A Piñata of Fahrenheit 451

Two amazing lectures in two days, both part of Banned Books Week Gadsden Reads Fahrenheit 451.  Friend Chris Harrison of Gadsden State’s English department delivered his blisteringly-hot The History Of Book Burning: From Cultural Annihilation To Symbolic Tantrum on Tuesday.  And Bradbury Center fellow Dr. Robert Woods’ passionate presentation on Fahrenheit 451 Wednesday, a presentation so moving that by its end, Amanda Jackson was wiping tears from her eyes and I was on the verge of shouting, “Hallelujah!”  Eric’s thoughts on Dr. Woods’ lecture the next morning after sleeping on it, “You know, it was like he hit a piñata of Fahrenheit 451 and scattered all these pieces of really amazing information all over the place…”  Yes, that is EXACTLY what Robert did.

Gadsden Times Article on Dr. Woods' presentation here.

Chris Harrison

Dr. Robert Woods

Love Letter to a Challenged Book

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We kicked off Banned Books Week Gadsden Reads Fahrenheit 451 last night with a participatory performance art piece, a ceremony celebrating intellectual freedom and our right to read.  The audience sat on borrowed church pews and faced a borrowed alter covered in candles.  The candles sat on replicas of banned books.  At the foot of the altar were the charred remains of discarded books, a reminder of what could happen if the right (or wrong) circumstances occurred within a community.  Our officiant was Mario Gallardo, artist, art teacher (at Gadsden State Community College) and director of the Walnut Gallery (the newly acquired Walnut Gallery space is an old church from which Mario loaned the borrowed pews and alter), dressed in his academic robes.

The service was reverential and reflective.  Thoughtful movements that took the participant from writing the name of their favorite book on a page torn from a banned book (The Great Gatsby), rolling that page into a scroll and tying it with twine.  Destroying the scroll by casting it into a fire pit.  Lighting a candle in memory of that book.  Finally, writing a love letter to the lost book.  It was moving.

I was unable to write down the name of my favorite book, nor was I able to write a love letter to it, just too busy with minutiae.

But I did write that love letter after the fact.  And here it is, dedicated to Jaimie.  You deserve better.

My Dearest Absalom, Absalom,

I’ll never forget the August that I first read you, an August that was hotter than the stoked fires of hell’s floor furnace.  I started reading you at Sherry Yates’ cabin on the banks of the Chattooga River in Cedar Bluff, Georgia, little more than a stone’s throw from Cornwall Furnace, that furnace built by the Noble Brothers in 1862-63 to supply Confederate forces with pig iron for products used in the War Between the States, the same furnace that was blown out by Union forces a year after it began production. 

You confused me, Absalom, Absalom, what with how you jumped around a lot and wouldn’t hold still long enough to tell me the whole story all at once.  I wanted to take you and hold you under the water to show you, to bring you up just long enough for you to catch your breath and tell me what was happening by Gawd.   Who were all these people that you kept introducing long after new characters should have EVER been introduced?  And why the hell were you repeating yourself over and over again like I wasn’t listening to you?  I WAS LISTENING!  You just didn’t notice because you were too busy being all stream of consciousness…

I suffered that August to finish you, suffered not just at the cabin by the Chattooga, but back in the old chicken coop at momma and daddy’s place in the country, me perched on an upended milk crate.  And later in the parking lot of the University while sitting in my car before going to speak with my advisor, my reading interrupted only by the talking alarm on the car beside me that calmly cautioned "Step away from my ride." anytime anyone breathed the same air as it.

Absalom, Absalom, I sweated you out in the August humidity, sweated you out like a fever, or a night of too much liquor.  I sweated you out so much that I thought I had seen the last of you with your final sentence, “I don’t hate it!" because I thought I hated you and never wanted to see you again!

I should’ve hated you Absalom Absalom especially after what all you put me through but I didn’t and I don’t I love you Absalom Absalom I love you so much I read you two more times AND hosted a pub crawl in your honor and I am currently encouraging my dear friend Jaimie who is reading you AT THIS VERY MOMENT I tell her that you are worth it because you are you are

My sincerest regards,

Carol

Dear Gadsden or Banned Books Week Gadsden Reads Fahrenheit 451

There were several disturbing photos on the front page of the Gadsden Times a couple of days ago.  The images were of Gadsden Public Library director Amanda Jackson and yours truly pulling banned and challenged books off of the shelves of our library.  These books were temporarily taken out of circulation to the public and will remain out of circulation until September 23rd, which is the date of our first Banned Books Week Gadsden Reads Fahrenheit 451 program.  On September 23rd, we will put all those books back on the shelves from which they were pulled and celebrate their being released back into public circulation.  During the month that our banned/challenged books are out of circulation, any student who needs any of those books for a school assignment will be allowed to check those books out.  Otherwise, those books are not available to the general public.

Why is the GPL doing this?  That is a question that I have been asked many times in the past three days by concerned citizens who saw the photos in the Gadsden Times of the books being removed.  My answer is this:  As American citizens, we have access to, and the right to read any book that we desire at any time we desire it.  We have earned this “freedom to read” by virtue of being a democracy, a democracy that has been defended by its citizens and its armed forces for a very long time.   Our pulling of the banned and challenged books from our GPL collection for a few weeks will be inconvenient, but it will not be anything like the inconvenience that people all over the world experience every day of their lives when they are denied access to information-a denial of access to information that is not temporary.

This is an exercise in experiencing what it would be like to not have access to Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.  But it is also an exercise in experiencing what it would be like to not have access to Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House On the Prairie and Martin Hanford’s Where’s Waldo.  To Kill A Mockingbird.  Webster’s Dictionary.  The Holy Bible.  All of these books have been challenged and/or banned here in the United States and all over the world.

But what the GPL is doing is just an exercise.  Next month all these books will be back on the shelves of our public library, and we will go back to living our lives the way we were living them.  But if even one person in Gadsden thinks differently about the relationship between books and reading to a healthy society, if one person in Gadsden is more willing to stand up for their Freedom to Read, if one person in Gadsden is more likely to call their local library to fight to have challenged books put back on their shelves, then we will have accomplished what we set out to accomplish for Banned Books Week Gadsden Reads.

And as for all of the folks here in Gadsden with whom I’ve spoken over the past couple of days, folks who saw the photos in the Gadsden Times and were concerned that we were removing books permanently from our collection, folks who saw the photos in the Gadsden Times were worried that something terrible was happening in their community, I want to thank you for your concerns and for your calls.  I am thankful that you noticed something was wrong and that you spoke up.  I am thankful that you were willing to stand up for your right to read and to fight to keep books on the shelves of your public library.   I am thankful for your vigilance.

Banned Books Week Gadsden Reads Fahrenheit 451 is supported by funds granted through the Freedom to Read Foundation Judith F. Krug Memorial Fund.

More on our September programs soon.