
Tag: book burning
The Fires of Ignorance
When I was in High School an injury forced me to resign from PhysEd and accept service in the school library. I learned so much: how to load the date stamps clipped to the end of the pencils; how to carefully letter the spine of new books for entry into the collection; how to shelve books in strict dewey-decimal order; and which binding glue was the happiest. You know: all those skills needed to support a library in the 1940s.
Continue reading “The Fires of Ignorance”Remembering Guy Montag
Have you heard about the newest American wedge issue: banned books? We’ve always had books being banned, generally for understandable, even if unreasonable, reasons. Classic works often contain words or activities that are no longer acceptable. Many more contemporary works are designed to appeal to the reader’s most basic, animalistic imagination. How many excellent books question or even ignore such sacred human constructs as religion or American Exceptionalism. Nowadays it seems the universal excuse is that a book makes someone, anyone, uncomfortable.
Continue reading “Remembering Guy Montag”