Sunday, October 7, 2012

Famous Authors’ Funniest Responses to Their Books Being Banned

Harper Lee in a 1966 letter to the Hanover County School Board in Virginia after they banned To Kill a Mockingbird from school libraries state-wide:
“Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbirdspells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is ‘immoral’ has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink. I feel, however, that the problem is one of illiteracy, not Marxism. Therefore I enclose a small contribution to the Beadle Bumble Fund that I hope will be used to enroll the Hanover County School Board in any first grade of its choice.”
Read the whole letter here.