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Show Book banners avoid media The attempt by a handful of parents to censor a novel at View-mont View-mont High School is not really surprising. sur-prising. Book-banning has become an increasing national trend, a sociological growth industry in which vocal citizens have traded tolerance for a bullhorn. IIIMMM 1 BRIAN I GRAY f F 1 Columnist But I was surprised by several nuances of the Viewmont case. Normally, for instance, the censors strive for publicity. In this incident, however, the woman who started the furor was intently avoiding the media glare, presumably for the protection of her daughter. (While the C7ff?erwithheld her name in Saturday's story, the Associated Press identified her in its weekend account.) This "hide and seek" stance creates a problem. Like soldiers hiding in an underground bunker, the censors can take pot-shots at the school and its teachers without exposing ex-posing themselves to any scrutiny of their grievance or agenda. Are they objecting to a single passage? Have they even read the entire book? Do they understand the theme of the book or the goal of the teaching staff? Do they truly believe that several excerpts make a novel pornographic? The questions go unanswered since the censors are in hiding. All we know is that the families have tried to pull the plug before, objecting objec-ting previously to a high school health textbook and a PBS movie. Another surprise is the book itself. Between 1982-89, the most frequently challenged books in national censorship ' cases were well-known classics: Of Mice and Men ( 'trash ), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ("an affront to religion"), A Light in the Attic ("demonic"), To Kill A Mockingbird Mock-ingbird ("dirty, filthy language") and Where the Wild Things Are ("promoting the occult"). Even Little Riding Hood was challenged on the grounds that it promoted violence and drinking. In the 1970's, a Davis County father tried to censor The Great Gatsby since the word "gin" was used four times in the novel.. .In California, parents tried to ban Jane Eyre for its "depressing tone"...In Tennessee, the book-burners attempted to clip Shakespeare's Macbeth. But the Viewmont novel is unknown to the general public. The novel, John Gardner's Grendel, is far too literary to attract mass appeal ap-peal and far too cerebral to be stacked at the Albertson's checkout check-out counter. It's a book that requires intense teachingand it could well be the most difficult book on the school's reading list But what about the complaints from the censors? Yes, the book contains violence but a necessary violence since the central character is a monster. This beast is a self-doubting critter who does what monsters do best: "In plain sight of them all, I bit his head off, crunched through his helmet and skull with my teeth and, holding the jerking, blood-slippery body in two hands, sucked the blood that sprayed like a hot, thick geyser." Ugly violence, for sure-but nothing more than the visual violence most teens have seen in the typical Sylvester Stallone movie. Yes, there's swearing but much less than one finds in most modem novels and certainly no more than one can hear in the average PG-13 motion picture. Yes, there's one sexual allusion, a graphic scene designed to show the imperfection of human beings. But the one-page reference is not too gamy for a 17-year-old senior and television viewers have seen the same topic handled less delicately deli-cately on 'Cheers" and "Roseanne." Yes, religion is questioned but only from the viewpoint of the monster who personifies evil. (Monsters are not known to carry Bibles with them on their hoary rampages.) Grendel is not an easy book to read or understand and I personally didn't enjoy it. But at the same time, I marveled at John Gardner's command of the language and the opportunity the novel presents for students to explore difficult themes. There's irony in the Viewmont case. Hie schools are usually encouraged en-couraged to raise academic standards stan-dards and decrease the fluff. Yet when the English staff does select challenging reading material, they become the focus of sniper fire. The teachers can't win. And if the censors get their way, neither can the rest of us. |