We could use a lot more complaints about books in Forsyth County.
At least that would mean somebody's reading. At least we could get into some fiery debates about the First Amendment right to free speech, and what's literature and what's trash.
But as we start another Banned Books Week this weekend, it's way too quiet. The Forsyth County Public Library system and Wake Forest University are among those offering programs about why we shouldn't ban books. They'll surely be good and worthwhile events. Unfortunately, not enough people will go.
That's probably because not enough people are reading. A 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts (which once had fascinating battles with some members of the reading public) found that Americans are reading less and less.
So it is that here in relatively conservative Forsyth County there have been only three formal complaints since 2002 about books in the public library system. Those complaints were made about The Sword of the Prophet: The politically incorrect guide to Islam; Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII; and He's Just a Friend, a steamy novel. There's enough in these books to spark debates that could go on for years -- if more people would only read them.
Elizabeth Skinner, the central library's public-services manager, said "We probably could have more people reading." The library still has lots of patrons, but many are coming in for the computers these days -- and not always to read on them.
In addition to Banned Books Week, the library is also helping to sponsor On the Same Page and The Big Read, programs to get more people reading.
But the good-bad old days, when Americans all but threw books at each other during battles over whether they should be banned, are gone. What days they were. I'll never forget the fun I had during my first reading of The Confessions of Nat Turner, which some elders in my Virginia county vehemently objected to because the author, William Styron, put fictional twists on their ancestors. Nobody mounted a serous campaign to ban the novel about Turner, the slave preacher led by his God to kill, but they were certainly vocal in their hatred of that mesmerizing book.
In other parts of the country, periodic fires are at least flaring. It's heartening to note that I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Winston-Salem's own Maya Angelou, was among the American Library Association's Top 10 list of books that got the most challenges from would-be censors last year.
Thank you, Ms. Angelou.
She's in the best of company on that list, right up there with Mark Twain (Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and Alice Walker (The Color Purple). At the places in America where those books have been challenged, fans are probably getting a rush to read their "forbidden pleasure."
Book censors have come from the "family-values" crowd on the right and the politically correct gang on the left. They've raged about everything from sorcery in the Harry Potter series to the use of the word "nigger" in Huckleberry Finn -- which courageously exposed just how wrong and stupid slavery was.
But here and elsewhere, whether they're lost in cyberspace, glued to boob tubes or genetically attached to their cell phones, too many Americans will never find that fun. Increasingly, our culture wars are over what somebody thought they heard in a sound bite.
Fewer and fewer people, at least locally, are clamoring for books to be banned.
It was always a stupid cause. Books should never be banned, mainly because many of us in this country still do believe in that First Amendment. Many of those who've wanted to ban books probably hadn't read their targets.
But others had. And the censors, and the readers, were all part of an American culture where books used to matter a lot more than they do now. Sometimes the saddest sound of all is silence.
(For more information about Banned Books Week, click on www.forsythlibrary.org.)
■ John Railey writes editorials for the Journal. He can be reached at jrailey@wsjournal.com.
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