120 Banned books - Censorship histories of world literature

120 banned

Books,

second edition

CENSORSHIP HISTORIES OF WORLD LITERATURE

NICHOLAS J. KAROLIDES,

MARGARET BALD AND

DAWN B. SOVA

To the University of Wisconsin–River Falls Chalmer Davee Library staff

—N. J. K.

For Jonathan, André and Daniel

—M. B.

To my son, Robert Gregor

—D. B. S.

120 Banned Books, Second Edition

Copyright © 2011 by Nicholas J. Karolides, Margaret Bald and Dawn B. Sova

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by

any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the

publisher. For information contact:

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Karolides, Nicholas J.

120 banned books : censorship histories of world literature / Nicholas

J. Karolides, Margaret Bald, and Dawn B. Sova. — 2nd ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8160-8232-2 (acid-free paper) 1. Censorship—United

States—History—20th century. 2. Prohibited books—United

States—History—20th century. 3. Challenged books—United

States—History—20th century. 4. Censorship—History. 5. Prohibited

books—United States—Bibliography. 6. Challenged books—United

States—Bibliography. I. Bald, Margaret. II. Sova, Dawn B. III. Title.

IV. Title: One hundred and twenty banned books. V. Title: One hundred

twenty banned books.

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Book printed and bound by Sheridan Books, Ann Arbor, Mich.

Date printed: August 2011

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CONTENTS

Introduction vii

LITERATURE SUPPRESSED ON

POLITICAL GROUNDS

All Quiet on the Western Front

Erich Maria Remarque 3

Andersonville MacKinlay Kantor 8

The Appointment Herta Müller 13

Areopagitica John Milton 18

Black Boy Richard Wright 22

Burger’s Daughter Nadine

Gordimer 31

Bus Stop (Chezhan) Gao Xingjian

35

The Corpse Walker: Real Life

Stories, China from the Bottom

Up Liao Yiwu 38

Doctor Zhivago Boris Pasternak 44

The Fugitive (Perburuan)

Pramoedya Ananta Toer 49

Girls of Riyadh Rajaa Alsanea 53

The Grapes of Wrath John

Steinbeck 57

The Gulag Archipelago 1918–

1956 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 71

I Am the Cheese Robert Cormier 78

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse Peter

Matthiessen 86

Johnny Got His Gun Dalton

Trumbo 98

Kiss of the Spider Woman Manuel

Puig 102

The Manifesto of the Communist

Party Karl Marx and Friedrich

Engels 105

Mein Kampf Adolf Hitler 112

My Brother Sam Is Dead James

Lincoln Collier and Christopher

Collier 123

1984 George Orwell 126

Novel Without a Name Duong

Thu Huong 131

The Prince (Il Principe) Niccolò

Machiavelli 137

El Señor Presidente Miguel Angel

Asturias 142

Slaughterhouse-Five: Or, the

Children’s Crusade, a Duty￾Dance with Death Kurt

Vonnegut, Jr. 146

Snow Orhan Pamuk 156

Spycatcher Peter Wright 160

The Things They Carried Tim

O’Brien 166

Uncle Tom’s Cabin Harriet Beecher

Stowe 169

A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in

The Conquered City Anonymous

175

The Age of Reason Thomas Paine

186

The Bible 190

The Cartoons That Shook the

World Jytte Klausen 196

Children of the Alley Naguib

Mahfouz 204

Christianity Restored Michael

Servetus 208

Church: Charism and Power:

Liberation Theology and the

Institutional Church Leonardo

Boff 211

Concerning Heretics Sebastian

Castellio 214

The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown 217

Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief

World Systems Galileo Galilei 223

Essays Michel de Montaigne 226

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s

Stone J.K. Rowling 229

The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in

the Arab World Nawal El

Saadawi 236

His Dark Materials Trilogy, Book

I: The Golden Compass Philip

Pullman 240

Impressions Reading Series Jack

Booth, gen. ed. 245

Infallible? An Inquiry Hans Küng

251

The Jewel of Medina Sherry Jones

254

The Koran (Qur’an) 262

Lajja (Shame) Taslima Nasrin 265

The Last Temptation of

Christ Nikos Kazantzakis 270

The New Testament William

Tyndale, translator 274

Ninety-fi ve Theses Martin Luther

277

Oliver Twist Charles Dickens 282

On the Infi nite Universe and

Worlds Giordano Bruno 285

On the Origin of Species Charles

Darwin 288

The Satanic Verses Salman Rushdie

295

Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic

India James W. Laine 304

The Talmud 311

The Witches Roald Dahl 314

Women Without Men: A Novel of

Modern Iran Shahrnush

Parsipur 320

Zhuan Falun: The Complete

Teachings of Falun Gong Li

Hongzhi 324

LITERATURE SUPPRESSED ON

RELIGIOUS GROUNDS

LITERATURE SUPPRESSED ON

SEXUAL GROUNDS

Always Running—La Vida Loca:

Gang Days in L.A. Luis T.

Rodriguez 331

Bless Me, Ultima Rudolfo Anaya 336

The Bluest Eye Toni Morrison 340

Candide Voltaire 345

The Clan of the Cave Bear Jean

Auel 347

The Epic of Gilgamesh Unknown

348

Fanny Hill, or Memoirs of a Woman

of Pleasure John Cleland 351

Flowers for Algernon Daniel Keyes

355

The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du

mal) Charles Baudelaire 357

Forever Judy Blume 359

Gossip Girl Series Cecily von

Ziegesar 363

The Handmaid's Tale Margaret

Atwood 366

How the García Girls Lost Their

Accents Julia Alvarez 369

Lady Chatterley’s Lover D. H.

Lawrence 374

Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 378

Madame Bovary Gustave Flaubert

382

Native Son Richard Wright 384

The Perks of Being a Wall￾fl ower Stephen Chbosky 391

Rabbit, Run John Updike 395

The Rainbow D. H. Lawrence 397

Sanctuary William Faulkner 400

Snow Falling on Cedars David

Guterson 402

Song of Solomon Toni Morrison

406

Sophie’s Choice William Styron 409

Tess of The D’urbervilles Thomas

Hardy 412

Their Eyes Were Watching

God Zora Neale Hurston 415

This Boy's Life Tobias Wolff 420

Twilight Series Stephenie Meyer

423

Ulysses James Joyce 427

Women in Love D. H. Lawrence 431

The Absolutely True Diary of a

Part-Time Indian Sherman

Alexie 435

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Mark Twain 441

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Mark Twain 448

And Tango Makes Three Justin

Richardson and Peter Parnell 451

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young

Girl Anne Frank 455

The Autobiography of Benjamin

Franklin Benjamin Franklin

457

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Malcolm X, with Alex Haley 460

The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath 462

Beloved Toni Morrison 465

Brave New World Aldous Huxley

470

The Canterbury Tales Geoffrey

Chaucer 473

Catch-22 Joseph Heller 477

The Catcher in the Rye J. D.

Salinger 480

The Color Purple Alice Walker 484

Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury 487

A Farewell To Arms Ernest

Hemingway 489

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist

Explores the Hidden Side of

Everything Steven D. Levitt and

Stephen J. Dubner 493

Gorillas in the Mist Dian Fossey 497

The Great Gatsby F. Scott

Fitzgerald 499

Heather Has Two Mommies Leslea

Newman 502

I Know Why The Caged Bird

Sings Maya Angelou 504

LITERATURE SUPPRESSED ON

SOCIAL GROUNDS

The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini

506

Leaves of Grass Walt Whitman 515

Lord of the Flies William Golding

518

Of Mice and Men John Steinbeck

521

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Ken Kesey 526

A Separate Peace John Knowles

529

The Sun Also Rises Earnest

Hemingway 531

To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee

534

Welcome to the Monkey House Kurt

Vonnegut, Jr. 537

Index 541

vii

Introduction

For centuries, books have been banned, suppressed, and censored because

of political, religious, sexual, and social reasons, according to the tastes and

beliefs of a particular era or a locale. As times change, formerly banned

books become acceptable or even “classic,” while once-acceptable books are

challenged, as the appearance of James Joyce’s Ulysses and D. H. Lawrence’s

Lady Chatterley’s Lover in college courses as required reading and the roller￾coaster history of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn attest. In many

cases, the same book has been banned at different times for different reasons,

as is the case with Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front,

Voltaire’s Candide, and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. The books do not

change, but the social climate does.

This updated edition of 120 Banned Books contains entries covering more

than 2,000 years of censorship. Entries new to this edition range from best￾selling works of popular fi ction, such as the young-adult Twilight and Gos￾sip Girl series, to highly acclaimed works of undeniable literary value, such

as Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and The

Appointment by Herta Müller, winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature.

Entries from the past edition have been updated to refl ect new challenges.

Each week brings new reports of challenges to books. In 2011, that may

seem diffi cult to believe, but the reality remains. Parents and librarians are

often shocked to hear that books in the Harry Potter series have been chal￾lenged in such diverse regions of the country as Massachusetts, California,

and Georgia, yet some suggest that other books would be better banned,

according to their own beliefs, biases, and prejudices. In some cases, readers

who defend controversial works by academics, such as Stephen J. Dubner and

Steven D. Levitt’s Freakonomics, are quick to condemn Philip Pullman’s tril￾ogy His Dark Materials as unacceptably anti-religious.

vii

As readers of the censorship histories in 120 Banned Books will realize, the

reasons for which these books have been banned, suppressed, and censored

are often highly subjective, and the success or failure of efforts to ban, sup￾press, or censor books depends more upon how vocal the challengers are

than upon the merits of the book. All books by an author who has offended

in one book might be condemned, as was the case for Honoré de Balzac, or

an author’s lifestyle or politics may result in the banning of works, as occurred

for Oscar Wilde and Dalton Trumbo. Threats to parental authority also drive

challenges, as they have in regard to such diverse books as J. D. Salinger’s The

Catcher in the Rye and J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Although the major￾ity of challenges today in the United States occur in schools or public libraries,

they are not limited to these venues.

120 Banned Books contains comprehensive information about books that

have been banned, suppressed, or censored for political, religious, sexual, or

social reasons across 20 centuries and in many nations. Each entry contains

the author’s name, original date and place of publication, and literary form, as

well as a plot summary. A separate section of each entry provides details of the

censorship history of the work, followed by a list of further readings for more

in-depth examination of the challenges. The entries feature books in numer￾ous genres, including fi ction for children and adults, as well as nonfi ction

in the forms of biographies, autobiographies, political and religious tracts,

philosophical treatises, histories, and books of science. In short, no one book

or no one writer is protected from would-be censors.

—Dawn B. Sova, Ph.D.

viii

120 BANNED BOOKS

1

The phrase suppressed on political grounds casts a shadow of a heavy-handed

government blocking its citizens from receiving information, ideas, and opin￾ions that it perceives to be critical, embarrassing, or threatening. This image,

unfortunately, is too often reality. It is not, however, limited to dictatorships

such as those of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Joseph Stalin’s Communist

Soviet Union, Suharto’s Indonesia, Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, and Sani Aba￾cha’s Nigeria. The political turbulence of the 1990s dismantled several of these,

establishing more open government in Indonesia, Chile, Nigeria, and Russia.

The governments of democracies, however, also participate in attempts to cen￾sor such critical material in order to protect their own perceived state security.

Indeed, repression of freedom of expression has been a signifi cant operative

factor in South Africa of the apartheid era, in pre-1990 South Korea, in Turkey,

in postcommunist Ukraine, and recently in Russia. It is a factor, as well, in the

United Kingdom and the United States today.

Further, the impression that censorship for political reasons emanates

only from national governments is mistaken. Another common source of

such activity, notably in the United States, is at the local community level,

generated by school board members or citizens, individually or in groups,

who attack textbooks and fi ction used in schools or available in school librar￾ies. In contrast to censorship challenges at the national level, challenges at

the local level are aimed at the political values and images that children are

receiving. In past decades, the chief targets were socialism, communism, and

the portrayal of the Soviet Union. A companion concern was the portrayal of

the United States. At the center of such objections was the fear that the Soviet

Union would be viewed too positively or the United States too negatively.

Continuing in the present, examining fl aws in American society is deemed

unpatriotic to critics, who become concerned when past and present policies

of their government are questioned in school textbooks and library books.

Literature Suppressed on

Political Grounds

120 BANNED BOOKS

2

Books conveying the dynamics of war situations are targets of censoring chal￾lenges as well.

The 30 censored titles discussed in this revised section vary considerably

in subject and form. Some works have had comparably limited censorship

exposure. Others have extensive and impressive censorship histories. The

Grapes of Wrath was challenged and burned within a month of its publication

in 1939 and has been subject to attacks ever since. The censorship of Alek￾sandr Solzhenitsyn’s books by the Soviet government gained international

notoriety. Four other novelists have had their entire oeuvre censored by their

respective governments: Nobel Prize winner Miguel Angel Asturias of Gua￾temala (El Señor Presidente), Duong Thu Huong of Vietnam (Novel Without

a Name), Pramoedya Ananta Toer of Indonesia (The Fugitive), and Herta

Müller, also a Nobel Prize winner, by Romania (The Appointment). Harriet

Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was broadly censored

in the South in the 19th century, and My Brother Sam Is Dead, the antiwar,

nonromanticized Revolutionary War novel, by James Lincoln Collier and

Christopher Collier, has drawn considerable fi re since its publication in 1974.

Other works have faced signifi cant court cases, such as I Am the Cheese, by

Robert Cormier; Slaughter-House Five, by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; and Spycatcher,

by Peter Wright. Some censored writers discussed in this section are less

well-known in the United States but still extremely important, such as Liao

Yiwu of China (The Corpse Walker), Manuel Puig of Argentina (Kiss of the Spi￾der Woman), Rajaa Alsanea of Saudi Arabia (Girls of Riyadh), and the anony￾mous German author of A Woman in Berlin: Eight Weeks in the Conquered City.

Not all objections are formalized or publicly announced; some are

reported only in local newspapers. Self-censorship by teachers and librarians

is common. I recall the comment of a librarian who accounted for the lack

of challenges to her collection through her tactic of not ordering books that

were censored elsewhere. Further, not all attacks are identifi ed forthrightly; it

is apparently more diffi cult to protest the politics of a text than it is to protest

its offensive language. Lee Burress, who has conducted fi ve state and national

surveys of censorship of school library and classroom materials, referred to

this mask as the “hidden agenda” of censorship.

The accounts of these attacks at local levels may seem to the glancing

eye diversifi ed and transient; those at the national and international levels

may appear remote and arcane. These multiple streams of curtailed thought,

however, combine to form a treacherous current. Its undertow can ensnare

the mind in the tangled weeds of ignorance and irrationality. Denied both in

individual incidents and en masse is the sine qua non of democracy, the right

of fundamental inquiry, the ebb and fl ow of thought.

—Nicholas J. Karolides, Ph.D.

University of Wisconsin–River Falls

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

3

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Author: Erich Maria Remarque

Original dates and places of publication: 1928, Germany; 1929, United

States

Publishers: Impropylaen-Verlag; Little, Brown and Company

Literary form: Novel

SUMMARY

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front,

that the army report confi ned itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the

Western Front.

He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him

over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of

calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

This fi nal passage of Remarque’s renowned novel enunciates not only the irony

of death of this unknown soldier, but also the irony of the wartime commu￾niques that announced that there was nothing new to report while thousands

were wounded and dying daily. (The German title of the novel, Im Westen nichts

neues, translates as “nothing new in the West.”) The fi nal passage also signals

the irony of the title, a bitterness that pervades the entire work.

There are many unknown soldiers in the novel on both sides of the

trenches. They are the bodies piled three deep in the shell craters, the muti￾lated bodies thrown about in the fi elds, the “naked soldier squatting in the

fork of a tree . . . his helmet on, otherwise he is entirely unclad. There is

one half of him sitting there, the top half, the legs are missing.” There is the

young Frenchman in retreat who lags behind and then is overtaken, “a blow

from a spade cleaves through his face.”

The unknown soldiers are background. The novel focuses on Paul Bau￾mer, the narrator, and his comrades of the Second Company, chiefl y Albert

Kropp, his close friend, and Stanislaus Katczinsky, the leader of the group.

Katczinsky (Kat) is 40 years old; the others are 18 and 19. They are ordinary

folk: Muller, who dreams of examinations; Tjaden, a locksmith; Haie West￾hus, a peatdigger; and Detering, a peasant.

The novel opens fi ve miles behind the front. The men are “at rest”

after 14 days on the front line. Of the 150 men to go forward, only 80 have

returned. A theme—and the tone of disillusionment—is introduced imme￾diately, the catalyst being the receipt of a letter from Kantorek, their former

schoolmaster. It was he who had urged them all to volunteer, causing the

hesitant ones to feel like cowards.

For us lads of eighteen [adults] ought to have been mediators and guides to

the world of maturity. . . . in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority,

120 BANNED BOOKS

4

which they represented, was associated in our minds with greater insight and a

manlier wisdom. But the fi rst death we saw shattered this belief. . . . The fi rst

bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught

it to us broke in pieces.

This theme is repeated in Paul’s conversation with adults at home during a

leave. They evince deep ignorance of the nature of trench warfare and the

living conditions and the dying. “Naturally it’s worse here. Naturally. The

best for our soldiers. . . .” They argue about what territories ought to be

annexed and how the war should be fought. Paul is unable to speak the truth

to them.

Vignettes of the solders’ lives pile up in the fi rst several chapters: inhu￾mane treatment of the recruits at the hands of a militaristic, rank-conscious

corporal; the painful death of a schoolmate after a leg amputation; the

meager food often in limited supply; the primitive housing; and glimpses of

the fear and horror, the cries and explosions of the front. The experienced

men reveal their distance from their youth, not merely the trench warfare

smarts in contrast to the innocent unready replacement recruits. Gone was

the “ideal and almost romantic character” of the war. They recognized that

the “classical conception of the Fatherland held by our teachers resolved

itself here into a renunciation of personality.” They have been cut off from

their youth and from the opportunity of growing up naturally; they cannot

conceive a future.

After a major battle, Paul narrates: “Today we would pass through the

scenes of our youth like travellers. We are burnt up by hard facts; like trades￾men we understand distinctions, and like butchers, necessities. We are no longer

untroubled—we are indifferent. We long to be there; but could we live there?”

Paul experiences the depths of this alienation during his leave. Beyond

recognition and a vivid yearning, he knows he is an outsider. He cannot get

close to his family; of course, he is unable to reveal the truth of his terror￾fi lled experiences, so he cannot seek their comfort. Sitting in the armchair in

his room, his books before him, he tries to recapture the past and imagine the

future. His comrades at the front seem the only reality.

Rumors of an offensive turn out to be true. They are accompanied by a

high double-wall stack of yellow, unpolished, brand-new coffi ns and extra

issues of food. When the enemy bombardment comes, the earth booms

and heavy fi re falls on them. The shells tear down the parapet, root up the

embankment and demolish the upper layers of concrete. The rear is hit as

well. A recruit loses control and must be forcibly restrained. The attack is met

by machine-gun fi re and hand grenades. Anger replaces fear.

No longer do we lie helpless, waiting on the scaffold, we can destroy and kill,

to save ourselves, to save ourselves and be revenged . . . crouching like cats we

run on, overwhelmed by this wave that bears us along, that fi lls us with ferocity,

turning us into thugs, into murderers, into God only knows what devils; this

wave that multiplies our strength with fear and madness and greed of life, seek-

ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT

5

ing and fi ghting for nothing but our deliverance. If your own father came over

with them you would not hesitate to fl ing a bomb into him.

Attacks alternate with counterattacks and “slowly the dead pile up in the

fi eld of craters between the trenches.” When it is over and the company is

relieved, only 32 men answer the call.

In another situation the relative anonymity of trench warfare is erased.

On patrol to scout out the enemy lines, Paul becomes separated from his

own troops and fi nds himself in French territory. He hides in a shell hole,

surrounded by exploding shells and sounds of activity. He is strained to the

utmost, armed with fear and a knife. When a body crashes in upon him, he

automatically slashes at and then shares the shell hole with the dying French￾man who has become a person. He tries to dress the stab wounds. He is

devoured by guilt:

Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not

do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an

abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It

was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the fi rst time, I see you are a man

like me. I thought of your hand grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifl e; now I

see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always

see it too late.

There is a respite for the company, and then it is sent out to evacuate a

village. During the march, both Paul and Albert Kropp are wounded, Albert

seriously. Hospitalized, they fear the amputation-prone doctors; Kropp loses

his leg; he does not want to live a “cripple.” Paul hobbles around the hospital

during his recovery, visiting the wards, increasingly aware of shattered bodies:

And this is only one hospital, one single station; there are hundreds of

thousands in Germany, hundreds of thousands in France, hundreds of thousands

in Russia. How senseless is everything that can be written, done, or thought,

when such things are possible. It must all be lies and of no account when the

culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured

out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone

shows what war is.

Back at the front the war continues, death continues. One by one the

circle of comrades is killed. Detering, maddened for home by the sight of a

cherry tree in bloom, attempts to desert but is captured. Only Paul, Kat, and

Tjaden are alive. In the late summer of 1918 Kat sustains a leg injury; Paul

attempts to carry him to a medical facility. Near collapse, he stumbles and

falls as he reaches the dressing station. He rises only to discover that Kat is

dead; en route he has sustained a splinter in the head.

In the autumn there is talk of peace and armistice. Paul meditates about

the future:

120 BANNED BOOKS

6

And men will not understand us—for the generation that grew up before us,

though it has passed these years with us here, already had a home and a call￾ing; now it will return to its old occupations, and the war will be forgotten—

and the generation that has grown up after us will be strange to us and push

us aside. We will be superfl uous even to ourselves, we will grow older, a few

will adapt themselves, some others will merely submit, and most will be

bewildered;—the years will pass by and in the end we shall fall into ruin.

CENSORSHIP HISTORY

When All Quiet on the Western Front was issued in Germany in 1928, National

Socialism (Nazism) was already a powerful political force. In the social politi￾cal context a decade after the war, the novel generated a strong popular

response, selling 600,000 copies before it was issued in the United States, but

it also generated signifi cant resentment. It affronted the National Socialists,

who read it as slanderous to their ideals of home and fatherland. This resent￾ment led to political pamphleteering against it. It was banned in Germany in

1930. In 1933, all of Remarque’s works were consigned to the infamous bon￾fi res. On May 10, the fi rst large-scale demonstration occurred in front of the

University of Berlin: Students gathered 25,000 volumes of Jewish authors;

40,000 “unenthusiastic” people watched. Similar demonstrations took place

at other universities; in Munich 5,000 children watched and participated in

burning books labeled Marxist and un-German.

Remarque, who had not been silenced by the violent attacks against

his book, published in 1930 a sequel, The Road Back. By 1932, however, he

escaped Nazi harassment by moving to Switzerland and then to the United

States.

Bannings occurred in other European countries. In 1929, Austrian sol￾diers were forbidden to read the book, and in Czechoslovakia it was barred

from military libraries. In 1933 in Italy, the translation was banned because of

its antiwar propaganda.

In the United States, in 1929, the publishers Little, Brown and Company

acceded to suggestions of the Book-of-the-Month Club judges, who had cho￾sen the novel as the club’s June selection, to make some changes; they deleted

three words, fi ve phrases, and two entire episodes—one of makeshift latrine

arrangements and the other a hospital scene during which a married couple,

separated for two years, has intercourse. The publishers argued that “some

words and sentences were too robust for our American edition” and that

without the changes there might be confl ict with federal law and certainly

with Massachusetts law. A spokesperson for the publisher explained:

While it was still being considered by the [BOMC’s] judges, the English edition

was published, and while most of the reviews were favorable in the extreme, two

or three reviewers condemned the book as coarse and vulgar. We believe that it

is the greatest book about the war yet written, and that for the good of human-