In Springfield, MO, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s
Slaughterhouse Five was recently pulled from high school curricula because of the opinion of one man. This man is a professor at Missouri State University, my alma mater. He is part of education, ladies and gentlemen. Scary. He believes it is "filthy," the book that is. As well as others.
Here is the link to the story in Springfield's "newspaper." And
here is a good analysis of the action. The following is from the Vonnegut book in question. Beautiful, smart, peaceful. And apparently part of a larger more evil and pornographic work, if you want to believe a guy named Scroggins.
"The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored nearly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.
When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the rack and shipped back to the United States, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous content into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anyone ever again.
The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn't in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed."
Slaughterhouse Five was the book that got me back into reading. It encouraged me to think about my life in different and exciting ways. It also challenged my constructed understanding of storytellings. There is not a word penned by Vonnegut I would be unwilling to read. I use to ride the elevator at Barnes and Nobel just so I could see his picture hanging from the wall....
ReplyDeleteI know a bit romantic right? Even though I have this overly sensationalized love for his books I would not ever be able to get off while reading them. It is because they are not pornographic. It is disturbing reading the Huffington Post article because of how misused that word is, 'Pornography'.
It is another reminder that censorship is still active. This being an example of a banning attempt that was successful. We will have to see where it goes from here.