Banned Books I was delighted to realize that on a lengthy list of commonly banned books I have read all but two, and taught two during my years as an English teacher. What is there about that sense of pride, I wonder. I’ve never been what anyone would consider a rebel. For instance, thanks to Facebook I was reminded that I wore a blue/gray suit with a navy tie in my fourth grade class picture. Perhaps that outlandish choice was in some inverted way a device for stepping outside the fashion norms for nine-year-olds of 1963. Regardless, no one ever called me James Dean. Suits and ties notwithstanding, one aspect of my early years did influence my interest in a wide range of literature. My mother had books all over the house. My father’s contribution was having made the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in the living room. Mom’s Book-of-the-Month-Club membership brought a seemingly endless supply of new, hardcover treasures full of promising adventure, some years ahead of my own time, which I suppose made for even more adventure than the author’s might have imagined. Imagination, the intersection of the author’s and the reader’s, is the point of literature. Imagination can be frightening, whether or our own creation late at night reading to the accompaniment of a howling wind, or the deliberate manipulation of a writer deftly pushing largely untapped, little used buttons of deep-seated anxieties and fears commonly held and personally abraded. Maybe that’s it. Books are banned because of fear. Topics, beliefs, convictions that confront us, that rub us even further than the exposed nerve endings of personal experience can create fear. Too often fear of ideas can result in bonfires; just ask Guy Montag.