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LitNotes: Bans and the Bard
October 5, 2007
As I said yesterday, there's more than one way to ban a book (alas). Today, I offer a selection of "LitNotes" that highlight different ways, both old and new, that threaten books and their content. Banned Books Week officially ends tomorrow, but I hope that its message of freedom in reading is never finished.
Sanitize This: Rachel Donadio's "Libel Without Borders" from this Sunday's New York Times Book Review deals with British libel laws and the frighteningly fast caving of Cambridge University Press in the wake of accusations from Sheikh Khalid bin Mahfouz that a book called Alms for Jihad falsely depicted his family as financiers of terrorism. Rather than challenging Mahfouz's allegations, the Press destroyed 2,300 copies of the book.
Hey Nonny Nonny : Did I just write something unprintable in modern English -- or not? The latest bit of news filler making the rounds through the AP is a short about Pauline Kiernan's new book Filthy Shakespeare, and while the blog Shakespeare Geek has a point being exasperated -- "you can find a sex reference in everything," it is at least a slightly more lighthearted take on Banned Books Week to consider how often and deftly Will inserted his naughty bits into scripts.
This Is Not Censorship: A reminder we can all use during Banned Books Week: just because we want all kinds of material to be available for reading doesn't mean we can cheat authors. Making something widely available in textbooks does not mean you forget about permissions and licensing. I'm certainly not objective, but I believe that authors, like teachers and nurses, deserve much better pay overall.
Posted by Bethanne Patrick on October 5, 2007 | Comments (2)
