listening to an NPR segment discussing “Gender Queer” as a “banned book”, i looked up “Gender Queer” on Amazon, and it was there, available to purchase. i looked up “Turner Diaries”, and it was not.
“Gender Queer” is, I am sure, “banned” from many schools and public libraries (which also, I suspect, don’t carry “Turner Diaries”).
should we be outraged by the suppression (“banning”) of “Turner Diaries” too, or are we arguing more about the criteria of suppression than the fact thereof?
@interfluidity there’s a lot to dig into here, but the short of it: it’s not the gov’t banning Turner Diaries
@karchie the same government libraries that Gender Queer is being pulled from I very strongly suspect don’t carry Turner Diaries.
do you disagree? do you think that choice is content neutral, just that libraries can’t carry everything and Turner Diaries isn’t notable enough?
@interfluidity @karchie Eh, not every library can carry every book. If they did, they'd take up multiple square miles.
A book being pulled for its content offending politicians is different than a book being pulled because it's old and hasn't been checked out in a decade.
@interfluidity @karchie Notable works that are bad novels were the bane of my existence as a schoolkid. Doesn't surprise me that they don't want to read it, lol.
@LouisIngenthron @karchie Yes. There were a lot of those that were unpleasant. But notability is usually enough to keep them (dangerously for our sanity!) in the library, where we migt accidentally begin them even if we are not assigned them...
@LouisIngenthron @karchie I guess the question I posed was trying specifically to acknowledge that. I agree there's no issue if we just think no one is interested in Turner Diaries. A library can't carry everything. But I don't think that's actually why Turner Diaries aren't in government libraries. I think there'd be more interest in it than in lots of books libraries routinely carry, and that it's obviously a notable work (even if it is a bad novel in more than an ethical sense).