The Post Quiz: Censorious Reasoning - Answers

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Banning books is an old human custom. But the reasons can be interesting.

Censorious Reasoning: Answers

A cartoon of Anthony Comstock

Were you able to follow the reasoning of the censors? Sometimes, it's a bit tortuous.

Here are the answers.

  1. Why did the censor in Hunan, China, ban Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1931?
    Talking animals. The censor felt this denigrated human dignity. (Go figure.)
  2. The Anarchist's Cookbook is only banned in Australia, though if you order one online, you'll probably get on somebody's watch list. The author, now a respectable Anglican, wants the book to go out of print. Why can't he effectively ban his own book?
    He doesn't own the rights. The dangerous people in Arkansas who now own the copyright say it's a big seller. We do not advocate that you try any of its recipes at home.
  3. Did the Irish Republic ban Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy because it criticised British prisons?
    In a word, no. But it did criticise the Irish Republicans. It also had a lot of adolescent sex talk. Take your pick, they weren't admitting anything.
  4. Why were The Canterbury Tales banned in the US after 1873?
    The Comstock Laws. You couldn't say things like that in the US mails. Have you read Chaucer? Older versions of his texts had glosses in Latin, to protect the innocent. If you read Latin, you were obviously educated enough to take it.
  5. The Dictionary of Modern Serbo-Croatian Language was banned in Yugoslavia in 1966. What was offensive about this dictionary?

    According to the censor, 'some definitions can cause disturbance among citizens.' This sounds weirder than it is. Remember: a language is a dialect with an army.
  6. We all know Ulysses was banned in a lot of places. What excuse did the US judges give for lifting the ban?
    It wasn't much of a turn-on. According to one judge, '[W]hilst in many places the effect of Ulysses on the reader undoubtedly is somewhat emetic, nowhere does it tend to be an aphrodisiac.' We agree.
  7. Why did parts of California ban The Grapes of Wrath?
    It said nasty things about Californians. Well, they weren't exactly welcoming to Okies.
  8. We know why the meat-packing industry objected to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. But why was this 1906 work banned in East Germany in 1956?
    Incompatibility with Communism. No, it makes no sense to us, either, unless there was something in the bratwurst we don't want to think about.
  9. Why did the Greek government ban Lysistrata by Aristophanes – in 1967?
    Pacificism. We guess the junta didn't approve of this namby-pamby attitude.
  10. Who claims the copyright to Mein Kampf, and tries to prevent it from being printed?
    The Free State of Bavaria. Yes, in addition to overseeing Oktoberfest, the Bavarian authorities have to keep people from printing copies of the world's most boring hate book. Of course, back in 1940, the same government would give you a copy if you got married, as a wedding present. (To be fair, so would any German authority.)

Gives you pause, doesn't it? Perhaps we should rethink our reasons for being annoyed at literature. As Oscar Wilde said about a controversial work, 'worse than immoral, it was badly written.'

Fyodor Dostoevsky
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Dmitri Gheorgheni

26.01.15 Front Page

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