To Hell Without the Dignity of a Handbasket, Even

This post was commissioned last year during Banned Books Week. United States v. Mark Twain No such case as my title implies was ever brought, of course. The United States has no banning—that is, no centralized prohibition of books. Here, a ban has come to mean any decision to eliminate a book from a library or a school reading list. It’s true that, until fairly recently, the Postal Service exercised a censoring function by enforcing laws against sending obscene matter through the mail. But Supreme Court decisions of the ’60s and ’70s have rendered obscenity pretty ungainly to work with as a criminal charge. Huckleberry Finn was “banned” several times in Mark Twain’s lifetime—always by librarians. In 1885, when the book was new, the public library in Concord, Massachusetts, withdrew it, citing the characters’ “low grade of morality” and “irreverence.” Huck lies, talks dialect, is friends with a black man, steals and fails to return stolen property (the black man). Mark Twain’s respon...

Einstein said that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious". Then why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus apparently depriving it of its mystery? -- Leonard Bernstein, 1976 In the mid-twentieth century, the word of Einstein -- a genius who explained our universe, was against bad things, and played the violin -- was something you could take to the bank. But Leonard Bernstein didn't need any special authority for this insight, which is not his alone -- I myself had the same reflection back when I was the King of Ur, and again, some centuries later, when I was Czar of All the Russias. (It's an odd title, know, but "Czar of All the Mexicos" didn't sound right either.) About "genius." I have meant, for long and long, to write something about Schumann. Among Schumann's most remarkable qualities was the ability to discern genius at long range and without a scope. And he never bothered himself with beat...