Novel Living by Lisa Occhipinti

Author:Lisa Occhipinti
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2014-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THREE

PRESERVING AND CONSERVING

Recycling books or crafting with them are both worthy options when books are damaged or showing signs of a long, well-read life, but a book weighted with significance should be preserved or repaired to extend its tutelage and impact. Books are powerful cultural objects because they contain stories, accounts, and records that ensure the legacy of a civilization. As believers in the importance of books, we know that they are full of knowledge, and if knowledge is power, then books are powerful. To preserve books is to maintain them so their power endures.

Books have historically incited controversy and, at times, have been banned and burned for the ideologies contained in them. Because of their innate power, books can be viewed as a threat by volatile and restrictive societies. In 1930s Soviet Russia, the state, fearing foreign influences on Communist culture, forced private publishers who printed translations of multinational literature to close their doors. And beginning in 1933, Nazis burned nearly 25,000 books deemed “un-German,” including works by Bertolt Brecht, Karl Marx, Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, Thomas Mann, and Helen Keller.

In the United States throughout the 1920s, the United States Postal Service confiscated and burned copies of James Joyce’s Ulysses because of indecency allegations, and the book was ultimately prosecuted and banned. Joyce was unable to publish it on U.S. soil, so Sylvia Beach, owner of Shakespeare and Company in Paris, published it in her shop in 1922. D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1928) and Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956) were also banned for obscenity. Booksellers who sold these books were arrested and jailed. Though few of us would find them offensive now, at the time they challenged the prevailing mores.

More recently, Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (1988), believed to be heretical to Islam, was not only banned in India but also burned in the UK. Furthermore, Rushdie’s life was under ceaseless threat, compelling him to live in hiding for more than a decade. Translators of the book in Italy, Turkey, and Japan were brutally attacked—some were even murdered.

In the modern era, we can maintain content via e-books, though digital forms can be deleted, altered, or hacked. They are public and can be accessed online. A book on your shelf, however, is tangible, finite, and yours alone, and keeping it is the surest way to preserve its power.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.