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didn’t she know that I would pick it up and read it the moment she was gone, hearing her distress signal as the clarion cry to forbidden fruit?
    It is difficult not to think of that clarion call, of the notion of forbidden fruit, looking at the list of America’s banned books. It is difficult not to conclude, too, looking at the list, that the books dominating it are of two sorts: books that are inarguably excellent, and those that merely have the virtue of some sort of truth. The
Banned Books Resource Guide
of 1997 documents efforts to ban Sinclair Lewis,
Moby Dick
(because it “conflicts with the values of the community” in a town in Texas),
Of Mice and Men
, and Chaucer. It also has three pages detailing efforts to suppress the young adult novels of Judy Blume, which have sold millions of copies to adolescents who recognized their own problems and pain in their pages. Ms. Blume’s
Forever
, about sex between teenagers, was challenged in Scranton because it contains “four-letter words and talked about masturbation, birth control, and disobedience to parents,” in Missouri because it promotes “the stranglehold of humanism on life in America,” and was moved from the young adult section in Nebraska because it is “pornographic and does not promote the sanctity of … family life.”
    It’s an interesting word, that word “pornographic,” which, along with the adjective “obscene,” has been at the heart of many legal decisions about printed materials. The most entertaining—and telling—exchange was that between Margaret Anderson, the New York bookstore owner who tried to publish
Ulysses
in the United States, and John Quinn, the lawyer who represented her when she was prosecuted for doing so. At the end of the proceedings—lost by the champions of free speech—Quinn warned his client, “And now, for God’s sake, don’t publish any more obscene literature!”
    Anderson replied, “How am I to know when it’s obscene?”
    “I’m sure I don’t know,” said the lawyer. “But don’t do it.”
    I repeated that to the eighth grade at the elementary school my three children attend, not far from the store where the intrepid Margaret Anderson sold James Joyce’s masterpiece. The librarian there, who knew as much about books for children as many of the industry’s best editors, approached Banned Books Week by making a lesson of the banning of books. The eldest students studied the First Amendment. They were remarkably laissez-faire about censorship—the consensus seemed to be that everyone should read everything, which was cheering—but there was general agreement that a book that contained a full frontal nude portrayal of the male form was completely inappropriate for a six-year-old and could be adjudged obscene. I whipped out Maurice Sendak’s classic picture book
In the Night Kitchen
, which portrays a small boy named Mickey floating nude, penis and all, through a landscape of enormous flour bags and milk bottles. The eighth grade groaned:
gotcha
, they knew I was saying. But the utter rightness of Mickey’s nudity had not been so easily accepted elsewhere; in a school in Missouri shorts had been drawn on the character, and elsewhere the book had been moved from low shelves so only taller, older children could get to it.
    As a Catholic girl who grew up in the sixties thematter of banned books had always fascinated me. Until Vatican II elevated individual conscience to a more central place in the faith, the church kept an Index of Forbidden Books, or Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Balzac was on the list; so were Dumas and Richardson’s
Pamela
. Writing of Catholic culture, the psychologist Eugene Kennedy describes an “acceptable” Catholic novel as “generally a pious work that supported and encouraged Catholic ideals and practices and justified the institution and its control over the lives of its adherents. In such works, the good were rewarded, the erring, terribly punished.” In my own