Posts Tagged ‘books’
“Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself”*…
Jodi Picoult‘s books are being pulled off of Florida school library shelves; she explains why we should care…
In the past six months, my books have been banned dozens of times in dozens of school districts. As sad as it seems, I was getting used to the emails from PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman telling me that yet again, my novel was under attack. But this week, something truly egregious happened. In Martin Country School District, 92 books were pulled from the school library shelves. Twenty of them were mine.
The 92 books fell into three categories: those with mature content, those written by BIPOC authors, and those written by LGBTQ authors. My books were removed because they were, according to the sole parent who made the challenge, “adult romance that should not be on school shelves.” It is worth noting I do not write adult romance. The majority of the books that were targeted do not even have a kiss in them. What they do have, however, are issues like racism, abortion rights, gun control, gay rights, and other topics that encourage kids to think for themselves.
When I read through the list of the 20 novels of mine that were pulled from the Martin County School District bookshelves, one surprised me the most. The Storyteller is a novel about the Holocaust. It chronicles the growth of anti-Semitism and fascism in Nazi Germany. There was a strange irony that a parent wanted this particular book removed, because it felt a bit like history repeating itself…
Florida has passed very broadly worded laws that limit what books can and cannot be in schools. Teachers who do not obey face penalties. Every book in a school must be reviewed by a media specialist and schools are told to “err on the side of caution.”
Some activists and parents have taken these laws as free reign to remove whatever books they personally do not deem acceptable. Some districts take the books off shelves “pending review”— but months and years go by without a review, and the books remain locked away. The outcome has been empty shelves in Florida classrooms and school libraries, where teachers and media specialists don’t only ban books that have been challenged but, in fear of future retribution, also remove other books that might result in punitive measures. The result? Students don’t have access to certain titles.
…
Many of my writer friends whose books have been challenged hear the same refrain: “Kids can just get those books somewhere else!” Unfortunately, not every kid has access to a public library or transportation to get there; for many, a school or classroom library is their only resource. We also hear: “Oh, that’s just gonna drive up sales!” Trust me, none of us want that. What we want is for kids to be able to read what they want to read, instead of being told what they should read. We want the great majority of folks in communities who support the freedom to read to be just as loud as those select few who are making so much noise against it.
In the brilliant words of Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, books create windows through which kids can escape and mirrors in which they can find themselves. We want you to stand in solidarity with us, the writers who create these books. Because we’ve seen, historically, what the next chapter looks like when we don’t speak out against book challenges… and that story does not end well…
Eminently worth reading in full: “What Florida Doesn’t Want You to Know About Its Book Bans,” from @jodipicoult in @thedailybeast.
* Potter Stewart (Supreme Court Justice, 1958-81)
###
As we encourage curiosity, we might spare a thought for a man with some personal experience of censorship, Jan Němec; he died on this date in 2016. A filmmaker, he was the the “enfant terrible of the Czech New Wave.”
His best known work is A Report on the Party and the Guests (1966), about a group of friends on a picnic who are invited to a bizarre banquet by a charismatic sadist, who eventually bullies most of them into blind conformity and brutality while those who resist are hunted down. It was not a hit with Czech authorities, who had it banned. (Antonín Novotný, the president, was said to “climb the walls” on viewing it and Němec’s arrest for subversion was considered.)
He was in the middle of shooting a documentary about the Prague Spring for a US producer when the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia occurred. He smuggled his footage of invasion to Vienna, where it was broadcast on Austrian television. He re-edited the footage released the documentary Oratorio for Prague. It received standing ovations at the New York Film Festival in the fall of 1968. Němec’s footage would eventually be used by countless international news organizations as stock footage of the invasion; and Philip Kaufman’s film adaptation of The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) also used footage from the film (on which Němec served as an advisor).
Němec was given a warning by the government that “… if he came back, they would find some legal excuse to throw him in jail.” From 1974 to 1989, he lived in Germany, Paris, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. He stayed in the U.S. for twelve years. Unable to work in traditional cinema, he was a pioneer in using video cameras to record weddings (documenting, for example, the nuptials of the Swedish royal family).
After the fall of communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, he returned to his native country, where he made several films, including Code Name Ruby (1997) and Late Night Talks with Mother (2000), which won the Golden Leopard at Locarno.
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”*…
The redoubtable Robert Darnton contemplates our technological present and future– and what they might mean for libraries and books…
Information is exploding so furiously around us and information technology is changing at such bewildering speed that we face a fundamental problem: How to orient ourselves in the new landscape? What, for example, will become of research libraries in the face of technological marvels such as Google?
How to make sense of it all? I have no answer to that problem, but I can suggest an approach to it: look at the history of the ways information has been communicated. Simplifying things radically, you could say that there have been four fundamental changes in information technology since humans learned to speak.
…
the pace of change seems breathtaking: from writing to the codex, 4,300 years; from the codex to movable type, 1,150 years; from movable type to the Internet, 524 years; from the Internet to search engines, nineteen years; from search engines to Google’s algorithmic relevance ranking, seven years; and who knows what is just around the corner or coming out the pipeline?
Each change in the technology has transformed the information landscape, and the speed-up has continued at such a rate as to seem both unstoppable and incomprehensible. In the long view—what French historians call la longue durée—the general picture looks quite clear—or, rather, dizzying. But by aligning the facts in this manner, I have made them lead to an excessively dramatic conclusion. Historians, American as well as French, often play such tricks. By rearranging the evidence, it is possible to arrive at a different picture, one that emphasizes continuity instead of change. The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts. In place of the long-term view of technological transformations, which underlies the common notion that we have just entered a new era, the information age, I want to argue that every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable.
…
In 2006 Google signed agreements with five great research libraries—the New York Public, Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, and Oxford’s Bodleian—to digitize their books. Books in copyright posed a problem, which soon was compounded by lawsuits from publishers and authors. But putting that aside, the Google proposal seemed to offer a way to make all book learning available to all people, or at least those privileged enough to have access to the World Wide Web. It promised to be the ultimate stage in the democratization of knowledge set in motion by the invention of writing, the codex, movable type, and the Internet.
Now, I speak as a Google enthusiast. I believe Google Book Search really will make book learning accessible on a new, worldwide scale, despite the great digital divide that separates the poor from the computerized. It also will open up possibilities for research involving vast quantities of data, which could never be mastered without digitization… But their success does not prove that Google Book Search, the largest undertaking of them all, will make research libraries obsolete. On the contrary, Google will make them more important than ever.
[Darnton makes a compelling eight-point argument, concluding…]
… I say: shore up the library. Stock it with printed matter. Reinforce its reading rooms. But don’t think of it as a warehouse or a museum. While dispensing books, most research libraries operate as nerve centers for transmitting electronic impulses. They acquire data sets, maintain digital repositories, provide access to e-journals, and orchestrate information systems that reach deep into laboratories as well as studies. Many of them are sharing their intellectual wealth with the rest of the world by permitting Google to digitize their printed collections. Therefore, I also say: long live Google, but don’t count on it living long enough to replace that venerable building with the Corinthian columns. As a citadel of learning and as a platform for adventure on the Internet, the research library still deserves to stand at the center of the campus, preserving the past and accumulating energy for the future.
Eminently worth reading in full: “The Library in the New Age,” from @RobertDarnton in @nybooks.
See also: “American Literature is a History of the Nation’s Libraries” (source of the image above).
And apposite: “The Most Influential Invention” (paper)…
* Groucho Marx
###
As we’re careful not to throw babies out with the bathwater, we might recall that it was on thus date in 1789 that Boston publisher Isaiah Thomas and Company published what is generally considered to be the first American novel: 24-year-old William Hill Brown’s The Power of Sympathy: or, The Triumph of Nature, which sold (poorly) for the price of 9 shillings.
Title page of the first edition (source)
“I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more or less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it’s my money. And I’ll bet you do it too.”*…
‘Twas ever thus. As Denise Gigante eaplains, nineteenth-century New York City was filled with books, bibliophilia, and marginalia…
By the nineteenth century, readers were feeling lost in a sea of print, and though this feeling was not entirely new, it was exacerbated by new print technologies and cheap reprints flooding the literary marketplace….
In New York in the 1840s, books and printed matter were everywhere. Up and down Broadway, boxes of used books cluttered the sidewalks. Newsstands stocked papers, literary journals, and magazines, while street vendors hawked the latest serialized novels by Dickens: “He-e-ere’s the New World—Dick’s new work. Here’s the New World—buy Master Humphrey, sir?”
From storefront windows, new books appealed to pedestrians with siren songs of entertainment and instruction at bargain prices, while literary annuals, gift books, and illustrated editions catered to an expanding American readership. New steam-powered rotary printing technology invented in New York in the mid-1840s revolutionized the print industry, rolling out thousands of pages per hour, while other innovations, such as stereotype printing, enabled a boom in cheap reading matter…
When technologically-enhanced supply met increased demand: “Choice Reading,” from @laphamsquart.
See also: “The value of owning more books than you can read.”
* Nick Hornby
###
As we read on, we might note that it was on this date in 1865 that a notable volume joined the parade of new books described in the article linked above: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (and here) was written by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson– better known as Lewis Carroll– went on sale in America for the first time (a revised edition of the first British version). Copies of the first U.S. edition, with illustrations created by John Tenniel, sold out quickly; the volume has never gone out of print since.
First edition cover (source)
“There is only one recipe for a best seller and it is a very simple one. You have to get the reader to turn over the page.”*…
Turns out, as Jordan Pruett explains, that while page-turning is necessary, it’s not sufficient…
In 1983, William Blatty—author of The Exorcist—sued the New York Times. His lawsuit alleged that the Times had incorrectly excluded his latest novel, Legion (a sequel to The Exorcist), from its bestseller list—the coveted ranking that purports to show the books that have sold the most copies that week in the United States. According to Blatty’s lawyers, Legion had sold enough copies to warrant a spot on the list, so its absence was due to negligence or fraud, for which Blatty was entitled to compensation. The Times countered with what might sound like a surprising admission: the bestseller list is not mathematically objective; it is editorial content, which is protected by the First Amendment. The court ruled in favor of the New York Times.
The Blatty case draws attention to a fundamental truth about bestseller lists, one that often gets forgotten amid the drama of their weekly publication: they are not a neutral window into what the public is really reading. Rather, they reflect editorial decisions about how and what to count. Changes on the list might reflect changes in counting procedure, rather than changes in the market. Despite their lack of neutrality—or, perhaps, because of it—these editorial and counting decisions can have a big effect on which books and authors get the honor of appearing on the list; in turn, they shape the public’s perception of what it is reading and what it should consider reading next.
In this piece, I want to explore one way such decisions have affected the Times list over its almost 90-year publication history: the separation of sales by book format (hardcover, paperback). In the 1950s and 1960s, the fact that the Times exclusively publicized hardcover sales meant that some of the most popular novelists of the time rarely appeared on the list, because they made most of their sales in paperback. Today, the Times publishes distinct lists for different formats, and the content of these lists often reflects status hierarchies associated with different genres and communities of readers.
It turns out, then, that “bestseller” is a more complicated category than you might at first think. Though its name seems to refer to something very straightforward, there are all sorts of weird historical factors and counting choices that affect whether a book might make the cut. Given the influence of the Times list, it’s worth examining the effects of the choices made when assembling it, and what they can tell us about the kinds of information about books we consider valuable…
What’s in and what’s left out- @pruett_jordan brings the data: “What Counts as a Bestseller?” in @PublicBooks.
* Ian Fleming
###
As we (re-)count what counts, we might recall that it was on this date in 1955 that The Return of the King, the third and final volume of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, was published. While it never made the bestseller list in its hardcover edition, the trilogy has become a classic– and a bestseller– with over 150 million copies sold.
“When you read a book, the story definitely happens inside your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes.”*…
Audiobooks are on the rise. Karl Berglund explores what that might mean to literature, literacy, and the business of publishing…
For an increasing number of people, reading means listening to streamed audio files through a smartphone. The audiobook has a long history, of course, but what is new is its commercial impact: For the first time, audiobooks can no longer be seen as a niche market. Now, the audio medium competes with print books and ebooks for the attention of book readers in a large and diverse range of national book markets. Most people in the book trade believe that the audiobook share will continue to grow in the coming years. According to the Association of American Publishers (AAP), 8.1 percent of the revenues of the total US book trade in 2021 came from audiobooks. This figure can be compared to ebooks (11.6 percent), but also to change over time: in fact, it is audiobooks—in contrast to all other book formats—that have shown a rapid and steady increase over the past ten years.
The audiobook boom is altering the book business and reading culture. It provides opportunities for people to read more and in new ways, but it also affects how “reading” can be understood. In highlighting the complexities of popular fiction reading, Janice Radway once famously objected to the metaphor of consumption when equated with reading. Reading is not a passive thing, she claimed. I agree, and a multitude of readership scholars have convincingly proved this to be true: reading is active, participatory, social.
But thanks to audiobooks, we might need to update this reasoning. In fact, some of the audiobook practices surfacing indeed seem to be exactly this: passive. One can easily pose the argument that the rise of audiobooks is a sign of an ongoing crisis of our book culture, where people no longer actively engage in books but lend them half an ear as a mere distraction while doing something else. People are reading while doing the dishes, driving, working out, sleeping, etc. Can such practices really be regarded as reading? In any case, passivity must be a problem for literature, right?
In one sense, it is true. But it is also not true, since print-book sales are not dropping when audiobook streams are skyrocketing. Perhaps audiobooks are not primarily competing with print books and ebooks, but with podcasts and other audio media? If this is so, audiobooks could be regarded not as a threat to our book culture but, rather, as a defender. Well, I don’t believe that to be the case either. But I do believe that audiobooks are about to fundamentally change our reading habits.
In fact, what appears to be happening is rather that people are expanding how they make use of books. Or, if you will, expanding what reading is, and what it can be…
Read on for Berglund’s explication: “Audiobooks: Every Minute Counts,” in @PublicBooks.
Tangentially apposite (albeit not your correspondent’s sentiment): “Good riddance to long books.”
* Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore
###
As we muse on metamorphosis, we might spare a thought for Edwin Abbott Abbott; he died on this date in 1926. A schoolmaster, theologian, and Anglican priest, he is best known as the author of the classic 1884 novella Flatland (c.f. also here and here)… a book that it’s hard to imagine consuming aurally…
You must be logged in to post a comment.