Internet of Warners Brothers cartoons referencing “Of Mice and Men.”
I think I mentioned this here before, but when one of my kids was in High School a mass email went out to parents regarding a book my son’s class (Freshman or Sophomore) had been assigned. The letter writer was trying to energize parents to join his or her campaign to get the book removed from the curriculum. It contained two or three quotes from the book along with a fair amount of editorializing on the parent’s part. My wife found the quotes upsetting and asked me what I thought we should do. I answered, “I think I’ll read the book.” (The book was, “Plainsong” by Kent Haruf.)
I found the quotes to be taken way out of context. The quotes contained a few x rated words. If I remember, they were the only x rated words in the entire text, and writing any book about teen-agers without mentioning a body part or three is beyond fictional. I found it a perfectly reasonable book for teen-agers to read. It was well written and had a positive message. I told my wife I had no problem with the book being in the curriculum. I’m not sure what became of the parent’s campaign, or how many people joined the petition, but the book stayed on the reading list.
It’s hard to imagine any parent objecting to any of the books neo lists in this post if they actually read the novels.
I will take one, potentially unpopular stance here. (And I’ll leave out, “Roll of Thunder, Hear me Cry” because I know nothing of it.) Regarding Huck Finn and Mockingbird, I think they are great works. Important American novels. Any serious American student of literature ought to read them. However, I don’t mind if they get dropped from the general curricula of grammar and high schools. Yes, there was a time in this country when black people in some states were treated as chattel. And yes, there was a time in this country when black people in some states were persecuted by the law. But why does this have to be the definition, the role, of black children today? It would be awkward to be in a mixed race class and read these works.
My grade school class was ethnically mixed. I was known as Polish because of my mother’s heritage. Had we read Upton Sinclair’s novel “The Jungle” I’m sure my classmates would have associated me with the protagonist, Jurgis. I would have gotten some teasing on the playground. Kids would have asked if my dad worked in the stockyards. That kind of stuff. O.K. No big deal. But what if we read 2 or 3 or 5 books where Polish immigrants are second class citizens, downtrodden and abused in America? Well, a young kid will possibly assume that role, or spend his or her waking hours defending against it.
My wife is the daughter of immigrants. Except for her brother, the only non-native American in her grammar school. She spoke a foreign language at home. Wore different clothes. Her folks had thick accents. She had a difficult to pronounce, foreign name. The last thing she wanted at school was for anything that queued her classmates to this. She dreaded when her parents’ homeland came up in History class.
Black children need literary references who were leaders, heroic. Not supplicants to Huckleberry’s or Atticus’.
Rufus, I so agree. And thank you for writing!
I’m willing to venture a guess: the whole dramatic story involving Destiny Helligar never happened; or if it did in any way, it was dramatically different than what’s being portrayed. Either Destiny or her mom (or both) made it up, or greatly embellished the actual incident. I have nothing to back this up other then a fair amount of knowledge of how these racially charged events (and the demands and acquiescence that come of them) usually play out.
“Roll of Thunder” is a great book. It is a semi autobiographical novel, written by a black women about a black family in Depression era Mississippi. In the 1980s, it was widely assigned reading for middle schoolers, at least in progressive school districts like my own (I encountered it a couple times in my K-12 years). It was popular, in part at least, because it checked the diversity boxes sufficient for that era: written by a black female about struggles in the Jim Crow south, but well written and excellent “intermediate” literature.
That said, it doesn’t sugar-coat the reality of the era, either in language or in context (there’s a powerful scene where the narrator and her classmates receive worn out, discarded text books from a white school, delineated to be for “Nigras”). The book neither elevates blacks to heroic, unassailable status, nor denigrates southern whites to irredeemable levels. And that’s why today’s progressive works have a problem with it.
“When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, this you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know, the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives.” R.A. Heinlein
Rufus T. Firefly,
I too found both “Of Mice and Men” and “Flowers for Algernon” profoundly affective.
To that list, I’d add for a succinct insight into what liberals cannot accept, a book whose message is that, Life is not Fair, it just is what it is and personal responsibility for our actions is essential to a civilized society…I recommend Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations”.
While I support children reading of black heroic historical figures, indeed of every race, I disagree as to the removal of both of the above novels from Middle School reading lists. IMO the positives far outweigh the negatives.
Rufus T. Firefly: I remember “Of Mice and Men,” but I was changed by “Flowers for Algernon.” To understand in a visceral way the world as lived by those with lesser mental powers and realize their experiences are every bit as valid as yours.
I had an odd, brief friendship when I was 16 with a boy named Bobby. He was a couple years older. All the neighbor kids knew he was retarded and he knew they knew. You could tell he was in a certain amount of pain all the time and he had a somewhat dangerous reputation.
I’ve forgotten how we met exactly. I do remember it led to him making physical threats against me. Which got defused, probably because I couldn’t understand why he was threatening me, and when he realized I didn’t understand, he decided I wasn’t being mean to him.
Out of that we became friends. We surfed the local beach break and rode our bicycles together all over town. We talked. He shared secrets with me. He even got me my first job — at a privately owned drive-in restaurant. I only lasted one night. I was so bone tired by 2 am that I sat on a fire extinguisher while chopping onions and the owner decided I didn’t have what it took.
Then summer ended. I went back to school and lost track of Bobby. I still wonder what happened to him.
In order to appreciate the new Progressive world order, books should be colored in, not read. And then, only with approved types of colors. Life will be better this way. Life will be better this way. Life will be better this way. Life will be better this way….
The reasons given seem to boil down to the allegation that they made a few students feel bad.
There will always be students for whom having to read assigned books- or do any schoolwork- makes them feel bad. While this doesn’t describe the reading and writing commenters here at Neo’s place, rest assured that there are and were plenty of students who fit the description.
I also wonder if some students have realized that they can game the system to get a book banned by complaining about it. My guess is yes.
Regarding literary descriptions of those with reduced mental capabilities, Faulkner’s description in the Snopes trilogy- The Hamlet?- of such a person’s attraction to a cow stuck in my mind. More so than Steinbeck.
Rufus T.:
Interesting point. I wonder what books apply.
BTW, Jurgis in The Jungle wasn’t Polish, but Lithuanian, though that probably wouldn’t have stopped your classmates from associating you and Jurgis.
Geoffrey Britain – I too was impacted by “The Cold Equations”. I read it in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Short Story collection. That and the novella collection are still a must read. I liked the novella “Flowers for Algernon” better than the novel. Also I read Alfred Bester’s “The Stars my Destination”. In fact with the corporatism taking over our government I think it has bearing today as well as Gibson’s “Neuromancer”. Neuromancer may not have had the impact it did if “Blade Runner” hadn’t been produced. The combination of the two certainly worked well together.
So Orwell’s “1984” is coming. Not on the basis of war but of global corporate control. Tucker Carlson’s A block today November 17th is worth viewing. They are coming for us. How long will we stand when they start the Chinese social credit system on us?
Also see what happened to the Republicans during the Wayne County MI certification vote.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/17/wayne-county-canvassers-deadlock-certifying-november-3-election-results/6324274002/
What they don’t tell you is that Jocelyn Benson the Attorney General threatened lawsuits against them. Soros Democracy Initiative is paying off.
OK, I guess I had better fess up. While a Senior in HS in 1964 I read ‘Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”. Being now an Old White Guy, and a Republican it must definitely must mean I am a “Nazi”.
I too read To Kill a Mockingbird” in HS, but after the movie came out. We had to read “Catcher in the Rye”, which I never understood.
Being a Historian (BA/MA) books are very important to me. Banning them is just not acceptable.
The Cay is a superb book! It made me think about things, when I was a fifth grader. There was no reason for it to be banned.
Regarding my stance on Finn and Mockingbird (and note I assumed it would be unpopular when I wrote it); they are great novels and should not be banned anywhere, from anyone. My point is that I don’t think they are essential books for grammar school students. How many novels does one read with one’s entire class? 2 or 3 a year over the course of 4 or 5 years in grammar school? If I were a junior high English teacher I probably wouldn’t choose either of those for that duty.
They both were written by very talented authors who wrote accurately about an American history they lived through, but Sam Clemens’ time was 7, 9 generations ago? Harper Lee’s 3 or 4? We can see today the effects of raising a generation of black children to feel they were the victims of slavery, or Jim Crow. And the equally damaging effect of raising a generation of white children to think there are Bull Connors around every corner and they need to march in the streets to fight racial intolerance.
How many Americans believe we live in a culture of systemic racism? 80%? 90%? Where has that gotten us? Do we suffuse our Irish or Chinese students with novels about their ancestors as indentured servants whose only purpose was to lay railroad tracks or dig canals; subservient to their white masters? Do we only expose our children to novels that feature the Jews while in captivity in Egypt? Imagine being a Jewish child in a modern, German school that only read variations on “The Diary of Anne Frank” year after year.
There is not a race nor ethnicity of people who was not subjected by another at some point in history. But only black children growing up in America think of themselves as descendants of slaves. And only white children growing up in America think of themselves as racists. Where has it gotten us?
My high school education in the 80s rivaled most universities then, all universities today. This included a full year of American Literature as a junior and English Literature as a senior. None of my teachers cared what I thought of our very tough and long reading lists, and no one is doing a child a service by catering to their whims or worrying about if what they read is spread on the playground (hint: it isn’t. Rap on the radio has more impact).
The book banning is just another sign of the downward spiral of education and general intelligence, as well as removing the common American experience, increasing polarization. Rufus doesn’t want hurt feelz from students so okay with banning Twain and Steinbeck, but then of course those students have no clue about any references to these authors, whether it is the silly Lennie takeoff in Looney Toons, references to whitewashing, knowing anything about the Great Depression, and so on.
Maybe these particular books aren’t that big a deal as society moves forward, but this trend will keep going until the whole Western Cannon is banned and we will have no common culture or references. This is all just a precursor to a day when “educated” children have no clue what a Trojan horse is.
The woman who is likely to be sworn in as Vice President next January is a great example of the phenomenon I am referencing, as is President Barack Obama. Kamala Harris is not the descendant of slaves. She is the descendant of slave owners. Barack Obama is the descendant of a high ranking, African politician. Obama mainly lived in Hawaii and Harris in Canada. And they both have one parent who was not of African decent.
Yet they both identify nearly solely with their black heritage, and act as if they are owed a debt for the hundreds of years their black relatives spent in bondage. Even though that is not their actual history. Where do those notions come from? Why do we insist on perpetuating them?
whatever,
Again, I never wrote that I want anything banned and I’ve written several times that I think they are great works of literature that any serious student of American literature should read. Every 7th grader is not a serious student of American literature.
And yes, I am concerned with childrens’ “feelz” in so much that feelings can shape someone and encourage or discourage behaviors. Surely you don’t think it would be wise to require all sixth graders to read one of the many books proclaiming “toxic masculinity” as detrimental to our society? And to force adolescent boys to sit quietly as chapter after chapter is read aloud, proclaiming their natural urges and behaviors as vile traits that must be extinguished?
Children need valid, realistic role models and heros to look up to and emulate. We ask our black boys to choose between Colin Kaepernick, Snoop Dogg or Jim in Huckleberry Finn. Given the choices, whom would you choose?
huxley,
One of the disturbing elements of “Flowers for Algernon” was wondering if one would know that one was different, if one had diminished capacity. I guess we see this with the diseases of Alzheimer’s and Dementia and, I believe, that is one of the reasons it can be so frightening to so many of us. They are like the ending of “Flowers for Algernon.” Do the protagonists understand what is happening, as it happens?
Gringo,
You are correct. Lithuanian. Sorry for the mistake.
I believe that at this stage, reading “To Kill a Mockingbird” (one of the finest American novels ever written) has become a subversive, perhaps even criminal, act.
Soon they’ll be coming for the Bible….. Oh wait…
P.S. I’d recommend Harper Lee’s second novel, too—because it’s a fascinating document, if not quite in the same league as TKaM.
“Flowers for Algernon” is simply a gem of a book. As shown by other commentators, it’s endearing, frightening, an extraordinary story and it arouses all the emotions—particularly empathy. And it stays with you. It never goes away….
Regarding “Huckleberry Finn”, a fabulous book —a great story—that goes a long way in contextualizing history (which is not always, alas, rosy) and raising issues that should be talked about, that help people grow (but I guess one can’t have that these days). By the way, Jim is as much a hero as Huck Finn…. (Actually, maybe it REALLY should be banned because of how it valorizes truancy and exposes young and malleable minds to drunken, abusive and neglectful fathers?? Or maybe because it portrays an independent spirit that will not be bowed, a hero who defies convention, who RESISTS what is expected of him, who is thoughtful about the situation he finds himself in and who reaches his own conclusions and decides on independence??…. Because it’s a book that exudes—-reeks?—of TRUTH. Yeah, that must be it…. Nope. Can’t have that. No way.)
Do the protagonists understand what is happening, as it happens?
Rufus T. Firefly: I’ve read that people descending into Alzheimer’s are aware of what’s happening and suffer for the awareness, but after they are far gone enough, they lose that awareness and don’t appear to be suffering.
Perhaps it’s like that for retardation. Hard to say.
I knew another kid, the brother of a friend, not retarded, but not very bright either. He was prone to fights, like Bobby I mentioned earlier, because the other kids could out-think him and often did. He didn’t know how he had gotten the short end again; however, he could equalize with his fists. He wasn’t big, but you sure didn’t want to fight him because he was strong, fast and fearless.
Rufus T. Firefly: You raise an interesting distinction between books of literary merit and those selected for schoolchildren. However, I still come down on the side of “Huckleberry Finn.”
I prefer we teach children they are human and they can identify with other humans. I believe that’s the way we get out of this racial mess.
I was touched by something Whoopi Goldberg said in the Beatles documentary, “Eight Days a Week,” about their touring years. Like all the other kids of that era, she went mad for the Beatles after they appeared on Ed Sullivan. Goldberg said she didn’t think of the Beatles as being white, but being her friends. For a happy ending to the story, see:
–“Whoopi Goldberg’s Favorite Beatles Memory: Eight Days A Week”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3Lq0XDgKHQ
Admittedly that’s a fragile bit of chemistry and an anecdote to boot, but I do wish we were shooting for that, instead of special treatment to protect children. I believe it makes children weaker and divides the races more.
If someone is going to ban The Catcher in the Rye because it’s a horrible book, I’m all for it.
Here’s a quote from Carmenita Helligar’s Facebook page:
“Our imperfections are golden.”
Wisdom from Big Sister.
Again, public officials at different levels have to prescribe a curriculum, and you have enough rogue teachers that some prescriptions by superordinate authorities are advisable. The problem here is that the prescription had nothing to do with advancing the proper institutional mission of schools. It was just an exercise in feeding one woman’s megalomania. Note, if some evangelical parent had shown up objecting to the sex ed books, they’d have been told to bugger off. That’s how white privilege works.
If someone is going to ban The Catcher in the Rye because it’s a horrible book, I’m all for it.
Ideally, the state board of regents would draft secondary school literature examinations to be given (by board proctors, not by local school officials) once a semester or once a year. Such examinations would be modular, and individual students would take an exam composed of a custom selection of modules. Each question on each module would be composed of a menu of options of which you’d answer one or two. Each option would assume knowledge of a given work. The works subject to such queries on each module would be published each year. You could take one or another of these works off the list, of course. If you’re not reading X, there’s always time to read Y.
In individual school districts, the board might place in a policy manual instructions on curriculum if it so chose above and beyond a general instruction that all boards issue: that specific schools limit the man-hours devoted to material not covered by state regents’ examination to 20% of the years instructional time; or it might just leave it to the schools. The superintendent could conduct performance audits of schools who performed poorly on the regents’ league tables, but otherwise confine himself to employing itinerant teachers and attending to the business side of providing educational services.
At individual schools, the principal and whoever performs the function of provost therein could exercise their discretion as to how prescriptive to be with instructional departments about which texts are selected.
It was a joke Art.
In Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks book, Morality he talks about the fact that history and our classical works are important because it tells us who we are, thereby giving context and meaning to us as Westerners.
The Left must not allow that because they couldn’t destroy a people who, are decent beings who stumble, but strive to do good. These books, which they ban, are all about “mans search for meaning,” therefore, the Left must destroy them because they would not be able to supplant their new world vision with a people who see themselves as a good people who struggle and strive to do and be better.
It was a joke Art.
I know that.
Joke or not, it raises the point of what it means to ‘ban’ a book. The mode by which educational services are provided in this country is such that the decision to study or not study a book, to purchase or not purchase, will be made by a public official. The question is which official and under what circumstances.
Vesting the decision with the school board is seldom optimal, but you benefit from some manual over-rides – provided that your school commissioners have more common sense than teachers (debatable) or school administrators (HA HA HA).
Rufus, very nice to read those thoughts. You’re quite right about Flowers for Algernon. I’ve actually never read Steinbeck yet – maybe I’ll put that on the winter lockdown reading list. (We had some snow here last night! The second snowfall so far.)
huxley, I liked your reflections, too. Did you set off that fire extinguisher?
Circling back to Neo’s topic, I suppose it’s possible that a school might feel inclined to make some adjustments to its reading repertoire for contemporaneity, for example; but where are the novels or stories anywhere in the last 50 years that would stand comparison with the classics? I suppose there must be some, but I don’t know what they are. Of course, that the books are essentially too old for today’s students to sympathize with them is not what motivated this thing in Burbank. But I mean, having eliminated that part of the reading list, they have to replace them with something. Only… what?
I’m offended by the communist manifesto, Das Kapital, Mao’s little red book, and the Q’uran.
Maybe we should ban all those as well.
Circling back to Neo’s topic, I suppose it’s possible that a school might feel inclined to make some adjustments to its reading repertoire for contemporaneity, for example; but where are the novels or stories anywhere in the last 50 years that would stand comparison with the classics? I
I’m recalling the article in Commentary some years back which suggested teachers of literature avoid anything published in the last 50 years, as you need time for the ephemera to wash out of the system.
“Our group cannot have heresy. We will not survive.”
Imagine how important that was a hundred thousand years ago. Our relic genomes drag our future.
Are they going to ban the works by Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, and other black authors too? Those works have been put on a pedestal equivalent or surpassing anything produced by Shakespeare and have been standard curriculum for schoolchildren for 30+ years. Yet, not only do they make use of the n-word, but they are filled with tales of incest, rape, and other atrocities I found quite shocking as a young teen reading them. Of course, these works, guilty of everything the banned works are of and worse, would never be censored.
I also vividly remember from my youth both “Flowers for Algernon” and “The Cold Equations”, and the lessons they taught. Those who remember the latter might like the story “The Cold Solution”, by Don Sakers. It was written decades later, when technology expanded the realm of possibilities, and is an interesting follow-on to the original.
huxley, I liked your reflections, too. Did you set off that fire extinguisher?
Philip Sells: Thinking back, maybe it was one of those big cans of syrup for soda instead.
…but where are the novels or stories anywhere in the last 50 years that would stand comparison with the classics? I suppose there must be some, but I don’t know what they are.
Indeed. I can’t think of any either. It’s tragic to look back over the National Book Award winners from the 1980s on and notice almost none of them have forked any lightning.
I’m not sure where “The Catcher in the Rye” fits in. I’ve read that today’s kids don’t get the book and don’t like it much either.
Are they going to ban the works by Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, and other black authors too? Those works have been put on a pedestal equivalent or surpassing anything produced by Shakespeare and have been standard curriculum for schoolchildren for 30+ years.
https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-why-every-english-teacher-should-assign-toni-morrison/
This guy thinks every English teacher should assign…Toni Morrison. Stanley Crouch thought well of her as a wordsmith. I first recall being exposed to her social views ca. 1988, when she was interviewed by Time magazine. Unedifying.
Morrison grew up in Lorain, Ohio. At the time, blacks were a low-single digit minority there; today, they make up somewhat north of 15% of the population, but are actually quite deconcentrated, scattered everywhere in town. IIRC, her siblings lived their lives around there. She had salaried bourgeois jobs from 1955 until such time as she could meet her expenses from advances, royalties, and fees. How much of this aspect of the black experience in America made it into her fiction?
Are they going to ban the works by Maya Angelou,
Have a gander at the terms of employment Wake Forest granted her to take a position on their faculty. They were delineated in National Review ca. 1993. John Derbyshire’s assessment of “On the Pulse of the Morning” is amusing.
How many Americans believe we live in a culture of systemic racism?
Very few people. ‘Systemic racism’ is sociological phlogiston.
The people who claim to are all in professional-managerial positions, however. It is what GK Chesterton called ‘the religion of the household gods’.
Indeed. I can’t think of any either. It’s tragic to look back over the National Book Award winners from the 1980s on and notice almost none of them have forked any lightning.
One gets the impression it was which publishing house had the best networker-lobbyists. I’ve read only a few (and am familiar with other works of a couple of authors, but not that for which they received the award). They weren’t bad, but it’s not difficult for a philistine like me to spot some deficiencies in them. I keep hearing Gravity’s Rainbow is some sort of magnum opus; never read it myself.
Art+Deco
We have a winner.
…but where are the novels or stories anywhere in the last 50 years that would stand comparison with the classics? I suppose there must be some, but I don’t know what they are.
Perhaps “A Day No Pigs Would Die”?
Oh no, sorry. It’s been banned.
Actually, I would say anything written by Mark Helprin would stand comparison.
An interesting thread, this. As noted above, good suggestions for the upcoming WuFlu shutdown extension.
I also enjoy the breadth of the “seniority” here. When someone references an email sent out while the kids were in high school, I get hit between the eyes: I’m old. When my kids were in high school there was no email, or anything similar in the civilian world. Communications to the parents were mimeographed notices given to students deliver to parents, the same for my generation.
When I was in high school we routinely got “old” text books, especially math books. It was fun for kids to check the “sign-out” tags inside the front cover for names of their parents and classmates parents. Somehow algebra and geometry did not change much in those days. No one felt “dissed”.
Another+Mike:
But in those old ignorant days 2+2=4 was not white supremacy or some form of oppression. Now we know better! 🙂
What will fall next, A squared + B squared = C squared? 🙂
Will pi have to die?
We must al lrn 2 kod!
Another+Mike,
Few things smelled better than the chemical in mimeograph machines. Almost made being sent to the office worthwhile.
Regarding systemic racism as sociological phlogiston,
Yes, it is ethereal. So ethereal the majority of race crimes are later revealed to be self inflicted. As someone famously (or infamously) said, “Racism in present day America is a condition where demand far outstrips supply.”
However, just like gender fluidity and a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle, 80% of our fellow citizens believe there is systemic racism. If you haven’t seen it, search out the video where Dave Rubin first interviews Larry Elder (the sage of South Central) and systemic racism comes up. I believe this is it: https://youtu.be/IFqVNPwsLNo
It is also likely that 80% of the 80% who believe there is systemic racism have never even paused to think of what the term, “systemic racism” means. If one does, one can only conclude that the systemic racism in our nation favors blacks and women as evidenced by the laws currently on the books.
But say that in a meeting at your place of work. Or at the next cocktail party you attend. Or in any public setting. Like phlogiston, it may not exist, but if we are all forced to behave precisely as if it does exist, what is the difference?
Just a brief addition to prove the point:
I’m a test prep tutor. A well-known volume of ACT prep ascribed this phrase:
“Let justice roll down as the waters
And righteousness as a mighty stream.”
to Martin Luther King, Jr.
King was a wonderful writer and orator. He had no doubt as to the origin of those words and the significance of the source. And I do not think I need to even identify the source to this group of readers. But in general, I doubt the words are well known and I doubt even more that most readers in the general public -and including much of academia – could place them. Folks who make money preparing kids for college studies (writer and editors alike) didn’t have a clue.
And just as denouncing the existence of phlogiston may have gotten you kicked out of the Royal Society in 1680, try denouncing the purported extreme effects of human causes on climate change at a meeting of modern scientists.
Denouncing Allah’s existence will get you beheaded today in Iran. Denouncing Jesus’ got you drowned in medieval Europe. Denouncing Caesar’s divinity got you fed to the lions in ancient Rome. Pharaoh’s word in ancient Egypt was reality.
80% of our fellow citizens believe there is systemic racism.
They don’t.
try denouncing the purported extreme effects of human causes on climate change at a meeting of modern scientists.
They resort to ad hominem arguments, hiding data, and scamming around with the peer-review procedures because the establishments in these disciplines aren’t shameless enough yet just to arrange for people to be expelled and fired.
Re: Toni Morrison…
I got about 20 pages into Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” before putting it down for its needlessly fancy, prolix style, political bludgeoning, and its dishonest mega-Holocaust narrative regarding the slave trade. Late one night I surfed the web for reviews.
Stanley Crouch’s review of “Beloved” offered a few minor compliments but was otherwise withering:
____________________________________________________
MORRISON, unlike Alice Walker, has real talent, an ability to organize her novel in a musical structure, deftly using images as motifs; but she perpetually interrupts her narrative with maudlin ideological commercials. Though there are a number of isolated passages of first-class writing, and though secondary characters such as Stamp Paid and Lady Jones are superbly drawn, Morrison rarely gives the impression that her people exist for any purpose other than to deliver a message.
[Further down Crouch sums up the Holocaust theme]
BELOVED, Morrison’s fourth novel, explains black behavior in terms of social conditioning, as if listing atrocities solves the mystery of human motive and behavior. It is designed to placate sentimental feminist ideology, and to make sure that the vision of black woman as the most scorned and rebuked of the victims doesn’t weaken. Yet perhaps it is best understood by its italicized inscription: “Sixty Million and more.’ Morrison recently told Newsweek that the reference was to all the captured Africans who died coming across the Atlantic. But sixty is ten times six, of course. That is very important to remember. For Beloved, above all else, is a blackface holocaust novel. It seems to have been written in order to enter American slavery into the big-time martyr ratings contest, a contest usually won by references to, and works about, the experience of Jews at the hands of Nazis…
–Stanley Crouch, “Literary Conjure Woman”
http://rvannoy.asp.radford.edu/rvn/444/beloved.htm
meirzev wrote,
“Let justice roll down as the waters
And righteousness as a mighty stream.”
King was a wonderful writer and orator. He had no doubt as to the origin of those words and the significance of the source. And I do not think I need to even identify the source to this group of readers.
(Betty had to look them up.)
from https://biblehub.com/amos/5-24.htm
JPS Tanakh 1917
But let justice well up as waters, And righteousness as a mighty stream.
Douay-Rheims 1899
But judgment shall be revealed as water, and justice as a mighty torrent.
Et revelabitur quasi aqua judicium, et justitia quasi torrens fortis.
Children fed on nothing but pablum will never grow to be strong and healthy. Likewise with their minds.
I also read pro-Morrison reviews. It was interesting to note how largely insubstantial the positive reviews were — mostly overviews of the plot and themes plus racial and gender significance, with some gushing about Morrison’s language. Or about Morrison herself.
Fran Lebowitz, a sort of modern Dorothy Parker whom I like, provided some of the most suckupathon writing, on behalf of Morrison, I have ever seen this side of bad rock criticism.
–Fran Lebowitz, “Toni Morrison – as remembered by Fran Lebowitz”
https://www.slow-journalism.com/from-the-archive/toni-morrison-as-remembered-by-fran-lebowitz
Lebowitz also did an interview film with Morrison in which I discovered Morrison’s self-serious speaking style — slow, precise with full eye contact to the camera as in “Savor my profundity…”
https://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/toni-morrison-conversation-fran-lebowitz
Perhaps I take her too personally.
Sixty Million and more.’ Morrison recently told Newsweek that the reference was to all the captured Africans who died coming across the Atlantic. But sixty is ten times six, of course. That is very important to remember. For Beloved, above all else, is a blackface holocaust novel. It seems to have been written in order to enter American slavery into the big-time martyr ratings contest, a contest usually won by references to, and works about, the experience of Jews at the hands of Nazis…
The dispute between Philip Curtin and Joseph Inikori on the dimensions of the slave trade concerned Curtin’s estimate that 9 million slaves were imported v. Inikori’s estimate that 15 million were imported. A common guess has it that the number dying in transit were about 1/2 the number who arrived on shore, so 4.5 million to 7.5 million over a period of three centuries.
meirzev:
Wow.
Another Mike:
In my NYC public school, all the desks had inkwells.
Neo:
Ink Wells on desks…?! Yowzaaaa!!
Brings up wonderful visuals for this 1944 So.California boy!!! We even (occasionally) got to dip pens into the ink for handwriting practice.
Monte Vista Elementary
LaCrescenta, Calif.
meirzev, AppleBetty —
I guess I always figured that MLK was making a Biblical reference, but didn’t know for sure until literally yesterday.
We ran out of fiction after finishing Lord of the Rings, so I started reading the Bible to my daughter for bedtime (she’s 11 but we still do it). We’re not religious but I think it’s important for cultural literacy, and I’ve never read past Leviticus either. I wanted her to get more background than my occasional comments, so we started watching a series on The Great Courses Plus, and the lecturer happened to call out that verse — which I immediately recognized as something MLK had used.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” C.S. Lewis
I second what Ackler said about “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.” It’s about racism in Jim Crow Mississippi during the Depression, it pulls no punches, and it’s a fine book. In fact, it won the Newbery award — the highest award in children’s literature — in 1977; I believe Mildred Taylor was only the second black author ever to receive the award. It was ground-breaking when it was published, and the idea of banning it — apparently solely because it tells the painful truth about some of the worst aspects of the black experience — is just beyond me.
By 9th or 10th grade, 15ish or so, a young person should be getting exposed to good literature, as well as cultural history. I’ve only read the first 3, but each was both a fine book as literature, as well as an important view of a part of American society at the time. With Twain, the hugely important civil war – and why it was good for hundreds of thousands of American Whites to die in order to stop slavery. Injustice is most often clearly seen in very personal examples. n-word Jim is a great, heroic fictional character. But part of the reason that the real Jackie Robinson is so important is to overcome the prior injustice.
For Harper Lee, the continued Jim Crow racism by Democrat KKK type folk, continues the anti-Black injustice. This being shown in a fictionalized version of an innocent Black being falsely accused and convicted. (Look up Tom Robinson)
(Now I’m thinking how Trump, in losing [if he loses, now 90%], will be able to play the martyr. Unjustly treated by the deep state.)
For Steinbeck, and mid-30s socialism, I recall a friend whose grandfather was at a strike at a Ford car plant in winter. The cops came, and under their supervision, freezing cold water from fire hydrants was sprayed on the strikers. There were many injustices in early industrialization, and voluntary unions agreeing to support each other and gaining better working conditions was a reasonable, nearly optimal response. (Would have been closer to optimal if the managers had been giving better deals without the strike. Metrics for optimal are not agreed upon, so of course there’s no agreement on what is optimal.)
I seem to recall how the main character, trying to unionize, came up to some workers, looking poor, and asked for cigarette. Later he explained it was the quickest way to start talking with them, pretty much as equals — tho you owed them at least a cigarette, and they didn’t owe you nothin’. Last week I related this to my own 15 yo son (youngest child of 4).
I think it’s time for him to read all of these — I haven’t read the last 2.
Flowers for Algernon still makes me cry.
Finally, here’s part of the final graph of sparknotes:
The resolution of the novel suggests that humanity will be all right as long as we remember to see each other as individuals and empathize with their perspectives.
We, the sinners trying to be good, need to see our fellow Americans who are Trump-haters, each as an individual. Even tho it seems one of the worst things many of the are doing is NOT seeing others as individuals.
And of course, banning books which promote individualism and nuance and gray areas about justice is bad – and we should love the people doing it while hating their bad actions.
Maybe – “Good people sometimes do bad things.”
Special thanks to Rufus for his perspective:
“Black children need literary references who were leaders, heroic.”
As I noted above, both Jim and Tom were heroic, despite being downtrodden. Yet it would be good to have more Blacks who were heroic leaders.
Did you see the Ben Carson movie?
It’s unexpectedly gratifying to discover so many commenters here were as affected by “Flowers for Algernon” as I was.
The movie with Cliff Richardson and Claire Bloom was quite decent, though it didn’t have the same impact.
My favorite Steinbeck was “Cannery Row” based on Steinbeck’s real-life friend, Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist studying the coastal ocean life, and the inhabitants of Cannery Row, the section of Monterey where the sardines were canned, during the Depression.
It was arguably too sentimental, but I found the writing beautiful and the love shared among the characters moving. The movie, however, kinda clunked.
We read Steinbeck’s “The Pearl” in high school, which I barely recall. Still, one could do worse than assign Steinbeck to teenagers.
One of my children was in a play of “Flowers for Algernon” in middle school or high school. I think he was one of the doctors, watching it happen. I can still barely stand to think about it.
For some reason I thought Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was a classic. Now that I look it up I realize it was published in the 70’s. Probably on its way to becoming a classic. It is all about a black family, so it’s weird that it would be “banned.”
A huge subplot in The Cay is a prejudiced white boy coming to love a black man, whom he initially thought must be “stupid.” It’s actually a book that kids should be encouraged to read. Why would a school want to ban that? Or any of these books?
Huxley,
“Flowers for Algernon” was a heart-breaker. I read it in junior high over forty-five years ago and can still recall the passages that hit me the hardest. Like Harper Lee, Daniel Keyes turned out to be a one-book author. But what a book.
Thanks for sharing your story about Bobby. I think there are a lot of Bobbys out there.
I worked briefly as a day laborer in LA many years ago with two young guys who had just mustered out of the service in San Diego: Vince, the smart one (Navy); and Bob, the slower one (Marines). Vince looked out for Bob. We parted ways when I returned back east. They were saving up to leave California and go live with Bob’s sister in Dubuque. I still often wonder what happened to them. I hope they made it.
Art+Deco,
I got on a Pynchon kick in my late teens-early 20s. Started with “V.” and ended with “Gravity’s Rainbow”. At the time I thought he was a genius, but his appeal decreased as I got older and learned more about life. The books have their bravura interludes but Pynchon’s characters are basically caricatures and placeholders for real human beings. I didn’t read any of his later stuff. A very underestimated mid-20th century writer is John O’Hara: almost anything by him is worth reading. I made the mistake of reading “Imagine Kissing Pete” (one of the three novellas in “Sermons and Soda Water”) on a flight; the ending made me blub.
I believe that I could credibly make the same arguments in favor of banning the Christian Bible or the Quran.
I had one of my story dreams last night, in which I and a coworker were rummaging around a small warehouse space of some kind that was storing Tsar Nicholas’ personal library, or what the dream supposed had been his personal library. Bookshelves upon bookshelves (the utilitarian metal kind) of books from a century and probably more ago, many of the bindings worn, some starting to decay. So much stuff in Russian, mostly scholarly studies and things like that. I can’t read Russian, so that was all a non-starter for me. But the surprisingly large number of books in German was fascinating to see – there were a few full shelves of that. I found a two-volume history of Bavaria that was probably the dream’s closest connection to reality, since I have a one-volume edition of such a thing printed in Munich in 1980 (got it at a used-book store years ago).
I think this dream is about something tangentially related to this post: why collect things like books? I’d like my personal library to be a resource for the future, a sort of time capsule. If we should lose the Internet, there will still be books.
Roy Nathanson:
The Bible is already banned in public schools, hadn’t you noticed? It’s that icky non-atheist thing that is toxic and hateful. Sheesh.
Philip Sells:
That’s quite a dream.
It may also be about a society and rulers that were destroyed by a leftist revolution – at last, the Czar library part.
Philip Sells,
Sounds like the old Slavic reference collection at the University of Illinois Libraries at Urbana-Champaign. Now folded into a larger international and area studies library, unfortunately.
A one-volume history of Bavaria published in 1980–could it be this one, by Karl Bosl?
https://bit.ly/2IPIMpk
There is also a two-volume history of Bavaria by the same author, published in Munich in the 1950s:
https://bit.ly/2IHqQgX
So you weren’t that far off.
Libraries–real, physical libraries–are bastions of the tangible.
Hubert, no, it was actually Hubensteiner – this one:
https://www.zvab.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30435423924&searchurl=an%3DHubensteiner%26hl%3Don%26sortby%3D20%26tn%3DBayerische%2BGeschichte&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-title14
Unfortunately, the picture doesn’t show the spine, which is also pretty.
The copy I have has an inscription for the original owner, who got it as a gift, dated Sept 8, 1996 – at Traunstein.
Thanks, Philip. Handsome book. Perhaps your dream-persona was channeling the two-volume history by Bosl. There are more things in heaven and earth etc.