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9 J. Media L. & Prac. 42 (1987)
Banning Books

handle is hein.journals/tojmedlp9 and id is 42 raw text is: Banning books BRYAN HARRIS Throughout history there has been an irresistible temptation for people, whether as individuals or as representatives of a public authority, to seek to ban a wide variety of books. The motives have ranged from political and religious convictions to objec- tions on grounds of racism, obscenity and simple difference of opinion. The methods used to ban books vary from court injunctions to Customs seizures and from public burnings to official indexa- tion. In the closing years of the twentieth century, the desire to ban books in one way or another, and for one reason or another, is as strong as ever; and the legal justification for doing so is no less question- able. It is much to the credit of The American Library Association, assisted by The American Booksellers Association, The National Association of College Stores, The Association of American Publishers and The American Society of Journalists and Authors, that a continuous monitoring exercise takes place of all reports which they receive of books which are banned throughout the world. The results of their monitoring are contained in periodic reports, of which the latest is Banned Books Week '87: Celebrating the Freedom to Read.' Besides be- ing a mine of information about the nature and range of books which are banned in the various countries of the world, it is - indirectly - an indica- tion of the way in which the laws have either failed democratic societies or have succeeded, in authori- tarian countries, only too well. As a broad generalisation, it is probably true to say that, whereas the more authoritarian countries are concerned with the suppression of politically unwelcome books, the democratic countries are obsessed with problems of indecency and immorality. But there are several exceptions to this principle. It is instructive to look at the authors whose books are banned, at the countries in which books are banned, at the reasons for which books are banned and at the methods by which they are banned. Authors whose books are banned From the earliest times even the authors of what are now accepted as classics seem to have had a difficult passage: Homer, Confucius and Dante have all fallen foul of the authorities. It is less surpris- ing that Boccaccio, Petronious, Rabelais, Sade and Casanova ran into difficulties; but perhaps more surprising that Francis Bacon, Goethe and Montaigne should have done so. In some instances, early writers have suddenly been found in relatively recent times to be unacceptable. As recently as 1978, Shakespeare was banned in Ethiopia. David 1978, Shakespeare was banned in Ethiopia. David Hume's work On Religion has recently been banned in Turkey, two centuries after it was written. The evils of Zola's novel Nana only appear to have been discovered in Ireland some sixty years after it was originally published. Ovid's Art of Love, which was banned by US Customs in 1929, had been burned in Florence in 1497 and had originally caused the author himself to be banished by the Emperor Augustus in the year 8. While the banning of some authors, either for political reasons or because they are more or less consciously obscene, may not come as a great surprise, there are other authors, the banning of whose works is sometimes hard to explain. Ralf Dahrendorf, a former member of the Commission of the European Communities, and subsequently Director of the London School of Economics, is on the face of it a man of impeccable respectability; but it appears that this has not prevented him from having one of his books banned in South Korea. Apart from a tendency towards taking drugs, Sherlock Holmes was a character of the highest credentials; but this has not prevented The Adven- tures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, from being banned in the USSR in 1929, ironically on account of its references to spiritualism and occultism. It is not immediately obvious why Robert Graves's book, I Claudius, should have been banned, even in South Africa; but, since the South African authorities do not as a rule give a reason for their decisions, this will remain a mystery. Dictionaries and bibles, for all their apparent respectability, have also been looked at askance by those who ban books. Dictionaries have a bother- some tendency to include unmentionable words. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary was removed from classrooms in certain New Mexico schools in 1982 because it defined obscene words. Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang and Unconven- tional English was challenged in a Florida county in 1973 on account of profanity. (Legal actions have also been taken at one time or another against the publishers of dictionaries which have included material ranging from words protected by trade mark legislation to words with popular but tenden- tious associations, like 'Jewish'.) As to the Bible, several versions have been suppressed in various parts of Europe since Luther's day, while the Talmud was suppressed mainly in medieval times. In modern times, the Koran has been partially sup- pressed in the USSR. Countries in which books are banned As to the countries which ban books, the publication MEDIA LAW & PRACTICE, JUNE 1988 42

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