Philip Pullman has revealed he was delighted to discover his novel Northern Lights was one of the most “challenged” titles of the year in America, with numerous calls made to have it removed from libraries.
Pullman’s children’s novel, which is sold as The Golden Compass in the US, was the fourth most challenged book in 2007, according to the American Library Association, which received 420 formally submitted complaints to libraries or schools over “inappropriate content and subject matter” last year.
Pullman said his immediate response on hearing the latest figures from the ALA was “glee”.
“Firstly, I had obviously annoyed a lot of censorious people, and secondly, any ban would provoke interested readers to move from the library, where they couldn’t get hold of my novel, to the bookshops, where they could,” Pullman said, pointing to previous objections to the film of The Golden Compass, which he said resulted in soaring book sales.
Pullman said that banning a book on religious grounds was “the worst reason of the lot”.
“Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good,” he said.
BTW, Borders is currently doing a festival celebrating banned books.
“Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good”
Exactly! It’s high time these lunatics were put in their place. When will they learn to separate church from hate and adhere to the religion they claim (but so notably fail) to follow?
always the same, they sample the forbidden fruit so you don’t have to.
they think you are so stupid and feeble minded that handle certain ideas and images will turn you into miscreant demon.
heh.
actually religious types want everyone to be so stupid as to be easily controlled.
As if liberals don’t engage in censorship. Liberal Fascism was the #1 book in sales on the Amazon and NYT bestseller lists, and bookstores were either not stocking it, or hiding it as far away as they could.
Ha, I can’t figure out if “censorship” or “Religious Nutballs” is what invokes a google ad for Dianetics.org on this page. That’s rich! I love google ads… and VOLCANOS ROCK!
#3 – you forget that Amazon breaks it down to categories. Your favorite book was #1 – on the rightwing nutball list.
I think that as soon as I get a book published, I will send a review copy to people who would want to ban my book. I might even anoymously complain about the book.
Remember, there is no bad press except no press.
Liberals never call for censorship.
Ignore Tipper’s PMRC debacle. Ignore Hillary’s attack on the gaming industry. Ignore Obama’s campaign threatening litigation against radio/tv stations. It’s always Republicans using censorship.
Hoo boy. Again with the Christian-bashing.
I’m waiting for the posts that lampoon Jews. Like for whirling chickens around their heads to draw out the sins.
Or would that be too politically incorrect?
#8 Man I’m going to need a whole lot of chickens.
liberal calls for censorship do not make censorship good. all censorship is bad.
there, now you can go back to being a member of the party of personal responsibility who blames liberals for everything.
Hey, the GOP is the family values party. Just ask Dick Cheney’s lezzie daughter if that ain’t the truth.
#8 – You just hardly ever hear about Jews doing whacky shit like the bible thumpers. What will they do next?
Idiots…
I use to know a Jesus freak in Santa Barbara who perpetually kept the DVD “The Last Temptation of Christ” rented out because he didn’t want anyone to see it.
I kept trying to rent it, and it was always gone. I finally found a copy at another store. One day I mentioned this story to him and he said that he has it and that he was going pray for my soul for watching it.
I told him to shove his DVD up his backside.
Try posting a conservative opinion on Huffington Post.com… your i.p. address gets permanently blocked. Of course, that’s not censorship… it’s just for the good of the comrades.
We are talking about 420 people in the entire country – making ‘formal complaints’.
This hardly qualifies as censorship, and I find that kind of a pathetic excuse to lump the other 2 billion of us with them for the purpose of calling us evil nutballs.
#14 Last time I checked, HuffingtonPost was not a public library. Private web sites can do whatever they want in terms of what content they choose to post.
Would I expect that I can go to Rush Limbaugh’s site and post liberal rants? Not really. Heck, does his site even allow comment posting? I’m not curious enough to go check…
http://tinyurl.com/3jw5hd
#17
Glad you’re okay with a site that opens a public comment section but forbids any commentary that crosses the party line…can’t have that now can we, comrade.
#8
“Hoo boy. Again with the Christian-bashing.”
Who were the ones bitching against sex education?
Who were obssessed with allowing only heterosexual individuals join the army?
Who were responsible for reelecting Bush Jr. on the promise of never treating gay & lesbians like equals?
Who opposed the penalization of hate crimes?
And the list goes on and on and on…
And yet the pseudo-religious can get a movie paralleling its cult practices, BANNED! The movie “The Profit” was banned by the courts, at the insistence of the Church of Scientology. Because they feared the parallel might educate the viewers, the wrong way. Like a vaccine for the brain, of what crap to avoid. Think of all the movies and Tv shows that poke fun at mainstream religions (except Judaism), without being banned for life. Why is this one group so sensitive to its public perception, that it goes to legal extremes to completely kill a movie’s distribution? Because it could ultimate hurt their bottom line, profit. Whereas, the mainstream beliefs systems don’t operate from a profit seeking motive. But…. the atheists publishing books like Golden Compass, clearly do. So think about this.
#5, it’s true, non-fiction is the realm of right-wing nutballs. Liberals have no grip on reality and deal with fiction.
#12 – Hatemonger
>>You just hardly ever hear about Jews doing
>>whacky shit like the bible thumpers
You do? I hear about it all the time. Like Kapparot?
http://tinyurl.com/3vkszl
You don’t think it’s whacky to whirl a live chicken around your head to draw on the sins?
In fact, Jew-bashing is SO far beyond the pale of what’s acceptable on dvorak dot org slash blog, I noted someone’s post was delete a few days ago simply because he said something about the Jews on Wall Street telling us what do do with our money.
Sheesh.
Talk about a double standard.
#20 – Angelito
“Who were the ones bitching against sex education?
Who were obssessed with allowing only heterosexual individuals join the army?
Who were responsible for reelecting Bush Jr. on the promise of never treating gay & lesbians like equals?
Who opposed the penalization of hate crimes?”
I don’t know. I’m a Christian, and it wasn’t me. It wasn’t anyone at my church either, or any Christians I know.
Of course, if SOME Christians do it, I guess it’s OK to label them ALL as such, hm?
I’ll bet you think all the bluegums are standing in line at the welfare office? All the beaners and Spics are gang members? All fags are transmission vectors for AIDS, seeking to infect us all? All polacks are stupid? The Jews started all the wars?
Or would that be inappropriate stereotyping, and it’s only OK to defame all Christians for the actions of a small minority?
Hmmm.
I’m detecting the fetid stink of hypocrisy here.
I’m starting to think that politics and religion are polarizing topics.
I’m starting to think that people consider what operating system you like as a societal issue.
I’m starting to think that Dvorak is laughing all the way to the bank.
1. Float a polarizing topic
2. Poke both sides
3. ???
4. PROFIT!
😉
Sounds like a good way to make money. Write a book with the express purpose of pissing off the religious enough to call for a ban.
I read banned books. The books I read have been banned in every Communist / athist state in the world and, in the West, the books I read are being targetted by organisations and various ‘liberal’ groups because they don’t like the contents of those books, despite not knowing what’s in them.
I’m not afraid to read banned books and I don’t care what anybody says here, I can make up my own mind and if I want to read these books, I will.
I won’t allow governments or social conditioning through the media or ‘my betters’ to tell me that I’m not allowed to read these books, I won’t allow bigots to tell me that I shouldn’t read these books. I will read what I want and I will read these banned books.
There are 66 of them (to which I refer). In fact, more copies of these banned books have been burned than any other book. More people have been tortured and executed because of reading these particular banned books than any other banned book.
Right now, there are atheists torturing the readers of these banned books (I can call communists atheists, can’t I? After all, we all like to bunch people together in the name of making thinking a little bit easier 😉 because they’re afraid of these banned books.
I read banned books and nobody will stop me.
#27: Be sure to find and read those books banned by the whacko right wing and the religious nutjobs while you’re at it.
#28 They’re my favourites! Can’t beat a good bit of fiction.
#28 – Pink
>>Be sure to find and read those books banned by
>>the whacko right wing and the religious
>>nutjobs while you’re at it.
Could you give an example of a book that has been “banned by the whacko right wing and the religious nutjobs” that can’t be picked up at B&N, Borders, or the neighborhood bookstore (and no, kiddie porn doesn’t count).