What’s the point of banning books?

In an earlier time, a ban would have made the prohibited books difficult if not impossible to procure. In a digital age, that’s not the case. (Representational image: Aliis Sinisalu via Unsplash)

In a YouTube video uploaded earlier this week by Penguin Random House, Margaret Atwood steps out of the shadows with a flamethrower in her hands. She aims it at a copy of The Handmaid’s Tale and fires. Despite being enveloped by flames, the pages stay intact.

This was the publisher’s dramatic release of an “unburnable book”, which was printed and bound using fireproof materials. It’s an apt choice of title: Atwood’s novel is among the most challenged books in the US, according to a list drawn up by the American Library Association.

The incombustible edition is a response to books being banned and sometimes burned across the United States and elsewhere, intended to be “a powerful symbol against censorship”. It also carries an echo of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a dystopian saga of firefighters reducing books to ashes under an authoritarian regime.

The fire-resistant book will be auctioned by Sotheby’s New York and the proceeds will go to PEN America in support of activities to promote free expression. When I last checked, the highest bid for this “one-of-one limited-edition” was USD 45,000.

Such gestures and the publicity that surrounds them show yet again that banning books can be counterproductive. Bans draw attention to the titles in question and make people more eager to read them – if only to find out if it was worth banning in the first place.

In an earlier time, a ban would have made the prohibited books difficult if not impossible to procure. In a digital age, that’s not the case. Of course, the situation is more extreme in societies that are unusually repressive. In such places, book bans are a small part of overall restrictions on freedom of action and expression. Elsewhere, bans can be a starting point, not a full stop.

Take the so-called Banned Books Clubs in some American states. These have been set up by pupils who want to read and discuss the titles restricted by their schools. Other students are involved in lawsuits, protests, and other forms of resistance to censorship. The kids, as they say, are all right.

Schools apart, interest in banned work is often a consequence of the Streisand Effect: an online phenomenon in which efforts to conceal information result in wider dissemination. It’s named after the singer because she tried to sue a photographer who had uploaded aerial photographs of her Malibu mansion on his website. Alas, the publicity ensured that the site received tens of thousands of views.

Author Philip Pullman underlines this. He once wrote that when he heard that his The Golden Compass was on the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books of the year, his immediate response was one of glee. Censorship never works, he went on. “The inevitable result of trying to ban something – book, film, play, pop song, whatever – is that far more people want to get hold of it than would ever have done if it were left alone.”

A recent example: sales of Art Spiegelman’s Maus series of graphic novels went through the roof earlier this year after a widely-reported ban by a Tennessee school.

It’s not that banning a book has no consequences whatsoever. The Streisand Effect is often short-lived, and people eagerly move on to the next social media furore. The book in question can remain ignored.

Further, the relative inaccessibility of titles in libraries, bookstores and elsewhere does mean that fewer people can lay their hands on them. In the larger scheme of things, though, Pullman is quite right.

Why, then, do people take the time and trouble to demand bans on books? Some clearly believe that it’s appropriate to keep contentious material away from the eyes of children or the public at large.

Whether the material is actually questionable is another issue. Take the case of a southern California school that removed all copies of the Merriam-Webster English dictionary because parents complained that it contained definitions of sexual acts.

Many who are most vociferous about bans, though, have a different audience in mind. It’s a way for those in positions of power – on whatever side of the spectrum – to signal to supporters that they’re taking active steps to uphold a point of view.

The publicity ensures that they’re seen as defenders of a way of life unaffected by social or other changes. A way of rallying the faithful to the cause.

Unfortunately, there’s another aspect to the issue, which Ray Bradbury once pointed out. “The problem in our country isn’t with books being banned,” he said, “but with people no longer reading”. His perceptive conclusion: “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”