by Mercedes Aguirre, Lead Curator American Collections

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is an American classic. It is also one of the most censored books in American literature. One of the earliest works of fiction exploring male teenage consciousness, The Catcher in the Rye is narrated in the first person by Holden Caulfield, who struggles with feelings of alienation and anxiety. The novel has been the subject of controversy almost since its publication by Little, Brown and Co in 1951, and the debate around the book is still very much alive today. Salinger’s novel was listed in the top ten most frequently banned books in schools and school libraries in 2001, 2005 and 2009, according to the yearly list provided by the American Library Association.

The Catcher in the Rye cover from the 1985 Bantam edition

But what makes the The Catcher in Rye such an offensive book?

The use of Salinger’s novel as a set text in schools has been challenged by people who object to its use of swearwords and its sexual content. The work contains several disturbing scenes, including instances of abuse, and is written using 1950s teenage slang. The first curse word appears in the opening of the novel when Holden warns the reader not to expect an account of his unhappy childhood, or as he puts it, ‘that David Copperfield kind of crap’. But there are many more –according to associations who have protested against the novel the word ‘goddam’ appears more than 200 times. As these groups often point out, the novel was originally written with an adult audience in mind. The debate sparked by the novel, the question whether teenagers should be protected from ‘foul’ language and sexual content, curiously mirrors Holden’s own obsession with preserving childhood innocence, becoming the ‘catcher in the rye’, ‘catching’ children from falling off a cliff (and into the adult world).

While a number of American schools and parents’ associations may consider the language in the novel objectionable, many teachers see The Catcher in the Rye as a work which resonates with their students in a way that few classic novels can. The book is therefore in the unlikely position of being required reading in some schools, and a banned book in others.

Does the censoring of the novel contribute to its enduring allure for young readers? Most of us remember the first time we read a book meant for adults; the first time we saw forbidden words in print. Since The Catcher in the Rye remains a bestselling book in America 65 years after it was first published it is in any case unlikely that censors will get in the way of people’s enjoyment of the novel.

This blog is part of series for Banned Books Week 2016. See also Melvin Burgess’s blog on Censorship and the author, curator Christian Algar on the  ‘corrected’ Il Decamerone, curator Tanya Kirk on The Monk, the Bible and Obscenity and The Book Banner who inspired Banned Books by curator Alison Hudson.

Banned Books Week was initiated by the American Library Association in 1982 in response to an increasing number of challenges in the US to books in schools, bookstores and libraries, and in particular, books aimed at children or young adults. For the first time in the UK we are holding events, activities and publishing a series of blogs, all on the topic of Censorship and Banned Books, made possible by the partnership between The British Library, Free Word and Islington Library and Heritage Services and in association with the ALA.

Related articles

The Monk, the Bible and obscenity - English and Drama blog

Melvin Burgess: Censorship and the Author - English and Drama blog

by Tanya Kirk, Curator for Printed Heritage Collections 1601-1900

Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary on Sunday, 9^th February 1667/8 that he was ‘up, and at my chamber all the morning and the office doing business, and also reading a little of L’escholle des filles, which is a mighty lewd book, but yet not amiss for a sober man once to read over to inform himself in the villainy of the world.’ This does seem a bit like a convenient excuse to read smut on a Sunday, but it’s entirely typical of the view of the establishment for a huge part of modern British history.

Until well into the 20^th century, it has been the case that a privileged few have been considered exempt from any need for a protective censorship. Historically there have been libraries of banned books in the Houses of Parliament (for the use of members only) and in the Vatican, as well as in the British Library itself, which for part of its past history maintained a ‘Private Case’ – books which weren’t entered on the public catalogue, and for which readers had to make a special application. It was a fundamental that the censorship of books was in order to protect certain demographics – the poor, or women and children – who were not seen as intelligent or educated enough to read them without personal damage.

Mostly today we think of historic censorship being to prevent civil unrest by banning books that could incite a riot, or to prevent the corruption of morals – such as the belief that reading romances could make women behave like this (from a long poem, The Age Reviewed, written by Robert Montgomery in 1827):

Matthew Lewis’ 1796 gothic novel The Monk proved particularly controversial – as a novel, many considered the core readership to be women, and the book contained graphic depictions of sexual desire. In our Terror and Wonder: the Gothic Imagination exhibition a couple of years ago, we displayed this print by Charles Williams depicting what reading The Monk might incite a lady to do.

A Lady reading The Monk by Charles Williams

However what’s maybe a little less well-known about the novel is that it also caused controversy because it included the following passage about the Bible:

‘That prudent mother, while she admired the beauties of the sacred writings, was convinced that, unrestricted, no reading more improper could be permitted a young woman. Many of the narratives can only tend to excite ideas the worst calculated for a female breast: everything is called plainly and roundly by its name; and the annals of a brothel would scarcely furnish a greater choice of indecent expressions... [it] but too frequently inculates the first rudiments of vice, and gives the first alarm to the still sleeping passions.’

The idea that the Bible itself was a transmitter of vice into the minds of the young and impressionable was incredibly scandalous and was one of the reasons why Lewis was eventually forced to self-censor his work for the 4^th edition.

Lewis’s copy of the 3^rd edition with his own censorship marks – C.28.b.4-6.

However, Lewis wasn’t the only person to make this suggestion. In 1822, a man called Humphrey Boyle was prosecuted for having called the Bible an obscene book. His defence at the trial consisted of him delivering an impassioned speech condemning various passages of the Bible, and then announcing, much to everyone’s surprise, “Gentlemen, the first extract I shall read to you is the story of Lot and his daughters.” Although Boyle was eventually found guilty and sentenced to prison for 18 months, it was maybe an exoneration of sorts that when he began to read from the Bible at trial, the counsel for the prosecution sent all the women and children out of the room.

This blog is part of series for Banned Books Week 2016. See also Melvin Burgess’s blog on Censorship and the author  and curator Christian Algar's post on Boccaccio's Il Decamerone.

Banned Books Week was initiated by the American Library Association in 1982 in response to an increasing number of challenges in the US to books in schools, bookstores and libraries, and in particular, books aimed at children or young adults. For the first time in the UK we are holding events, activities and publishing a series of blogs, all on the topic of Censorship and Banned Books, made possible by the partnership between The British Library, Free Word and Islington Library and Heritage Services and in association with the ALA.

Related articles

Melvin Burgess: Censorship and the Author - English and Drama blog

by guest blogger, young adult and children's author Melvin Burgess, in anticipation of Banned Books Weeks (25th September-1st October 2016) which kicks off with Censorship and the author at the British Library on 22nd September, at which writers Melvin Burgess and Matt Carr will discuss censorship with Jo Glanville.

Melvin Burgess photographed by ©John Coombes

Censorship in books for teenagers takes a number of forms, but before looking at them, it's worth looking at the provision of fiction for teenagers in general, and the peculiar and privileged position books do hold among them.

Written matter is, in fact, the only media in which any serious issues can be seriously explored in a fictional way for people under the age of eighteen. Film, for instance, is strictly censored according to age – we're all familiar with the age rating for films in the cinema. At first sight, this might appear not to matter, since anyone can actually get to see anything via the internet; but if you look at provision rather than access, you get a very different picture. When my book Junk first came out, a number of production companies wanted to make a movie based on the book, but they very quickly realised they couldn't because “the audience for whom it's intended won't be allowed in the cinema.” Funding was impossible, and the project was dropped. Junk later appeared in a castrated version on BBC education.

That remains the case to this day. TV is the same. Access, although technically very limited, is in fact almost unlimited. Provision on the other hand is almost non-existent..

Censorship of provision is well and away the most successful way of going about the job of restricting what people get to see or hear but it does have some other unfortunate side effects. In the case of film anyone over the age of about twelve, can get to see things, many of them highly inappropriate, that they technically shouldn't. Meanwhile, the kinds of material they actually should be getting, but which some adults would still feel uncomfortable with, simply doesn't exist at all.

This isn't particular to the UK, either. It is in fact, global. In every continent in which visual material for film or TV is made, serious content for teenagers is effectively stifled at birth by the censorship of age. It appears at first glance to be a matter of simple negligence, censorship by accident, almost; but something that happens with such uniformity on such a global scale is obviously nothing of the kind. That doesn't mean it's done on purpose of course, but it does say a great deal about our attitudes to teenagers that the provision of visual imaginative material for them is restricted to the anodyne on such a universal level.

Books and other written material such as graphic novels and comics are uncensored for age. The importance of written fictional material for teenagers can be measured exactly by the degree of absence of fictions for them in other media. It is of the very first degree of importance.

Censorship of books does occur, however, at a much more local level. I remember very well the librarian who kept my books in a locked cupboard at the back of the library, so that no innocent youngster could inadvertently come across them, and suffer god only knows what forms of psychic shock or corruption. That's an extreme example, but that librarian was acting in the manner in which censorship against books does occur; by the system of gatekeepers. I'm referring to those people who are in a position to control or regulate books to young people; librarians, teachers, bookseller managers, parents – in other words, the very people whose job it is to encourage reading are the ones who also take it upon themselves to limit it.

It goes without saying, but even so I feel I have to say it, that this is not a role all of them relish.

A great deal of this actually happens in the school library, where the kind of material that older teenagers in particular like to read, is by no means always considered suitable for them. When I began writing, schools were still the main source of sales for children's books and to this day, publishers are concerned not to put anything out there that might fall foul of the kind of “standards” that schools require. All too often, such standards, purporting to be some kind of moral stewardship, actually revolve more around the the kind of stories the local press might summon up if they found people under the age of fourteen had access to books with such horrors as drugs, breasts or sexual activity of any kind.  There is in every class at least one unfortunate child with a mad parent, and if the school's senior management is more concerned with public image than developing young minds, that one person can completely define what kind of reading matter every child in the school has access to. In such schools, many readers will tend to ignore the library almost as much as non readers. It's a vicious circle.

Junk of course, and Doing It, were often kept by thoughtful librarians in brown paper wrappers under the desk, to be handed to chosen, suitably mature students, who weren't always he ones who would benefit from them the most. But I can also think of many examples not by any means connected with my more controversial books. One teacher told me how, when reading a passage from my very first book, The Cry of the Wolf, to a group of parents, one mother rose quaking with horror that something so violent (the wolves got shot in a suitably bloody fashion) was available in an institution of education. As a result, not just that one, but all my books were taken off the school shelves.

Violence, however, is one of the rarer targets for the banning of books. The usual one is sex – very handy when everyone over the age of thirteen is fascinated by it – and second is religion. I don't tend to write religious books, but back in the day I did write a book called Burning Issy, which showed witches persecuted by the Church in the 17th C. This book caused me to be dis-invited to a very posh school, on the grounds of “we do not feel the parents of our students would want them to be introduced to this sort of thing.” I was puzzled by what “this sort of thing” might be, but my enquiries yielded no further answers. My guess, though, is that someone somewhere out there, actually believed I was acting as a propagandist for Mr Satan.

Other gatekeepers can include book sellers. Those who remember the book shop Borders from a few years ago, may be surprised to hear that at least one store didn't stock my books, after receiving one solitary complaint.

Of course all this occurs alongside a great deal of support, and stems from an issue which begins life as something quite reasonable. Content, of course, is an issue that all parents will be concerned about.The real issue here isn't about whether we want to allow unrestricted access to children of any age whatsoever; we have allowed them that already (so long as we're not in the room at the time.) It's more about the disconnect between the kinds of material young people want to engage in, (and that we passively allow them to engage with), and the kind of material that we as adults want to present them with. It's a bit like teaching someone to swim in the bath, and then turning your back while they rush out and splash in around in a fast flowing river.

What are we scared of, I wonder? Finding out what they really think? It's all very hypocritical on the face of it, but presumably such a universal system serves some kind of purpose. Perhaps its something to do with permission. All over the world, adults passively encourage teenagers to breech the rules that we ourselves have put into place. I wonder if we rather like the idea that they transgress – that it is in fact a necessary right of passage. In that case, the  rules are more like the governor on a lorry, rather than the actual brakes. Even so, it's a pretty abyssal way of doing it, that leaves people at a time in their lives when they are changing so much, risk taking so actively, and trying to get to terms with an ever more complex and rapidly changing world, without the imaginative structures that might help them negotiate it.

The most moving and enthusiastic, as well as the most common emails and letters I've had from teenagers speak of the sheer relief and joy they've had at finding something that seems to actually reflect what's going on in their own heads in an honest and authentic fashion.

YA is barely twenty years old, and it remains the only form in which the contradictions I've spoken about are ever reconciled. Already it's become fashionable to knock it and to dismiss it's existence as a form, even among the people who actually write the stuff – driven, perhaps, by the urge to widen their readership among adults. Every publisher and every writer wants their work to be crossover, rather than pure YA as such. It would be a tragedy if it ever got genuinely taken over by middle aged wannabe youths, looking for nostalgia. At its best it is for teenagers, about being a teenager, and its disheartening to see grown ups trying to hi jack it for themselves.  If they succeed, we'd be talking about banned genres, rather than just books and that old biblical saying – To those that have not, even that which they have shall be taken from them – will yet again have proven its  worth.

Banned Books Week was initiated by the American Library Association in 1982 in response to an increasing number of challenges in the US to books in schools, bookstores and libraries, and in particular, books aimed at children or young adults. For the first time in the UK we are holding events, activities and publishing a series of blogs, all on the topic of Censorship and Banned Books, made possible by the partnership between The British Library, Free Word and Islington Library and Heritage Services and in association with the ALA.

        

The Library has recently received the first 3 issues of Swimmers bimonthly pamphlet series. These will be available in our Reading Rooms later this year. In this guest post, the editorial team at Swimmers, explain more about the group and the series, and how to find out about future events and publications.

Swimmers publishes a limited-run bimonthly pamphlet series. The pamphlets combine creative and non-fiction written work, alongside artwork in various forms, created by established, emergent, and new writers and artists. To mark the publication of each pamphlet, Swimmers runs an events series—frequently hosted at The Function Room in Somers Town—where artwork exhibits provide a backdrop for poetry, fiction, and script readings and performances.

Swimmers was founded in 2013 in collaboration with arts association STORE. STORE is composed of an educational programme of arts and architecture courses, wide-ranging public exhibitions, and a socially engaged design practice: through this nexus, STORE has created projects and events beneficial to local communities, such as the Summer School in Gillett Square. STORE and Swimmers’ shared ethos and interest in the city space made for an ideal collaborative partnership, through which an initial series of readings, screenings, and performances were hosted in a derelict space in Bloomsbury, where STORE/Swimmers built a library and cinema. Contributors to Swimmers events, and to an anthology-style publication produced in response to the series, included (among many others): Sarah Howe, Maureen McLane, Amy Blakemore, Will Self, Richard Wentworth and Christopher Reid.

In 2014, the Bloomsbury space was regrettably claimed by property developers. Shortly afterwards, Swimmers dived underground, occasionally resurfacing to host one-off events in collaboration with STORE at a variety of venues across London—such as Taste and Poetry and Architecture.

In March 2016, Swimmers received ACE funding to help launch the pamphlet series. Issue One featured an essay on race and poetry in the UK by Kayo Chingonyi, alongside new poems by André Naffis-Sahely and photo-printed artwork by Ned Scott. Issue Two featured a fragmentary essay on translation and fan-fiction by Sophie Collins, new poems by Caitlin Newby—ancient hymns to the Mayan goddess Inanna, taken from the cuneiform and put through translation software—and A3 prints by Luke Burton. In the current issue, Matthew Gregory explores the phenomenology of the piazza, Richard Scott takes inspiration from Bellini, and Tamsin Snow renders an autopsy table. Issue 4, released later this month, will feature new written work from Daisy LaFarge and Anne Boyer.

Swimmers wants to celebrate the physical, tactile object, to inspire communication between readers, and to allow the written word to enjoy the single-event status often reserved for visual artwork. Swimmers also distributes the pamphlets for free, so that the pamphlets are not restricted to an economically-privileged readership. To achieve all this, Swimmers utilises an experimental distribution model; on subscribing to the mailing list at swimmers.london (or emailing direct at [email protected]), you will be notified as to when an online sign-up sheet will go live. The first 30 people to sign-up receive a copy—through the post or hand-delivered—for free. In order to widen this readership, a copy of each issue will be accessible to the public at the British Library Reading Rooms. Select content from each issue will also be downloadable as a PDF from swimmers.london, one month after that issue is distributed.

While The Function Room undergoes refurbishment, the next Swimmers event will be held at 7.00pm on Thursday 29th September, The New Evaristo Club, 57 Greek Street, London W1D 3DX. Readings from Emily Berry, Daisy LaFarge, and special guests. Entry is free.

By Rachel Brett, Reference Specialist

Among the fanzines on display in ‘Punk 1976-78’ is a copy of Sideburns, featuring a diagrammatic representation of three chords, with the caption 'This is a chord - this is another - this is a third ... now form a band'.

Imagine this famous three-chord approach as a manifesto for life; it might look something like this:

1. Committing to the destruction of old beliefs
2. Accepting that we are alone and committed to create our own ideals and beliefs
3. Living in accordance with these self-authored ideals while resisting the temptation to return to old ideal (in the words of Robin Ryde).

When we speak of punk then, you could argue that we are also speaking about a philosophy. We are still talking, and putting on exhibitions about, Punk because inside the record sleeve was the message: change is possible.

Brave New World

The first issue of Ripped and Torn created by Tony Drayton (Tony D) on display at Punk 1976-78 at the British Library until 2nd October

While the three points above read like a punk manifesto, it is in fact a summarisation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s conceptualisation of a ‘superman’. Such beings would live by their own values, choices and beliefs, cast off old perceived habits and pre-given morals to ultimately lead a freer and more fulfilling existence.

This is an over simplification of an illustrious theory by Nietzsche, yet parallels can be drawn with the ethos of the punk spirit which was tantamount to the idea of change and autonomy. Punk wanted to rip it up and start again, and it wanted to do it for itself. If we want to consider the significance of punk, its legacy and intention beyond slogans perhaps then the German philosopher Nietzsche is just as germane as Joe Strummer.

This is not to connote punk was a preconceived philosophical gesture, rather it is offering a reflection on punk’s demand for change that became a shaping force within culture as demonstrated in the British Library’s exhibition. This however, raises a question - If art can be philosophically considered, why shouldn’t pop music also be contemplated with philosophical curiosity?

Such outrageous posturing to situate punk within a philosophical proposition will provoke a loud disquiet in the crowd. What has punk got to do with philosophy? A brief glimpse into some of Nietzsche’s ideas may be thought provoking for the curious. Nietzsche loved music. Life without it he famously said isn’t worth living. Music for him was an expression of the imagination, a dynamic power in the everyday world, an expression of a life changing force within all humans, a feeling and an emotional outburst, and anger after all is energy…

Nietzschean gesture

 
Friedrich Nietzsche around 1869. Photo taken at studio Gebrüder Siebe, Leipzig. Courtesy of WikiCommons.

Nietzsche considered music’s function within Greek tragedy, which he understood as an artistic form born from the struggle between the gods Apollo and Dionysus. As a philosophical concept Dionysus denotes a primordial urge outside the rationality of instincts representing intoxication, excess, and a drive towards a transgression of limits. Nietzsche identified these aspects within non-representational art and specifically encapsulated within the power of music to covey suffering as a universal truth as opposed to an individual symptom.

In the modern world the rational reigns, while gods and myths are banished as the divine guiding principle for human existence. Nietzsche’s panegyric of Greek tragedy lies in his argument that such enlightenment had failed. Instead privileging  a return to the subterranean impulse of the Dionysian spirit within music to exposes the depths of human experience beyond the rational.

Put another way, the unifying experience of music contains a potential for change to live creatively beyond the suffering of the human condition. Heck, sounds a bit punk to me!

Going Underground

Reproduced with kind permission of ©Gary Neill

In 1886 Nietzsche raised the question “What would music have to be like if it were no longer Romantic in its origin, as German music is, but Dionysiac?”. Given his understanding of the Dionysian drive in music, I would propose it would be like  Punk. This proposition was explored in the contemporary world by the artist Dan Graham in his work “Rock my Region”. In this ‘video essay’ Graham drew out the ecstatic release within punk music and illustrated comparisons with the same release in religion and the Shaker movement.

Punk was a sonic and visual sign in an otherwise grey, over commercialised industry. It was the fly in the ointment, a critique of society, mass culture and of itself. That is to say of pop music. Perhaps punk’s greatest legacy is that it remains indefinable. What do we mean by punk? Everyone knows all the answers to this, don’t they? Yet we still dispute it, maybe because punk demanded a change and while it was not the revolution McLaren’s King Mob dabbling’s aspired to, it did effect exactly what pop music could be, sound like and how it could be made and distributed.

Punk’s still got a job to do; only it’s going to take more than a guitar to do it. Better get out your philosophy books kids, there’s an overdue revolution waiting to happen and perhaps Nietzsche and a bit of Greek Tragedy just might help…

Hey! Ho! Dionysus & Go!