Censorship?

Whatever the merits of the case made, this image is offensive and absurd. As a male librarian with very little hair, I take great offense at this stereotypical depiction of the shushing librarian.






Mr. Muncy is chief operating officer of the Institute for American Values. From 1996 to 2008, he was editor in chief of Spence Publishing.

I am exceedingly wary of anyone or anything proclaiming values. And, just what the heck are American values? (Presuming, of course that this individual and this institution mean U.S. values.)

Book Fair's dissident guests roil China

A dispute between China and organizers of the famed Frankfurt Book Fair threatens to overshadow the world's premier publishing event and become a diplomatic headache for German Chancellor Angela Merkel ahead of elections later this month.

The rift broke open last weekend at a symposium to herald next month's Frankfurt Book Fair, whose guest country of honor this year is China. Just as the 2008 Olympics ushered China's economic and sporting accomplishments onto the world stage, the fair is intended to do the same for its literary achievements. Some 2,000 Chinese publishers, artists and writers are expected to attend, and the first of hundreds of exhibits, readings and author tours already began this spring.

The fair's official Chinese organizing committee, though, took issue with the invitations of two dissidents to the symposium, titled "China and the world -- perception and reality."

After the Chinese delegation threatened to boycott the event, book fair organizers withdrew invitations to journalist and environmental activist Dai Qing and poet Bei Ling -- only to have them come as the guests of the German PEN club of independent writers.

Perception and reality is quite an apt title, it seems.

The German government could face a tricky balancing act if it wades in to the dispute. China is a critical trading partner and helped jump-start Germany's export-heavy economy's climb out of its recession in recent months.

But Ms. Merkel has made defending human rights a cornerstone of her foreign policy. Two years ago, she defied Chinese pressure and criticism by becoming the first German chancellor to receive the Dalai Lama.

Book Lover - September 18, 2009

In Search of Banned Children's Books
by Cynthia Crossen

I recently learned that the wonderful children’s book “Karlsson-on-the-Roof” by the Swedish author Astrid Lindgren is largely unknown in U.S. According to Wikipedia, the book was banned in some libraries and schools in North America. Is that true?

—Pavel Gurov, Nottingham, Md.

There doesn't seem to be a single verifiable record of banned books, but "Karlsson-on-the-Roof" by Ms. Lindgren, author of more than 70 children's books and creator of Pippi Longstocking, appears to have met with some protests in the U.S. One list of challenged books says Karlsson was suspected of inculcating "subversive views on babysitters." It probably didn't help that when it was published in 1955, it became was a huge best seller in the U.S.S.R. I have just read it, and I'm mystified by the controversy.

The Puritans brought censorship to America, and it has thrived ever since. Boston was the epicenter of censorship in the early 20th century; in 1927, Boston banned novels "The Hard-Boiled Virgin" and "The Marriage Bed," both of which sound like pretty wholesome messages. Over the years, Boston censors also turned away Sinclair Lewis's "Elmer Gantry"; Theodore Dreiser's "An American Tragedy"; and Erskine Caldwell's "God's Little Acre." But the publisher Alfred Harcourt of Harcourt, Brace & Co. said in 1926, censorship efforts "certainly do not have any marked effect in curtailing receipts."

Looking at lists of books that have been challenged or banned (many protests against books are unsuccessful) around the world, I was surprised to find a children's book I remember fondly, "Ferdinand the Bull" by Munro Leaf. The bull who just wanted to smell the flowers was apparently going to seduce children into being Communists or pacifists. William Steig's "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble" has been challenged because the police are imagined as pigs—but then Sylvester is a donkey.

Among adult books, a few of my favorites that have provoked the censors somewhere are "Flowers for Algernon" by Daniel Keyes; "Beloved" by Toni Morrison; "Sophie's Choice" by William Styron; "This Boy's Life" by Tobias Wolff; "Ordinary People" by Judith Guest; and "All Quiet on the Western Front" by Erich Maria Remarque.

My opinion of censorship was neatly expressed by Clare Boothe Luce: "Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there." And why blame books rather than the behavior they reflect? Artists, said Edward Albee, should be "holding a mirror up to people and saying, 'This is the way you behave, and if you don't like it, you should change.' "

Virtual college

Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which "going to college" means packing up, getting a dorm room and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges cannot survive.

Change is unstoppable, of course. And technology is changing virtually everything.

The real force for change is the market: Online classes are just cheaper to produce. Community colleges and for-profit education entrepreneurs are already experimenting with dorm-free, commute-free options. Distance-learning technology will keep improving. Innovators have yet to tap the potential of the aggregator to change the way students earn a degree, making the education business today look like the news biz circa 1999. And as major universities offer some core courses online, we'll see a cultural shift toward acceptance of what is still, in some circles, a "University of Phoenix" joke.

One element is missing from this model: interaction between people. In coming years virtual interaction will be possible as technology improves, but the interaction between live people can not be replicated.

This doesn't just mean a different way of learning: The funding of academic research, the culture of the academy and the institution of tenure are all threatened.

Online degrees are already relatively inexpensive. And the price will only dive in coming decades, as more universities compete.

Of course, a cultural shift will be required before employers greet online degrees without skepticism. But all the elements are in place for that shift. Major universities are teaching a few of their courses online. And the young students of tomorrow will be growing up in an on-demand, personalized world, in which the notion of a set-term, offline, prepackaged education will seem anachronistic.

Not all colleges will be similarly affected. Like the New York Times, the elite schools play a unique role in our society, and so they can probably persist with elements of their old revenue model longer than their lesser-known competitors. Schools with state funding will be as immune as their budgets. But within the next 40 years, the majority of brick-and-mortar universities will probably find partnerships with other kinds of services, or close their doors.

Even the Times is in trouble.

So how should we think about this? Students who would never have had access to great courses or minds are already able to find learning online that was unimaginable in the last century. But unless we make a strong commitment to even greater funding of higher education, the institutions that have allowed for academic freedom, communal learning, unpressured research and intellectual risk-taking are themselves at risk.

If the mainstream of "college teaching" becomes a set of atomistic, underpaid adjuncts, we'll lose a precious academic tradition that is not easily replaced.

A reputation made, and ...

Once popular, an author has a built-in audience. Witness Dan Brown, whose Da Vinci Code made his name: his new book, The Lost Symbol, has 231 holds in the large print version, and 688 on the regular-type version.

Equally, Pat Conroy's new book, South of Broad, has 569 holds on first copy returned of 203 copies. Nicholas Sparks is also an established favorite; his latest, The Last Song, has 390 holds on first copy returned of 57 copies.

Publishing thrives, perhaps even survives, on this phenomenon: guaranteed readers.

*

In contrast, consider this book:
The study of counterpoint from Johann Joseph Fux's Gradus ad parnassum ; translated and edited by Alfred Mann, with the collaboration of John Edmunds. New York : W.W. Norton, 1971. [Call No. 781.42 F]

It has circulated once.

Despite Knees, Nadal and Venus Advance

Implying the other tennis players didn't have knees?