Why were John Steinbeck's books banned?

I've long been a fan of John Steinbeck, and couldn't quite understand when I read that some of his books were banned. Reasons cited for the bans were that they were violent, included racial slurs and segregation. And of course he was accused of being a Communist, perhaps the worst thing a person could be labeled in his day.

Having looked up a lot of his quotes I feel there was a bit more to it than that - many of his writings advocated free-thinking and the despicable ways of governments. Here are just a few:

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about."

I guess this is why I hate governments. It is always the rule, the fine print, carried out by the fine print men. There's nothing to fight, no wall to hammer with frustrated fists.

There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

It has always seemed strange to me... the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.

I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one. . . . Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. . . . There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?

An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.

It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it.

If you're in trouble, or hurt or need - go to the poor people. They're the only ones that'll help - the only ones.

For it is my opinion that we enclose and celebrate the freaks of our nation and our civilization. Yellowstone National Park is no more representative of America than is Disneyland.

I wonder why progress looks so much like destruction.

If lowborn men could stand up to those born to rule, religion, government, the whole world would fall to pieces...[Merlin replies]...So it would; so it will...then the pieces will be put together again by such as destroyed it.

Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside your eyes. A man may have lived all of his life in the gray, and the land and trees of him dark and somber. The events, even the important ones, may have trooped by faceless and pale. And then -the glory- so that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man's importance in the world can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the world. It is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

What do you guys think? I think John would have fit in quite well round here

Of mice and men should have been banned for the line, "yaw, kin have somm'a mah ket-chup if yaw wanna George!"

Steinbeck is my favorite author. I think it's outrageous that his books are being banned. Just one more thing about this country that i hate.

reply to post by Ginga


Who knows..
The time of publishing?

Many of the ones upon a time banned books are excelent.
And some of them made into movies in modern times.

Books Banned at One Time or Another in the United States

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween Symbols by Edna Barth

The above list source

reply to post by coder22


You gotta problem wit lenny you got a problem wit me! Lenny was such a good character poor guy

Reply to post by tomten

Webster's Ninth Collegiate Dictionary has been banned at some point?

Wow.


Posted Via ATS Mobile: m.abovetopsecret.com

Wow that's so many books! I can't believe some of the ones on the list there, they are just purely simple classics. How absolutely ridiculous.

reply to post by AxcidnKC


Yeah, they ban his books but show rape, murder and theft on prime time though.

And the FBI had their eye on him too www.paperlessarchives.com...

You guys should know better than that. You know our governernments don't want us to think, only to consume and remain in our pharmacological comas.

Steinbeck was definitely an amazing author. I went down that list and noticed Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes. I had to read that book in elementary school and I never liked reading before that book. If you haven't read it I extremely recommend it. It's a great book. The main theme of the book is "ignorance is bliss". The main character discovered that he was actually less happy the more aware he became and that sometimes it's better just not to know. The less you know, the less you have to worry about.

Anyway, pick it up sometime. It's a great read.

reply to post by AxcidnKC


hear, hear...
you are not alone. I am realizing more everyday what a crock the USA really is..
all the inbred knuckle dragging sheeple LOOOOVVVE A'merca..don't they?

man, it really chaps my hide to know how bogus the whole "freedumd" crap is..

the only things that should be banned are stuff like child porn..

was the whole of america always a scam? and we are the first ones with enough info to connect the dots?

I always heard that Steinbeck was banned because "Grapes of Wrath" had a white woman breastfeeding a black man. This was quite scandalous back in the day.

The "banned" list is quite interesting. I will never forget mentioning the Harry Potter books in the presence of my husband's grandmother. She got very offended and started a rant about them being "tools of the devil." I started laughing until I realized she wasn't just joking around with me. She seriously believes that! Some people, you will never convince because they are not free or critical thinkers.

Steinbeck is one of my favorite people ever.
A true Visionary , a Revolutionary, a real American/Patriot, a man that americas forefathers would actually be proud of. Unlike anyone 'in power' today.
No surprise that those in power would want his words to be kept unseen.
He had the extraordinary ability to actually THINK!, and to see all the BS for what it is... pure BS.

For anyone who is new to John Steinbeck, (or not new),
Here you can grab 12 of his books in under a minute or two, for free!
www.demonoid.me...

and here is a nice little gem to go with them..

A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia
amazon.com Price for the Hardcover Edition: $125.00

"[T]his Encyclopedia will serve the needs of a diverse audience, from high school students to established academics, very well… it is full of
well-organized information on Steinbeck's life and work, and it does provide a panoramic sweep of the history of scholarship on this major author."
–Reference Reviews

J.S.Encyclopedia download Link: www.demonoid.me...

Good thread OP!
Great quotes you grabbed as well!
Some of my favorites.

reply to post by Ahmose


Thanks for the dl link One quote I particularly liked I can't find online. It was in Travels with Charley, and went something like: I love all countries, but despise all governments.

Originally posted by Ginga
reply to post by Ahmose

 

Thanks for the dl link

One quote I particularly liked I can't find online. It was in Travels with Charley, and went something like: I love all countries, but despise all governments.

Most welcome.

Yep, That is a good one!
Great book.

reply to post by Ahmose


Aye that's the one. Cheers I must read that book again. I took a road trip across the US myself a few years ago (I'm originally from the UK), and most the people I met, when I told them what I was doing, were kind of in awe and said they wished they could do the same.

JS summed it up better:

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation – a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unachored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move”

Originally posted by Ginga
reply to post by Ahmose

 

Aye that's the one. Cheers

I must read that book again. I took a road trip across the US myself a few years ago (I'm originally from the UK), and most the people I met, when I told them what I was doing, were kind of in awe and said they wished they could do the same.

JS summed it up better:

“I saw in their eyes something I was to see over and over in every part of the nation – a burning desire to go, to move, to get under way, anyplace, away from Here. They spoke quietly of how they wanted to go someday, to move about, free and unachored, not toward something but away from something. I saw this look and heard this yearning everywhere in every state I visited. Nearly every American hungers to move”

Powerful!
Meaningful!
Thanks for posting it!

reply to post by Ahmose


A lot of people I met in the US said the same, that they'd love to visit the UK. Always sounds strange to me, because I've been doing my best to stay away for the past 8 years lol

I think there must be something in our dna that makes us want to roam. I'm currently in the Philippines, where 10% of the population are abroad working. I thought it was just about the money, but a guy I know here came back from Saudi after 4 years working there. 6 months later and he's had to move to a smaller house because he's short of money. It seems to be the ambition of every Filipino to work abroad, maybe its just in all our mindsets to get away from where we are.

Anyway, if you ever make it over to the UK and I'm around I'll be happy to offer you a sofa for a few nights if you need it