Nova Scotia has a network of all the public libraries outside of the Halifax Regional Municipality; it’s a recent innovation, and I love it. This morning there were 3 holds on 2 copies of “Stoner,” by John Williams on the library network. There are now 4.
Thank you cousins Paul and Ira for a fine interview and a promising reading list.
Thanks Paul. I really enjoyed this interview for a few reasons. The first was your mention of Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday. You don't hear that book referenced too often. I have a very tattered fifty year old paperback copy of the book on my shelves. I just checked the price. 75 cents. I also enjoyed the talk about novels you and Ira read in high school that you enjoyed and which weren't on the curriculum. This got me thinking about the books I enjoyed then. Brave New World came to mind. Also Catch-22, and of course the Bond books. I have always been grateful that I never had to study Pride and Prejudice in high school because it allowed me to be knocked out by it with when I read it in my twenties. Finally, I appreciated your mention of Orwell's essays. My discovery of Orwell's essays in my final year at Western was one of the great lasting benefits of my undergraduate studies there. Orwell certainly knew something about censorship. His essay titled The Prevention of Literature really stands up in this regard.
Picked up a copy this afternoon from Take Cover Books, Peterborough. Timing was good as it led to a conversation with one of the owners. Of course, not possible if ordered on-line.
As a former teacher who often fought the weeding process (and who took weeded books into my room for my class library), I found this fascinating. 35 years ago, the employment equity committee on my staff set about this process. I was never sure how books in the library were related to employment equity but that is another story. They ended up pulling books that showed women in traditional roles. While I was, and am, all for showing that all roles, all colours, all sexes, all genders are valuable, I was struck by one of our female teachers asking if we couldn’t keep at least a couple of traditional books as that too was a valid choice.
Books like To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn were guiding lights for me as I learned about racism. There are wonderful new books dealing with gender and sexual preferences that need to be in schools. But the old books still need to be available.
And I also know that if I ever was told I couldn’t read a book, the first thing I did was read it. In fact, I sometimes told reluctant readers they couldn’t read something which got them reading immediately.
I loved the discussion about books online, and I know kids read things like game cheats all the time. But I am with Jean Luc Picard and the comfort gained baby having a book in your hands, in a comfy chair, with a cup of coffee and a dog beside you. May books last forever.
Thank you for this interview! It was so relevant and clear. No wonder book banning proponents don't want any old books in the library; kids would learn about what happened to books in WWII and fight back!
He who controls the past, controls the present. he who controls the present, controls the future. If I could make one book mandatory in school it would be Animal Farm.
Would that we could all be as vocal and effectively communicative as your cousin Ira with regard to the inherent value of all books, aka the record of human thought. My modest personal library includes Orwell, A.Huxley, Karl Marx, V.I.Lenin, Nietzsche, Atwood, Bonhoeffer, Ayn Rand, Berton, Shakespeare, etc. Not that I've read them all cover-to-cover nor pretend to fully understand all that is contained therein, but more to remind me that there are many and diverse understandings of the state of humanity at any given time. Funny that my copy of Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is wedged between The Book of Mormon and The Koran. Hope the book police don't come knockin'.
Trying to think back on the many books I read as a youngster. The ones that excited me most were ones that didn’t reflect my lived experience. I didn’t want to read about me, I wanted to get to an imagined place. If there was magic in the words, then I might get there. So sad to hear that there is deliberate movement to deprive kids of this incredible gateway. A good interview, but sad.
While listening to this excellent piece, I could not help recalling the CBC’s list of “banned words”, and what happened to a CBC journalist when, in an in-house meeting, she referred to the title of Pierre Valliere’s book, that was much discussed when I was an undergraduate in the 1960s. Which, I guess, I better not identify here, lest readers be offended. But I too, once read, with great profit, Orwell’s journalism from the 30s and 40s – which was also a time when ideology permeated the English language and was driven by a political agenda.
Moreover, I did a lot of that reading in a building that was built with white African and Rhodesian money, for “white commonwealth students” – so it really was a product of colonialism, and of conquest, and exploitation. Although it is also worth noting that this “colour bar” was struck down by the British courts in 1948 – long before there was “human rights legislation” in Ontario, let alone the current oddities of DEI.
The question is what, if anything, can be done by “ordinary people” when educational institutions (and the hierarchy of teacher unions) are so dominated by people for whom terms like “de-centering” or “heteronormative” are not only common, but are also an obligatory component of a political catechism to which, it is thought, all must adhere.
That is, when education becomes explicitly a forum for indoctrination – no doubt animated by the Jesuitical notion that if young minds are captured early enough, then they are captured for life.
In theory, elected school boards are supposed to inject a public and “consumer” input into education; but do they, and if not why not? I wonder whether “party labels” for these elected positions would change the context or the outcome? Perhaps producing fewer commissars.
Well, I, like Richard, recall Pierre Valliere's book but I, unlike Richard, am quite willing to name the book because that title provides a very great glimpse of the social claims of unfairness (?) / racism (?) / ethnodominism (?) of the book. The book was titled, White Niggers of America and it essentially made the claim that English Canada looked down on and treated Quebeckers (French Canada) as if Quebecers were blacks in America. The book dust jacket was a matte black with white lettering to reinforce the title. [I simply cannot find my copy now but I certainly do recall buying it way back when.]
Richard, I suggest that it is quite appropriate to actually explicitly note the title as it - yes, that word!!!! - is offensive but that is the point and is actually quite germane to the discussion of the content of the book. Similarly, Huckleberry Finn uses the word "nigger" quite openly and in a way that, while offensive to our modern sensibilities, accurately reflected appropriate usage of the times and that usage is highly instructive today.
Ultimately, the idea that books should be banned / winnowed / deaccessioned or whatever stupid euphemism one might choose is a crazy idea - use the correct words here!
By all means, recognize that one might find a book offensive but that is quite different than eliminating the book. Remember, a lot of life is offensive.
To be honest, Ken, that "I do not dare say the word" comment was intentionally tongue in cheek, and my reference to the CBC was intended to point to the political capture of that organization by the so-called progressive ideology. I'm afraid that I am rooted in a rather old fashioned view of "the left", in which driving a Maserati and fondness for Rolexes would be laughed at. And was not dominated by folks with "tenure".
An ironic sight, this morning this one was of the banner items on my substack, but in the inbox below it was a link to a story about the US White House proclaiming that they will decide which organizations will get into certain briefings.
That leads me to the point I was thinking about when listening to this podcast. Censorship is a larger topic which banning books fits under. Part of the challenge is that our understanding of history is based on books and writers. Ira mentions that, in the sense that people who ban books are thinking about books as methods to indoctrinate as well as educate. But Censorship has also occurred in that repressed people have a lot less capacity to record their history in writing. And some people use oral tradition to pass down their stories. Those are not things we can go back in time and change, and banning books doesn't help solve these problems. But I do feel that is our perspective is that if history is not recorded in a book, it is seen as less true, than we are using Censorship in that judgement.
There is limited space in pool reporting. (i.e. being allowed into a White House location to like see the President meet a foreign leader, or into a Cabinet Meeting Room). The Whitehouse Correspondents Association (something like the PPG) previously decided who could participate in pool reporting, but they limited participation to a small existing historical media club/subset, blocking many new media organizations the opportunity to participate in pool reporting at all, even if they were members of the Whitehouse Correspondents Association. The White House press office took control, because they want more media organization the possibility to participate in pool reporting. (Monopoly busting) Axios, which is progressive in its inclination, had its first pool opportunity ever yesterday inside the Cabinet Room. Hard questions were still asked. There are new media organizations which lean pro-Trump and lean anti-Trump that want and deserve the opportunity to participate in the pool reporting rotation, not just the old guard. Old media was protecting their franchise against new media players. The White House Press Office decided to level the playing field.
Nova Scotia has a network of all the public libraries outside of the Halifax Regional Municipality; it’s a recent innovation, and I love it. This morning there were 3 holds on 2 copies of “Stoner,” by John Williams on the library network. There are now 4.
Thank you cousins Paul and Ira for a fine interview and a promising reading list.
Two of my favourites right here. Requesting you start a Wells Book Club.
We'll need a third hand, J...
Count me in.
Thanks Paul. I really enjoyed this interview for a few reasons. The first was your mention of Steinbeck's Sweet Thursday. You don't hear that book referenced too often. I have a very tattered fifty year old paperback copy of the book on my shelves. I just checked the price. 75 cents. I also enjoyed the talk about novels you and Ira read in high school that you enjoyed and which weren't on the curriculum. This got me thinking about the books I enjoyed then. Brave New World came to mind. Also Catch-22, and of course the Bond books. I have always been grateful that I never had to study Pride and Prejudice in high school because it allowed me to be knocked out by it with when I read it in my twenties. Finally, I appreciated your mention of Orwell's essays. My discovery of Orwell's essays in my final year at Western was one of the great lasting benefits of my undergraduate studies there. Orwell certainly knew something about censorship. His essay titled The Prevention of Literature really stands up in this regard.
Picked up a copy this afternoon from Take Cover Books, Peterborough. Timing was good as it led to a conversation with one of the owners. Of course, not possible if ordered on-line.
Isn't the whole point of reading a book so that you can see the world from the point of view of someone else's lived experience?
This book must be in every school library and all public libraries. Submit it and see what happens!
As a former teacher who often fought the weeding process (and who took weeded books into my room for my class library), I found this fascinating. 35 years ago, the employment equity committee on my staff set about this process. I was never sure how books in the library were related to employment equity but that is another story. They ended up pulling books that showed women in traditional roles. While I was, and am, all for showing that all roles, all colours, all sexes, all genders are valuable, I was struck by one of our female teachers asking if we couldn’t keep at least a couple of traditional books as that too was a valid choice.
Books like To Kill a Mockingbird or Huckleberry Finn were guiding lights for me as I learned about racism. There are wonderful new books dealing with gender and sexual preferences that need to be in schools. But the old books still need to be available.
And I also know that if I ever was told I couldn’t read a book, the first thing I did was read it. In fact, I sometimes told reluctant readers they couldn’t read something which got them reading immediately.
I loved the discussion about books online, and I know kids read things like game cheats all the time. But I am with Jean Luc Picard and the comfort gained baby having a book in your hands, in a comfy chair, with a cup of coffee and a dog beside you. May books last forever.
Books are bad..Ban all books, kids might learn about history and culture. Let them spend hours on social media where the real truth is.
Thank you for this interview! It was so relevant and clear. No wonder book banning proponents don't want any old books in the library; kids would learn about what happened to books in WWII and fight back!
Great interview, Paul - thanks! I work in a public library, I'll make sure Ira's book is in our collection. We Have Never Been Woke is already here.
He who controls the past, controls the present. he who controls the present, controls the future. If I could make one book mandatory in school it would be Animal Farm.
Brilliant interview!
I think I’ll get a some copies for my wife’s book club. They’re all retired teachers.
Would that we could all be as vocal and effectively communicative as your cousin Ira with regard to the inherent value of all books, aka the record of human thought. My modest personal library includes Orwell, A.Huxley, Karl Marx, V.I.Lenin, Nietzsche, Atwood, Bonhoeffer, Ayn Rand, Berton, Shakespeare, etc. Not that I've read them all cover-to-cover nor pretend to fully understand all that is contained therein, but more to remind me that there are many and diverse understandings of the state of humanity at any given time. Funny that my copy of Hunter S Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is wedged between The Book of Mormon and The Koran. Hope the book police don't come knockin'.
Trying to think back on the many books I read as a youngster. The ones that excited me most were ones that didn’t reflect my lived experience. I didn’t want to read about me, I wanted to get to an imagined place. If there was magic in the words, then I might get there. So sad to hear that there is deliberate movement to deprive kids of this incredible gateway. A good interview, but sad.
While listening to this excellent piece, I could not help recalling the CBC’s list of “banned words”, and what happened to a CBC journalist when, in an in-house meeting, she referred to the title of Pierre Valliere’s book, that was much discussed when I was an undergraduate in the 1960s. Which, I guess, I better not identify here, lest readers be offended. But I too, once read, with great profit, Orwell’s journalism from the 30s and 40s – which was also a time when ideology permeated the English language and was driven by a political agenda.
Moreover, I did a lot of that reading in a building that was built with white African and Rhodesian money, for “white commonwealth students” – so it really was a product of colonialism, and of conquest, and exploitation. Although it is also worth noting that this “colour bar” was struck down by the British courts in 1948 – long before there was “human rights legislation” in Ontario, let alone the current oddities of DEI.
The question is what, if anything, can be done by “ordinary people” when educational institutions (and the hierarchy of teacher unions) are so dominated by people for whom terms like “de-centering” or “heteronormative” are not only common, but are also an obligatory component of a political catechism to which, it is thought, all must adhere.
That is, when education becomes explicitly a forum for indoctrination – no doubt animated by the Jesuitical notion that if young minds are captured early enough, then they are captured for life.
In theory, elected school boards are supposed to inject a public and “consumer” input into education; but do they, and if not why not? I wonder whether “party labels” for these elected positions would change the context or the outcome? Perhaps producing fewer commissars.
Well, I, like Richard, recall Pierre Valliere's book but I, unlike Richard, am quite willing to name the book because that title provides a very great glimpse of the social claims of unfairness (?) / racism (?) / ethnodominism (?) of the book. The book was titled, White Niggers of America and it essentially made the claim that English Canada looked down on and treated Quebeckers (French Canada) as if Quebecers were blacks in America. The book dust jacket was a matte black with white lettering to reinforce the title. [I simply cannot find my copy now but I certainly do recall buying it way back when.]
Richard, I suggest that it is quite appropriate to actually explicitly note the title as it - yes, that word!!!! - is offensive but that is the point and is actually quite germane to the discussion of the content of the book. Similarly, Huckleberry Finn uses the word "nigger" quite openly and in a way that, while offensive to our modern sensibilities, accurately reflected appropriate usage of the times and that usage is highly instructive today.
Ultimately, the idea that books should be banned / winnowed / deaccessioned or whatever stupid euphemism one might choose is a crazy idea - use the correct words here!
By all means, recognize that one might find a book offensive but that is quite different than eliminating the book. Remember, a lot of life is offensive.
To be honest, Ken, that "I do not dare say the word" comment was intentionally tongue in cheek, and my reference to the CBC was intended to point to the political capture of that organization by the so-called progressive ideology. I'm afraid that I am rooted in a rather old fashioned view of "the left", in which driving a Maserati and fondness for Rolexes would be laughed at. And was not dominated by folks with "tenure".
An ironic sight, this morning this one was of the banner items on my substack, but in the inbox below it was a link to a story about the US White House proclaiming that they will decide which organizations will get into certain briefings.
That leads me to the point I was thinking about when listening to this podcast. Censorship is a larger topic which banning books fits under. Part of the challenge is that our understanding of history is based on books and writers. Ira mentions that, in the sense that people who ban books are thinking about books as methods to indoctrinate as well as educate. But Censorship has also occurred in that repressed people have a lot less capacity to record their history in writing. And some people use oral tradition to pass down their stories. Those are not things we can go back in time and change, and banning books doesn't help solve these problems. But I do feel that is our perspective is that if history is not recorded in a book, it is seen as less true, than we are using Censorship in that judgement.
There is limited space in pool reporting. (i.e. being allowed into a White House location to like see the President meet a foreign leader, or into a Cabinet Meeting Room). The Whitehouse Correspondents Association (something like the PPG) previously decided who could participate in pool reporting, but they limited participation to a small existing historical media club/subset, blocking many new media organizations the opportunity to participate in pool reporting at all, even if they were members of the Whitehouse Correspondents Association. The White House press office took control, because they want more media organization the possibility to participate in pool reporting. (Monopoly busting) Axios, which is progressive in its inclination, had its first pool opportunity ever yesterday inside the Cabinet Room. Hard questions were still asked. There are new media organizations which lean pro-Trump and lean anti-Trump that want and deserve the opportunity to participate in the pool reporting rotation, not just the old guard. Old media was protecting their franchise against new media players. The White House Press Office decided to level the playing field.