Fuel to the Fire: Book Burning in History

 

 In June of 2022, a specially designed fireproof copy of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood was auctioned for $130,000 USD to support PEN America’s efforts to fight book bans. A delightfully over-the-top promotional video shows Atwood blasting the book with a flamethrower, from which it emerges unscathed. While constructing all future books out of heat-resistant aluminum and space-age steel wouldn’t actually solve any problems, the fireproof book is an act of defiance against that recurring symbol of fear and anti-intellectualism, the bonfire. It announces that the written word can always adapt to outlast the forces that would try and destroy it.

Looking to history supports this claim. Despite sustaining irrecoverable losses over the millennia, literature has survived, and while fireproof editions may be the latest innovation in this long conflict, past societies made many innovations of their own. Let’s take a look at some ways in which texts of the past have been saved from the flames.

In the ancient world, a library itself can be considered a remarkable feat of the imagination. A prospect first available only to royalty, the gathering together of texts for their protection and study has remained a cornerstone of the literary world. The library of Ashurbanipal, king of the Assyrian Empire in the 7th century BCE, has been called by H. G. Wells "the most precious source of historical material in the world," and contained within its collection the legendary Epic of Gilgamesh. Ashurbanipal, a lover of literature, collected tablets from across his empire for preservation in his great library. Unfortunately, he was also a cruel and iron-fisted military leader of an empire hungry for growth. He used his empire’s expansion as a means to expand his collection, taking for his own the recorded knowledge of his vassal states until they eventually stage a rebellion, setting fire to the library in 612 BCE. Ironically, the heat of the fire baked the clay tablets stored inside, allowing them to be preserved for our viewing today. However, the wax boards, leather scrolls, papyrus, and other texts were destroyed. The knowledge of the library, conscripted by those in power, was forever lost to those to whom it belonged.

With the advent of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century, book burning in Europe reached a fevered height. Martin Luther and the Catholic Church both used book burning as a political tool to alter public opinion. The efficacy of the printing press made complete eradication of controversial texts almost impossible, but both sides sought to utilize public book burnings to convey the ideological incompatibility between the old and the new. Rather than to institutions of church or state, it fell to private citizens, wealthy antiquarians, to preserve the endangered writings of the time. Even a single manuscript tucked away on a shelf can carry its knowledge to the future, its messages alive and well. Sir Robert Cotton makes a perfect example, possessing a rare book collection which surpassed that of the crown. His collection included the original bound manuscript of Beowulf and a fifth-century copy of the Greek Bible, among other treasures. As a secular private library, Cotton’s collection was safe from the shifting political tides of religious allegiance, allowing its contents to survive even today.

Perhaps the most infamous book burners in history, the Nazis waged a ceaseless war against any text which did not reflect their particular worldview. No library, institutional or private, was outside their reach, and the materials held at the Yiddish Scientific Institute was a particular target. Conscripted Jewish workers, nicknamed the Paper Brigade, began smuggling away books and other items from the Institute, secreting them away throughout the ghetto or passing them along to trustworthy outsiders. Two of the Brigade’s leaders, Abraham Sutzkever and Shmerke Kaczerginski, managed to eventually escape imprisonment, but the majority of the members were murdered. However, the group succeeded in saving between 30 and 40 percent of the irreplaceable Institute collection, what is now the largest collection of material about Jewish life in Eastern Europe in existence. Against the overwhelming political and martial force of the Nazis, the humble potato sack became a safer place for valuable books than even a respected research institute.

These anecdotes all demonstrate the clear value of the individual in preserving knowledge. Books have been burned by invading armies and established social institutions alike, but there are always those who can see past the short-term manipulation tactics and into the future. Whether you are a king, prisoner, or anything in between, your efforts could save a work of art or scholarship from destruction. Keep the works you value close. While systemic values may change, the preservation of knowledge by the individual ultimately benefits all. 

 For more on the topic, check out Richard Ovenden's Burning the Books: A History of the Deliberate Destruction of Knowledge

scary stories to ban in the dark

Halloween is poking its little head around the corner -- for me, a deeply nostalgic holiday. Children are often drawn to the macabre and the weird, because that’s their existence: growing pains, lost teeth, with new dangers learned about and confronted and not yet made peace with. Halloween is the season to celebrate their most creepy selves, but the horror section of school libraries is always open, with books that let kids face fears head-on. I’m sure others can relate to younger me begging the school librarian for directions to the scary stuff. It was a sparse section then, in the early 2000s, with its crowning jewel being Alvin Schwartz’ three-part series “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.”

Y’all remember those books: bite-size tales of ghosts and ghouls, death and mayhem, accompanied by Stephen Gammell’s iconically horrifying illustrations in dripping black and white. They’ve been the stuff of nightmares for several generations. But October’s a good time to reminisce on “Scary Stories” not only because of Halloween; the first through seventh of the month also marks Banned Books Week. According to the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom, Scary Stories was, between 1990-1999, the most challenged book in America. In the 00s, it moved down to number 7.

An example illustration

Parent groups, individual parents, and even a legislative action committee raised concerns, claiming that some of the disturbing or violent content was not appropriate for children. In a 1993 interview with Chicago Tribune, Sandy Vanderburg, a mother former teacher, brought up perhaps a common complaint about the stories: "There's no moral to them. The bad guys always win. And they make light of death. There's a story called `Just Delicious' about a woman who goes to a mortuary, steals another woman's liver, and feeds it to her husband. That's sick." In the same article, the author was compared to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.

Schwartz was unphased by the controversy. In an interview with Inverse, Cody Meirick (creator of Scary Stories: A Documentary) said, “Alvin Schwartz really loved the fact that his books were being banned. The attention to censorship within schools and libraries was just beginning to take shape around the time of his passing in the early 1990s. The American Library Association really started tracking and making lists in the mid-1980s, which was when his books began to really take off. But Alvin loved it and thought it was great publicity.” There is something particularly appealing about the controversial stuff when you’re younger, isn’t there? The books continue to garner fans, and even received a film adaptation in 2019.

The first volume of “Scary Stories” was also republished on its 30th anniversary with less-nightmarish illustrations, now done by illustrator Brett Helquist, a former missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints who is best known for his drawings in the 13 “Series of Unfortunate Events” books. Though gorgeous in their own right, these new “Scary Stories" illustrations just didn’t do it for fans of Gammell’s OG drawings. In 2017, the books were republished with the original artwork. 

Newer cover by Helquist

 

An example of Helquist's illustration

Flipping back through “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” as a grown adult, I was impressed by its packed bibliography, several spanning pages in a book that doesn’t have that many pages to begin with. Schwartz was a passionate folklorist, and put great research into his work. In an interview with Language Arts Magazine, he said of his process: “Basically, what I do with every book, is learn everything I can about the genre. This will involve a lot of reading and scholarly books and journals and sometimes discussions and scholarly folklorists... In the process of accumulating everything on a subject, I begin setting aside things that I particularly like. What's interesting is that eventually patterns emerge.” Wherever you stand on the question of how much violence or horror young readers should be exposed to, you can’t deny that a monstrous amount of work went into these books, and that even today, they remain a key title in the world of creepy fiction, as well as a contested title for concerned parents.