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Fetch My Fainting Couch, Ah Do Believe Ah Have a Case of the Vapors
Dammit, I tried, I really tried. When I set up the Banned Books Week display, I tried to stock it with only the most controversial titles from the most challenged books list. Hey, anything to drive up circ, right?
Unfortunately, after careful perusal of the full list and much deep, profound thought, I must sadly agree with the consensus of the nation’s teens: the vast majority of banned and challenged books are really fucking lame.
In a letter sent to the ALA, the American Association Of High-School Students cited its members’ other complaints with banned books, including: the monster in John Garner’s Grendel isn’t scary at all and doesn’t even act like a monster; William Golding’s Lord Of The Flies is not actually about a mutant insect man who can control the world’s flies with his mental powers; and there is no reason to read Stephen King’s Cujo when you can see it on cable 24 hours a day; plus, it’s not that good, anyway.“Desensitized to sex and violence from an early age, today’s teens simply expect more out of their banned books than previous generations,” said Naomi Gould, director of the D.C.-based National Education Consortium. “For the teens of yesteryear, access to novels like Tropic Of Cancer, Portnoy’s Complaint, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover was an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime thrill. But for teens raised on Cinemax and Def Comedy Jam, it just doesn’t cut it.”
(link via The Laughing Librarian)
If the relative Lameness Quotient of a country can be calculated in inverse proportion to the raunchiness of the materials it tries to ban, then I’m afraid the good ol’ US of A has vaulted to the top (or, to put another way, the “bottom”) of the rankings. Lamer than the lame mayor of Lametown!
