illicit pleasures

What have Lolita, The Origin of Species, and The Satanic Verses got in common?

The answer is, they have all been banned somewhere. Wikipedia has a list of banned books.

Borders is being subversive and offering 40% off banned books at the moment. The list is fascinating.

• Slaughterhouse 5: The Children's Crusade - A Dirty-dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut
  I've read this book, but didn't enjoy it that much. I suppose it was banned because of its pacifist stance and relentless exposé of the pointlessness of war.
• Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
  I've read this - definitely a classic
• The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
  I bought the first edition. Great book.
  
• Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
• The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  One of my favourite books of all time
  
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
• Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr.
• Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
  Sorry, but I could never get into this book; it's boring. I love Lawrence's travel writing, can't bear his novels
• The Color Purple by Alice Walker
  I really liked this book, and the sequel The Temple of my familiar was even better
  
• Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
  Excellent. It's all about why banning books is wrong. Ironic, really.
  
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
  Boring, boring, boring.
  
• To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
• Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller
  
• Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
  Started this, couldn't finish it
  
• Ulysses by James Joyce
  
• The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
  A great classic of the "invert" theory of lesbian love. Mothers used to give it to their daughters to let them know they knew, apparently.
• The Dark by John McGahem
• Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
  
• Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin
• The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
  I had to read this for my German degree; still didn't manage to finish it, even though I wrote an exam paper comparing it with Freud's Interpretation of Dreams (which I hadn't read either). I confess: I am a very lazy intellectual. I get 90% of what I know from reading novels.
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
  I have read this, years ago. It was bleak, but well-written.
• Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  Utterly magical on the first reading; couldn't get into it the second time around.
• Germinal by Emile Zola
• The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
• The Rights of Man, Common Sense and Other Political Writings by Tom Paine
• Animal Farm: A Fairy Story by George Orwell
  Blimey, was this banned? Where? It was a set text at school. Great book.
• The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
  

The main reason things seem to be banned is either because they are politically subversive or sexually explicit, except The Origin of Species, which is presumably banned in creationist states of the US, or something.

They missed out the Harry Potter books, but I suppose those aren't actually banned by any legislatures, only by certain schools and libraries. Things used to get banned for being religiously subversive, such as Steganographia by Johannes Trithemius and Picatrix or Ghayat al Hakim, but they seem to have ignored that category - maybe because now you can get them as free e-texts online. Picatrix was allegedly one of the books that Casanova was imprisoned for possessing. The Index of books prohibited by the Catholic Church was abolished in 1966.

What these people don't realise is the psychology of the thing. The minute I hear that a book or film has been banned, or that someone somewhere doesn't want me to read or see it, it makes me want to go out and read it or see it. For instance, I had no plans to go and see The Last Temptation of Christ. Yawn, I thought, yet another film about Jesus. But as soon as I heard that it was controversial and people wanted it banned, it made me want to go and see it. I didn't see it in the end (apathy set in), but it illustrates how stupid it is to try and ban things. Notice how I thought several of the books listed above were actually quite boring - they would probably have sunk without trace if they hadn't been banned, but I expect the fact they were banned made them instant best-sellers (a bit like Spycatcher, which I bought in Germany because there was a court order against it being published in the UK, but that turned out to be rather boring).

Northern Lights

We went to see the film Golden Compass last night, and really enjoyed it. Generally speaking, Lyra's world was pretty close to the way I imagined it from reading the books. The alethiometer was beautifully designed, and the daemons worked well too, especially Pantalaimon and Hester. Also Nicole Kidman was very scary as Mrs Coulter (though her monkey daemon wasn't quite how I imagined him), Eva Green was excellent as Serafina Pekkala, and all the casting was rather inspired, I thought. The CGI was 99% convincing, apart from one aerial shot of London (slightly blurred, but I notice there is a Gherkin in Lyra's world too) and the fight scene between Iorek Byrnisson and Ragnar (not as much blood as one might have expected, but perhaps that's just as well in a children's film).

Apparently the Vatican has complained that the film is anti-Christian, but I say, if the Catholic Church recognises itself in the mirror held up to it by the Magisterium, maybe it should do something to clean up its image. Stop telling people what to think, and people like Philip Pullman will stop writing unflattering portraits of your religion. Note what a good press witches (nonconformists and freethinkers all) get from the book and the film. If Christianity had stuck to the radical message of Jesus instead of transmogrifying itself into the heir to the Roman Empire, then it wouldn't bear such a close resemblance to the Magisterium.

It is your values that count, not what you believe.

tomboys and misfits

I was thinking about characters in children's books on the way home last night. Which characters did you identify with?

In the Famous Five books (gosh, does anyone still read those antiquated imperialist books? does anyone else remember the Comic Strip send-up of them? "Lashings of ginger beer!") I identified with George, the tomboy. I once wrote a short story where she came out as a lesbian to the feeble and girly Anne.

In the Swallows and Amazons books, I identified with Titty (the slightly fey one) and Nancy (heroic pirate captain). In the Narnia books, it was Lucy (though I warmed to Susan when she took up archery). Why is it the sensible, practical ones who make the meals and ensure everyone has clean socks are always called Susan? In Little Women, I preferred Jo - the feisty, independent one who wanted to be a writer. I didn't like the books that much (too soppy), but Jo was a good character.

I can't think of any other characters I specifically identified with.