# Controversial Books



## Hunter56 (Jun 20, 2013)

Which ones that have come out over the years really brought about controversy? It's hard to believe it happening with _books_ of all things but I'm sure there have been some that have sparked a public outcry.


----------



## philistine (Jun 20, 2013)

I know that soaking-wet turd of a book _Wetlands_ (original German title _Feuchtgebiete_) caused something of a furore.

Before anyone says it: turd is not a profane word.


----------



## Lewdog (Jun 20, 2013)

_The Da Vinci Code_, it opened a can of worms with one of the most powerful groups in the world, the Roman Catholic Church.  I would say _The Satanic Verses_ is a close second.


----------



## escorial (Jun 20, 2013)

Lolita..I stopeed reading after a few chapters.


----------



## FleshEater (Jun 20, 2013)

Lewdog said:


> _The Da Vinci Code_.



Which stole a lot from _Holy Blood Holy Grail_.


----------



## Hunter56 (Jun 23, 2013)

I heard that The Catcher in the Rye was somehow linked to John Lennon's murder. Is this true?


----------



## JimJanuary (Jul 1, 2013)

Hunter56 said:


> I heard that The Catcher in the Rye was somehow linked to John Lennon's murder. Is this true?


His assassin, Mark Chapman, apparently sat on the doorstep and read the book after he shot Lennon. The book is also linked with the Reagan assassination attempt


----------



## Lewdog (Jul 1, 2013)

JimJanuary said:


> His assassin, Mark Chapman, apparently sat on the doorstep and read the book after he shot Lennon. The book is also linked with the Reagan assassination attempt



You have to call him Mark David Chapman.   All the weirdos and assassins are referred to by their full name!  The most famous thing about Reagan's attempted assassination, was that John Hinkley Jr. did it to try and impress Jodie Foster whom he fell in love with after watching her in the movie _Taxi Driver_.  The only major assassin I can think of that isn't called by three names is Bobby Kennedy's killer, Sirhan Sirhan, full name Sirhan Bishara Sirhan.

Now this is kind of weird...I just found out I have the same birthday as John Hinkley Jr., May 29th.  Ironically I was born in 1976 the same year _Taxi Driver_ came out!


----------



## Sam (Jul 1, 2013)

_Frankenstein, Candide, Dubliners, The Canterbury Tales, Lord of the Flies, The Merchant of Venice, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird _– all of them were banned at one point.


----------



## philistine (Jul 1, 2013)

Sam said:


> _Frankenstein, Candide, Dubliners, The Canterbury Tales, Lord of the Flies, The Merchant of Venice, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird _– all of them were banned at one point.



Don't forget Lady Chatterley's Lover! If I remember rightly, that was banned until the early sixties, for obvious reasons. The midlands accent and slop talk just made it even more hilarious.


----------



## Skodt (Jul 1, 2013)

Christian groups pretty much have a squabble at all the magic books. Harry Potter, lord of the rings, Percy Jackson, ect...


----------



## Hunter56 (Jul 3, 2013)

JimJanuary said:


> His assassin, Mark Chapman, apparently sat on the doorstep and read the book after he shot Lennon. The book is also linked with the Reagan assassination attempt



Dang! That definitely puts it in a different light.


----------



## No Man (Jul 27, 2014)

Lewdog stated above that _The Da Vinci Code was his choice due it opening a can of worms for the _Roman Catholic Church. I did see the movie a few times and did not read it or the book _Holy Blood Holy Grail.

 I have read a few months ago in an article with Dan's new agent Heidi, that he partly choose to go into seclusion do to Dan claiming  he got heat all the way up to the Pope. 

 Now I know he may have just pulled one for sales or do you think he may have been telling the truth?  Maybe something in the Book I missed? 

 Any thoughts, I am curios and have researched some?





_


----------



## krishan (Aug 16, 2014)

_The Chocolate War_ - which was one of my favourite books while growing up - was relatively widely-banned in America. It got a lot of bad press because, at the end of the book, the bad guys win and the protagonist is almost beaten to death for trying to stand up to them. This ending, however, made me think many times harder than any number of books in which everything simply works out okay.

I feel fortunate to live in a country where books are rarely banned or restricted.


----------



## No Cat No Cradle (Aug 17, 2014)

Sam said:


> _Frankenstein, Candide, Dubliners, The Canterbury Tales, Lord of the Flies, The Merchant of Venice, Of Mice and Men, Slaughterhouse-Five, Ulysses, To Kill a Mockingbird _– all of them were banned at one point.


I love me some banned books! Candide I was introduced to as a junior in high school and I loved it. Very unforgiving but very enlightening in many ways. Though I love how most of these books are on curriculums in schools even though having been banned at one time, shows how wrong people were and how well others learn from it.


----------



## MysticalMind (Aug 24, 2014)

I suppose Nineteen-Eighty-Four by George Orwell could be considered somewhat controversial. It's the topic of much conversation as people sometimes talk about Orwellian societies. You get these privacy campaigners on the news and they sometimes refer to the book. While I am concerned about my privacy I think it's a bit of a stretch to say any Western country is truly Orwellian. Then again, Edward Snowdown... People wouldn't be having certain discussions if it wasn't for him. His revelations made the German Chancellor and other high profile people quite upset. Maybe we are heading towards a Orwellian style society? Only time will tell.


----------



## sreeves2 (Aug 30, 2014)

50 Shades of Grey


----------



## Burroughs (Jan 5, 2015)

William Burroughs - Naked Lunch was banned in the US (other countries too) when it first got published. It's a dark piece of writing and I think only certain people enjoy it. Personally, I think it has some strong points. Not Burroughs best work.


----------



## Converse (Jan 21, 2015)

We taking recent or old. Cause books 50+ years ago would have been banned for asinine purposes nowadays. 


*Modern 
*
50 Shades of Grey - not banned per say, but libraries were pulling it in Europe? maybe the UK if I remember correctly. 

I'd have to second the comment about Da Vince Code stealing Holy Blood, Holy Grail... four different people I believed tried suing Brown for copyright... and that it opened a can of worms. 

_Things Fall Apart _by Achebe I read once. It was banned for a while, and people still want it banned, and I think those who banned it should have been "hung" - just cause they didn't like how close it rang to real life. 



*Older 
*
Same with _Grapes of Wrath _- they actually burned it in huge piles. And yet what 80 years later it's not far off from nowadays in some areas of the USA.

I laugh at this one - _Huckleberry Finn_.  All because really, minus the sexual aspect, some twit library let children get their mitts on it. 

Origins of the Species  - guess why. 


My personal favorite was _Tropic of Cancer_. It can get touchy but personally I found it an excellent reflection on what people do but never say. Nowadays the sexuality is a near mirror of any low brow's (a loser that has sex with anyone & anything) life [and there's a lot of them] and rather tame compared to some stuff published as a "novel" today.


----------



## Blade (Jan 21, 2015)

There was a book published in the US in 1963 called _*Fanny Hill* - __Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasuret _which raised a lot of controversy on the pornography side. The original relating to the life of a prostitute had been wriiten in 1748 and was thought to be the first sample of text pornography. The original banning of the book led to the emergence of bootleg editions as the item proved popular with the public.


----------



## Wannabe (Feb 8, 2015)

Lolita has always been my favorite "controversial" book. Although, it's pretty tame compared to more modern novels. Third-rate writers like Dennis Cooper have practically dedicated their entire career to writing specifically about sexually demented characters carving up teenagers, and doing it in great detail.


----------



## EnglishmanRob (May 4, 2015)

Alan Moore's Lost Girls. 
I actually bought this book in hardback (£30!) and had to throw it away. It contained child porn. 
He wanted to make a statement about the difference (or lack of difference) between art and porn. 

It made a big publicity stink at the time of release.


----------



## Loveabull (May 15, 2015)

Oh my gawd I feel so very old...many of you weren't born when they were still trying to sanitize mass media. The first book that comes to mind when I was a teen, Judy Blume's "Forever". Now looking back...wow they are actually having sex...in a very sweet awkward way. It's a beautiful landmark book. RW's went ballistic over suggesting pre-marital sex as acceptable and so on. Of course they knew Paul Lynde and Liberace were straight too. It was a weird several decades.


----------



## JamesR (May 16, 2015)

_Mein Kampf_,_The Nat Turner Diaries_, and _The Communist Manifesto_ are obviously pretty controversial books that have been labeled hate texts at one point. But in more modern times, I ironically tend to think that the Harry Potter series has been pretty controversial given the reaction it has received from moral activist groups and the like. The books relating to religion tend to also be controversial. Richard Dawkins' _God Delusion_ garnered a lot of criticism, as did _The Da Vinci Code_ for Roman Catholics. If you're Russian Orthodox like me, Seraphim Rose's _Orthodox and the Religion of the Future_ was very controversial at its inception and received a lot of criticism from hierarchs in the Church, despite how much the laity loved it. I know that _50 Shades of Gray_ is controversial, although I think that's more so because no one expected the book to become so big.


----------



## Nicholas McConnaughay (May 19, 2015)

People seem to talk about this one book called the Bible a lot, a guy named Jesus wrote it, and it has dragons and unicorns and all kinds of neat stuff. True story. (Depending on who you ask.) 

Joking aside, *American Psycho *is a fun one. In-fact, while more about the movie and less about the book, a woman named *Gloria Steinem *lobbied against the book constantly and was totally against them ever adapting the film. As a feminist activist, she thought it was hateful, sexist, and all kinds of dastardly things. Years later, this woman went onto become *Christian Bales'* step-mother. (The actor that played the lead in the *American Psycho* film)


----------



## Tyrion (May 20, 2015)

_"It" _a 1920s novella by Elinor Glyn pioneered the concept of the 'It Girl,' a sexually self-confident and magnetic woman who oozes sex appeal but without the need to flaunt herself. It was kind of the 50 Shades of Grey of its day, albeit resulting in a far better film with the silent star Clara Bow as its lead. In 1927 Glyn defined "IT" as:

That quality possessed by some which draws all others with its magnetic force. With 'It' you win all men if you are a woman and all women if you are a man. 'It' can be a quality of the mind as well as a physical attraction.​


----------



## Loveabull (May 20, 2015)

"Are You There God? It's Me Margaret" by Judy Blume, bless her...for generations of pre-teen girls this book was there to gently guide you through early adolescence and your first period. See nowadays you can go on the internet or go to a bookstore and find a zillion books under growing up and liking it. But Margaret was published a few years before I became a teen.

It was just as they describe in the book. One fateful day in sixth grade they would troop the boys out of class and the freakiest gym instructor in the school would run a filmstrip about the birds and the bees. Afterwards she would ask if there were any questions. No, everyone has just been traumatized enough thank you.

We had a middle school librarian who was ahead of her time. This book was banned from many school libraries and public libraries too. I suppose the whole business of crushes and growing breasts was too smutty for some parents to allow. Even now there are parents like that. But fortunately the boomers as a whole became more enlightened than past generations.

In my Mom's era  "womanly concerns" weren't discussed openly at all. Now we live in an age when we have to hear ads for erectile dysfunction on early morning radio...perhaps we've passed the point of a tasteful happy medium? But really for a confused teen this book let you know it was all going to be okay.


----------

