Plan for the Promotion of Reading. Books: Should We Burn or Ban Them?

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J. Ignasi Fernández Daroca

First came humans, then fire, and later, books. And ever since, book pyres have been a constant feature of history. If you ever find yourself in Berlin, take a moment to visit Bebelplatz, next to the Opera. Look down: beneath a glass panel in the ground, you will see an empty underground library, designed to hold 20,000 volumes—the very number of books burned by the Brownshirts and the Hitler Youth on the night of 10 May 1933. It is well-known that paper does not burn easily—it requires 451 degrees Fahrenheit—so the bonfire must have been colossal. That fateful night, 34 other book burnings took place across Germany. As for the authors whose works fed the flames, they are hardly surprising: Stefan Zweig, Sigmund Freud, Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway…

From Berlin, my thoughts turn to the Library of Alexandria, which succumbed to flames multiple times. Then to more recent fires: the Sarajevo library during the Bosnian War, Los Angeles in 1986, Baghdad in 2003. Fire, with its holocaust-like devastation, strikes at something deep within us. Yet, beyond mere propaganda, book burnings have achieved little in the way of true censorship. Just ask Martin Luther, J.K. Rowling, or Karl Marx.

Now let’s consider book bans and censorship. In the USSR, banned works included Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita. Add to this list Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Orwell, and Nabokov. Were they censored? Yes—but they all were widely read, thanks to the underground samizdat system, whether via handwritten copies, carbon paper or, in later years, photocopiers.

The samizdat phenomenon spread across the Communist bloc. In an act of dissident solidarity, Czechoslovakia printed banned Polish authors, while Poland circulated underground editions of Václav Havel, Milan Kundera, and the Nobel laureate Jaroslav Seifert. The result? Increased demand for Czech literature in Poland.

In the GDR, samizdat was also resorted to, though the situation had its irony, as Article 9 of the 1949 Constitution shamelessly stated, with literal audacity, that ‘censorship does not exist’ (sic), and later, in the 1968 Constitution, freedom of expression was proclaimed. Of all the titles banned in Communist Germany, I would highlight Animal Farm by Orwell—given the excessive international vilification it suffered—as it was also banned in Francoist Spain and Saudi Arabia, albeit for very different reasons; in the latter case, due to the fact that its characters were anthropomorphic pigs. For years, East Germans could not read Kafka, Robert Musil, or Günter Grass. This explains why, at the Leipzig Book Fair, Western editions were stolen from stalls, and why eager readers pleaded with their grandparents—who had travel visas to West Germany—to smuggle in copies of Der Spiegel or anything by Sartre or Kafka.

In the United States, the list of banned books has surged in the past two years: from 3,500 titles to 10,000 during the 2023-2024 academic year. Leading the charge are Iowa and Florida. Take note: we are talking about removing novels like Roots by Alex Haley, One Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez, Beloved and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The House of Bernarda Alba by Lorca, and banning authors such as Mark Twain, Dickens, and Shakespeare. Any mention of sex, race, colour, or the LGBTQ+ community risks censorship, often due to pressure from ultraconservative groups like Moms for Liberty, fully aware that their actions openly violate the First Amendment. The result is that in states where books remain available, young people are organising book clubs to send them to readers in states where they are banned. More proof that prohibition “works“: pro-books organisations like the 451 Foundation have emerged, and there is a clear surge of interest in reading. A final example of pushback: in Collier County, Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis banned sixteen Stephen King books. To this, the famed author responded with defiant irony: “I must be doing something right”. Similarly, when The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood was removed from libraries, the Canadian writer quipped: “Go ahead, ban my book. More people will read it”.

It is impossible to determine the “most banned” book in history, but strong contenders include Lady Chatterley’s Lover, The Satanic Verses, the Bible, Das Kapital, and, of course, Animal Farm. Whether banned frequently or not, one thing is certain: these titles rank among the most widely read.

Now, if we get serious and bring into discussion the latest PISA results on reading comprehension, everything we have discussed so far might sound ironic or even frivolous. It might seem downright provocative when we assess the effectiveness of the Departament de Cultura and Educació’s initiatives: the 200-page Pla Nacional del Llibre, its advisory committees, the creation of an entire Consell Nacional de la Lectura (with no fewer than 48 members), and, through a zealous application of the Decret d’autonomia de Centres, the creation of thousands of individualised reading plans—one for each school.

Yes, I am being irreverent. But let us not forget that this very administration, now claiming to promote reading, is the same one that has undermined knowledge transmission—thereby knowledge itself—hesitates to ban mobile phones in secondary schools, once removed books from classrooms, and has filled schools with screens. Given these precedents, and despite making a big deal about Consells, Plans nacionals y Asessors (Councils, National Plans and Advisors), does anyone really believe they will get students interested in books?

Because we have no faith in the Departament‘s well-meaning rhetoric, perhaps a little reflection is in order. And believe me, viewed in this light, censorship is no trivial matter. At the 2021 Fira del Llibre d’Ocasió Antic i Modern de Gràcia (Gràcia Fair of Old and Modern Second-Hand Books), booksellers paid homage to censorship for its “undeniable and historic contribution to the promotion of reading”.

Promoting a love of books: why not forget about the Departament and ask the booksellers of the Gràcia Fair instead?

Source: educational EVIDENCE

Rights: Creative Commons