Intellectual Freedom

There's an unwritten contract between writer and reader. The author is here to challenge you, to hold up a mirror and show you what they see, a new viewpoint different from your own. It is in the nature of any reflection that we will not always see what we expect to see. At its worst it is merely titillating, but at its best this is the beginning of a conversation.

The juxtaposition of different viewpoints, one set beside the next, interlocking reflections of life in our times (or past times in some cases) adds depth and understanding because no single image can be the entire picture. In the words of the oft-censored author Douglas Adams: "The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn’t a mirror big enough..."

Without the conversation, without seeing as much of the picture as is available to you, all the reflections available to you, you cannot hope to have a fully-realized picture of our culture. Pull the mirror off the wall and the reflection will go away but it will not change what it showed. Only by taking all the images available -- even those we disagree with -- and overlaying them can we begin to see the whole interconnected collage of overlapping lives and loves and wonder that surrounds us. The whole of creation laid out before us in the stacks of the world library.

Last year, Judith Krug died, leaving behind a tradition of raising up those voices that others would silence. Ms Krug founded "Banned Books Week" from the aptly-named Office of Intellectual Freedom at the American Library Association.

Art is supposed to be a challenge to your viewpoint. If all we ever read or hear are those voices which already agree with us, then we are stagnant and the conversation dies. And that... that would be truly tragic.

The Hall of Dangerous Ideas includes the likes ofL Geoffery Chaucer, Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Joseph Heller, JD Salinger, the Christina Bible, the Quran and the US Constitution. These are the dangers when we allow someone else to decide what we can read.  Some of the greatest minds and influential works ever to pass from pen to page have all been censored, blocked, burned and banned.  And through it all, the real literary heroes have been the librarians who stepped in front of the censors and said "Not on my watch".

UPenn offers the following list of banned literature: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html.

Find out more and get your own free unplugged robot bookmark downloads from The American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom.

Banned Books Week Starts Tomorrow

A library with empty shelves

NPR: Stanford Ushers In the Age of Bookless Libraries

A Library on the hoof...

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of libraries and librarians.  This one inspires me even more than most.  Featured in the New York Times back in 2008, the famed Biblioburros of Columbia in a documentary by Ayoka Productions...

Referenced

I can pick a lock or repair a watch.  I can conduct surgeries, examine corpses for forensic evidence, bind a book, dress a deer, identify or concoct poisons, and reproduce Lord Nelson's flagship down to the last knot and nail.  If necessary, I can also conduct a Latin Mass, reproduce the scripts of Carolingian scribes, shoe a horse, summon Cthulhu, or swear like a WWII soldier.  I can walk the streets of forgotten cities in lost kingdoms and navigate the alleys of Calcutta in the year 2010.  And I can do it all from the safety and convenience of my writing chair.

Some of these things I can do because I'm weird that way.  For the rest of it, I have reference books.

If there are any writers who don't have a personal library of research materials, I haven't met them yet.  If you want to be a writer, I swear that the first order of business is to nail down a handy and reliable source of research material.  Whether it's a colonnaded building built with a Carnegie grant or an impressive list of websites and online journals or a room in your house (apartment, condo, whatever) an eccentric collection of research materials grows as a result of the curiosity that made you become a writer in the first place

I never studied medicine but one of my main characters in the last novel I wrote was an MD.  I could go online, of course, and get a lot of information and some of it would even be accurate.  But far better for me to be able to reach over and pulling my Manual of Surgery or PDR, or Mosby's Manual of Diagnostic Tests off the shelf and getting on with the writing.

For most writers I know, research is our drug of choice.  Putting a slumgullion of random yet curiously interrelated websites and blogs at my fingertips just ups the danger of losing my workday down the rabbit hole.  I can spend hours hopping from topic to topic, following a chain of links down a questionable path of lies and truth spun together into a strange blend that even William Gibson's Neuromancer failed to adequately predict.  How easy it is to get lost on the information superhighway, tumbling in the slipstream of bits and bytes as I bounce from website to website, digging up one quirky fact after another like a hyperactive two year old shoveling candy into his mouth.

Far better to bind my search between boards.  Paper is safer and there are no pop-up ads or viruses.

Your public library is a good start and will always and forever supplement your home library.  In fact, the aspiring writer needs to first and foremost make friends with the reference librarians at their local branch library.  A first name basis is best, and you might even want to learn how to bake their favorite cookie because odds are good that you're going to put their library sciences degree to work.  You're going to be the story they tell around the supper table that night when they get home; embrace the fact. 

"So that writer guy Scott came in again today and asked me to help him calculate the amount of whalebone harvested by Basque whaling fleets before 1610."   The answer is approximately 24 million pieces.  Academic libraries are the best and if it wasn't for the able assistance of Becky, Kendall and Rachel, I would never have discovered the various academic journals that allowed me to piece that together.

Which reminds me.  I need to bake some snickerdoodles.

Even straight literature requires at least a modicum of research.  One story idea I'm developing would feature nary a single mysterious element or unexplained death.  But it still required me to pick up an old pocket watch repair manual and another on the history of the American athletic shoe industry.  In any story, for any market, it is the job of the writer to create the verisimilitude of background and character that allows you to accept the setting and concentrate on the story.  Unless you are an acknowledged expert in every field your writing will touch on or uncommonly skilled at lying... you're going to need some help at some point.

I'm not suggesting that you have to become a Crichton or Clancy, but it's important to get stuff right or know how to lie convincingly.  I swear that half of fiction writing is getting a feel for when you have to know what you're talking about and when I can make stuff up.  (Yes, we lie to you all the time; the sign overhead in the bookstore says 'fiction' for a reason.)

My dad taught me that a personal library largely exists to supplement the public libraries I frequent.  Duplicate books you want to collect, but save your money if you're not filling the gaps.  It has since grown to encompass books that I reference often enough that I don't want need to get in the car to go consult them.  My dad wasn't a writer, but it's worth noting that at his funeral, the local librarians were among the mourners.

"I like books. I was born and bred among them, and have the easy feeling, when I get in their presence, that a stable-boy has among horses."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes

Buy the books you need to touch more than once a  week.  The collection will grow of its own accord, so devote some space to the books you love and the books you need.  Cicero said that to add a library to your home was to give it a soul.   Your relationships with your books and those who purvey them will extend that feeling to your words, imbuing them with soul as well.

Rocking your book cart...

Have you ever been in a library, and while you were browsing the stacks in contemplative silence looked around and thought "You know, this place would would make great concert venue"? No? Well, I have because libraries host music events all the time (well, occaisionally) but until this morning it never occurred to me that there were enough library-specific songs out there to warrant a top-ten list. Now I know better. Enjoy! Mixtape: 10 Best Songs About Libraries and Librarians

Monday Jan 25, 2010 by Caroline Stanley

at Flavorwire

On Censorship

It's national Banned Book Week. A celebration of reading the things that someone didn't want us to, both historically and currently.

I'm a partisan in this fight, emphatically against any governmental entity telling me what is good or bad for me to read. But what about the other side of the issue? The counter-claim was launched by the Wall Street Journal in an Op/Ed titled "Finding Censorship Where Theyre Is None" which trotted out the usual arguments summed-up by the idea that it is impossible to really ban a book in today's America. With open lines to obtain a copy of anything we want online, censorship is theoretically impossible and citizens challenging the content of their libraries is the constitutionally-protected right to seek redress of grievances.
And they're right... at least to a point.

Christine at the wonderful book blog Stacked posted an excellent commentary in reflection of to the Wall Street Journal's Op/Ed and I encourage you to read it. She rightly points out the difference between books in school libraries and books in public libraries. But she reiterated something for the WSJ that I disagree with... that avenues of getting around a ban negates the ban and thereby negates the ability to censor. (You'll find my comments there as well.)

This is the stickiest of sticky issues. I agree on the marked differences between choosing appropriate materials for a school versus restricting content in a public forum such as a public library. Schools are necessarily controlled environments for pedagogical reasons and that has been repeatedly underlined by the US Supreme Court.

And the WSJ is also correct inasmuch as the application by citizens to have books moved, removed or segregated is the right of a citizen to seek redress of perceived grievance — a right every bit as sacred as the freedom of speech. And sometimes the two will collide, the one becoming restrictive of the other.

Rights are not absolute and definition and boundaries are usually defined as your rights stop where they begin to impinge upon the rights of another. You right to swing your fist stops when your fist impacts my nose. For similar reasons not all speech is protected inasmuch as you can’t shout “Fire” in a theater. The trouble is that outside of the realm of theater-shouting there’s no good way to indicate where your speech has impacted my nose… so to speak.

As a citizen of this country, I have the legally-protected right and ability to obtain a copy of anything online (within the bounds of copyright law which is a whole other issue). But this ability to get it doesn’t negate the ability of a community to censor. A theoretical path around a roadblock doesn’t make the obstacle cease to exist.

The trouble is the inherent conceit that there are people out there who ‘know better’ and deserve a role in choosing for me and for my child what they can or cannot see, hear and read. Within a school curriculum that makes a certain kind of sense, but a public library is a public forum. And any effort by authorities to restrict the contents of the stacks or remove items and place them behind a curtain not for fear that they will be stolen and incur additional costs to replace, but for fear of what reaction they might provoke… that stigmatizes those authors and those books and those who dare to read those books. The act of crossing into the restricted section becomes an open act in defiance of the perceived mores of the community rather than a private act of self-education. This will embolden some, even encourage them to read the banned material as an act of defiance, yes. But doing something in defiance inherently changes our relationship to the material. Even so, it's not for those emboldened that we argue -- it’s for those who will be warned away, their minds and ideas unchallenged by the forbidden volumes behind the curtain, their education and erudition stunted by lack of intellectual oxygen.

I support your right to seek the removal or segregation of books within the public forum because to support my unfettered right to speak is to likewise support yours. But I don't in any way accept that the government has the right to impose your views on me and mine. Your option to seek redress of grievance is sacrosanct and it contributes to our culture not because I think the government can acquiesce to your demands, but because it keeps the debate alive within our society about a range of issues that should never be kept under a basket.

The public library is the central storehouse of ideas within a community. Whether or not we can find other ways to obtain a copy of a given book or magazine in irrelevant. The removal or segregation of written material within a public library is an act of the government to enforce the opinions of some upon the whole. That is what makes it censorship and takes it from a citizen seeking redress of grievances into the realm of the government endorsing an opinion and acting as the arm of that opinion, ideology or person.

And that's a violation of all of our rights.

---

Scott Walker Perkins writes literary thrillers and novels of suspense woven from the threads of history. His current novel is The Palimpsest and he is working on another tentatively titled 42 Lines.

Contact Me

Books Aflame

There's an unwritten contract between writer and reader: The author is here to challenge you, to hold up a mirror and show you what they see, a new viewpoint different from your own.

It is in the nature of any reflection that we will not always see what we expect to see. At its worst it is merely titillating, but at its best this is the beginning of a conversation. The juxtaposition of different viewpoints, one set beside the next, interlocking reflections of life in our times (or past times in some cases) adds depth and understanding because no single image can be the entire picture. In the words of the oft-censored author Douglas Adams: "The function of art is to hold the mirror up to nature, and there simply isn’t a mirror big enough..."

Without the conversation, without seeing as much of the picture as is available to you, all the reflections available to you, you cannot hope to have a fully-realized picture of our culture. Pull the mirror off the wall and the reflection will go away but it will not change what it showed. Only by taking all the images available -- even those we disagree with -- and overlaying them can we begin to see the whole interconnected collage of overlapping lives and loves and wonder that surrounds us.

The whole of creation laid out before us in the stacks of the world library.

 This past year, Judith Krug died, leaving behind a tradition of raising up those voices that others would silence. Ms Krug founded "Banned Books Week" at the American Library Association, which begins on Saturday. Art is supposed to be a challenge to your viewpoint. If all we ever read or hear are those voices which already agree with us, then we are stagnant and the conversation dies. And that... that would be truly tragic.

 ---
Find out more: The American Library Association (ALA) Office of Intellectual Freedom Geoffery Chaucer, Montaigne, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, George Orwell, John Steinbeck, Joseph Heller, JD Salinger... not to mention the Bible, the Quran and the US Constitution. Some of the greatest minds and influential works ever to pass from pen to page have all been censored, blocked, burned and banned. UPenn offers the following list of banned literature: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html And one of my favorite places to keep track of the current trends in banned and challenged books is the blog The Dangerous Pages Review

Custos Librarium

By now you know that I'm a big fan of librarians. The are the guardians at the gates of our world culture, they fight for the inclusion of all and the exclusion of none. Librarians will (and have) go to court and even jail to protect the privacy of their patrons. When the USA PATRIOT Act extended the writ of the federal government's surveillance efforts into the nation's libraries, the librarians and the ALA fought (semi-successfully) the legislation in the name of their library patrons. Internet search providers have a long and troubled history when it comes to privacy concerns. This is most notable in China where dissidents have been turned-over or exposed by their internet email providers. They have proven time and again their focus isn't on the privacy of their users, but on the aggregation and sale of their site-views. These are businesses and must pursue profit. Libraries are not businesses, they are a public service where free public access to information is protected. This morning, NPR asked: If Google is allowed to become the world's librarian, how will they match up to the librarians they will be replacing? (listen) (read)

Nancy Pearl - Action Librarian!

Seattle (and indeed all of Western Washington) is blessed by the presence of super-librarian Nancy Pearl. (Seriously, she has her own action figure!) We hear her on our local NPR station (KUOW) so often we sometimes forget her national stance as a literary taste-maker. These are her summer picks from NPR. Things like this remind me why I send a check to NPR once a year. If you're not sponsoring your local public radio provider, why the heck not?

So now what? We install elevators?

Oxford's storied Bodleian library has suffered an outbreak of a most pestilential villain... of course I speak of health & safety experts. They have banned stepladders from the premises, and good riddance to the pesky things. Who wants to reach the books on the top shelf anyway? The students, that's who. And the university has taken a stand against moving the books within reach, forcing students to travel to the British Library in London in some cases to look at a book that resides in their own local library... just out of reach. The full story in The Daily Mail (Tip care of @david_hewson's Twitter feed.)

ALA Must-Reads List (Genre Fiction)

People ask me all the time for a recommended reading list of current fiction. I've been writing a novel, so my reading of late has been primarily non-fiction research materials and I am only now starting to catch up on the pile next to my chair. Nevertheless, when all else fails one can rarely go wrong going to the American Library Association for a recommendation... The ALA Best Genre Fiction list is an excellent place to start. Or you could ask your friendly neighborhood librarian. They're your friends and they live to talk about books... kinda like me, but with a professional credential in "Recommending Books" beyond just being a book blogger.

Is It Censorship Season?

To recap: It is not the responsibility of your librarians to parent your children. To protect the speech we like it is imperative that we protect all speech. Ban one ideology and yours is next. Peel back the protections of the authors you hate and the authors you like will be unprotected. No one wins these fights. I invite you to support the "West Bend Four". Because censorship hurts everyone.