The internet is awash these days with notices every few days about what particular institutional holiday has come around.
Just last Wednesday, for instance, I got several email from various fast food restaurants I frequent that the day was the official commemoration of National Quesadilla Day. I felt sorta bad that evening when I went out and ate waffles instead.
Most of these events are corporate-dictated events, or driven by some interest group or another, and aside from a brief laugh — or possibly a vow to make an effort to go out and celebrate the best ones, like National Doughnut day — we ignore them and move on.
This past week, however, was one of the more notable of such events, and one that has been all too relevant these days: Banned Books Week.
I’ve seen notices about Banned Books Week for years now. Libraries would put up posters and displays about them, proudly mentioning which books, considered canonical works now, have been challenged or removed from shelves for various reasons at different times.
Everything from “The Great Gatsby” to “To Kill a Mockingbird” has been targeted at different times. My favorite example was always Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” because nothing spells irony better than banning a book decrying the banning of books.
One year in high school, I went on a months-long spree of reading as many major books that had been targeted with bans by one group or another, reading novels like “Catch-22,” “Slaughterhouse Five” and “Catcher in the Rye” along the way.
It was an interesting experiment, if only to try and identify what can make someone so angry about a book they want to get rid of it altogether.
Unfortunately, on a scientific level, it didn’t prove much to me, as I still haven’t been able to figure out what pushes people to ban books. I just don’t have that urge in me, I guess.
A lot of others do, though, and they’ve been active in recent years, going after numerous books in school and public libraries across the nation.
While they’ve primarily targeted books about LGTBQ+ themes, books about other “woke” elements like racial equality and civil rights have also frequently been challenged.
The usual canard has been trotted out to support such bans: “Think about the children,” though these challenges never seem to stop at the children’s section of the library.
No, the primary thought here is the same as ever: the idea that private disagreement with a book should equal public destruction of said book for everyone.
Sadly, we need Banned Books Week more than ever just to keep the focus on the insidious actions of some bad apples who think they should be able to dictate what everyone should be able to read. We musn’t let them win that debate.
Stephen Milligan is news editor of The Walton Tribune. Email comments to stephen.milligan@ waltontribune.com.
