Seven months ago in this space I mentioned the decision by Puffin Books, a Penguin Random House imprint of children’s books, to rewrite the stories of Roald Dahl in keeping with contemporary notions of “sensitivity” that are actually of more interest to highly ideological adults than they are to children. I noted at the time that after some pushback, Puffin announced that the original editions of Dahl’s books would continue to be available—as would the bowdlerized new editions. I neglected to mention that one of the organizations that pushed back, to its credit, was PEN America, formed a century ago by poets, essayists, and novelists (hence the acronym) and now open to anyone interested in literature and the freedom that sustains it.
Bravo to PEN America for the stand it took against “fixing” Dahl’s children’s books. But we have now just been through the organization’s annual awareness campaign known as Banned Books Week, which, as Abigail Anthony pointed out at National Review, is not really about “banned books” at all. Poets, essayists, and novelists know a thing or two about hyperbole for effect, of course, and they’re counting on the reactions of half-informed people to the news that more than 3,000 cases of “book banning” occurred over the course of a year in the United States. But like “censorship,” the expression “banned book” suggests something like the litigation long ago over the availability of James Joyce’s Ulysses in the United States. Prior restraint, or subsequent legal punishment for publication, distribution, and sale of a work—these are bans.
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