{"id":12635,"date":"2015-05-24T14:36:31","date_gmt":"2015-05-24T14:36:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/vonneguts-letter-to-a-book-burner\/"},"modified":"2015-05-24T14:36:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-24T14:36:31","slug":"vonneguts-letter-to-a-book-burner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/vonneguts-letter-to-a-book-burner\/","title":{"rendered":"Vonnegut’s letter to a\u00a0book-burner"},"content":{"rendered":"

mostlysignssomeportents<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
\"image\"<\/figure>\n

In 1973, Kurt Vonnegut learned that Charles McCarthy, head of the
\nschool board that governed Drake High School in North Dakota, had burned
\n 32 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five<\/i> in the school furnace,
\noffended by the book\u2019s \u201cobscene language.\u201d Vonnegut wrote a private
\nletter to McCarthy, a heartfelt, low-key, scathing recrimination that
\ncould be repurposed for any literary censor. The letter is reprinted in
\nVonnegut\u2019s Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage<\/a>, I found it on Letters of Note. <\/p>\n

\n

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you
\n imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike
\npeople who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I
\n am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot
\nof farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six
\nchildren, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well.
\n Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War
\nII, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I
\n have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted
\nwith young people and by young people that I have served on the
\nfaculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of
\nNew York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be
\ncommencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably
\n more widely used in schools than those of any other living American
\nfiction writer. <\/p>\n

If you were to bother to read my books, to
\nbehave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not
\nsexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that
\npeople be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true
\nthat some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak
\n coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak
\ncoarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all
\nknow, too, that those words really don\u2019t damage children much. They
\ndidn\u2019t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that
\nhurt us. <\/p>\n

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still
\nready to respond, in effect, \u201cYes, yes\u2013but it still remains our right
\nand our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be
\n made to read in our community.\u201d This is surely so. But it is also true
\nthat if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an
\nignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call
\nyou bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call
\nyou that. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Letters of Note: I am very real<\/a> (via Kottke<\/a><\/i>) <\/p>\n

(Image: Book burning<\/a>, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0)<\/a> image from ender\u2019s photostream<\/i>) \t<\/p>\n


<\/b><\/p>\n

Read the rest\u2026<\/a>
<\/b><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

mostlysignssomeportents: In 1973, Kurt Vonnegut learned that Charles McCarthy, head of the school board that governed Drake High School in North Dakota, had burned 32 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five in the school furnace, offended by the book\u2019s \u201cobscene language.\u201d Vonnegut wrote a private letter to McCarthy, a heartfelt, low-key, scathing recrimination that could be repurposed for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6PWot-3hN","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafaelfajardo.com\/portfolio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}