The Explosive Power of Printers' Ink

The Jack Kerouac Alley

“The air was soft, the stars so fine, and the promise of every cobbled alley so great…”  (Jack Kerouac – On the Road)

Kerouac’s soliloquy to San Francisco is memorialized in the pavement adjacent to  San Francisco's landmark City Lights Bookstore. Nearby other fragments of poetry are set amidst the cobblestones of  the recently renovated and renamed Jack Kerouac Alley.  City Lights and the surrounding North Beach District were ground zero for the Beat Generation, and the setting of a major censorship battle and cultural clash as the decade of the 1950’s drew to a fitful close.  

Kerouac Quote 

In 1957, On the Road, a mania edged, full-throttled hymn to restless youth, freedom, and American individualism roared into that carefully coiffed decade.  The publication of On the Road was one of those defining  moments in literary history.  This stunningly original work ushered in a new genre of music, film, and writing that included Bob Dylan, Easy Rider, and Hunter Thompson;  reflecting the voices of a brash new generation that straddled being quintessentially American and anti- establishment.  

Door into City Lights Bookstore

In September of the previous year, poet Laurence Ferlinghetti, owner of City Lights Bookstore and City Lights Press, released Allen Ginsburg’s Howl and Other Poems, and was subsequently arrested and charged with publishing obscenity. Judge Clayton Horn, a conservative Sunday School teacher, struck a major blow against censorship by ruling that the poem was not obscene, but in fact had, “redeeming social importance”. Like so many seminal works of art, Howl shockingly crashed though the boundaries of what had been deemed acceptable.  The epic poem came to epitomize the Beat Generation to a national audience.

City Lights glass window reflects neighborhood

In a recent article in Slade magazine entitled, “How Howl Changed the World”, writer Fred Kaplan states that, “it’s probably hard for anyone born long after those years to grasp just what a cataclysmic impact that poem made (or perhaps any poem could make) not just on the literary world but on the broader society and culture.”  The lack of inhibition and raw freedom of personal expression opened the floodgates for the 1960’s, with all of the culture clashes and polarized opinions that continue to vibrate fifty years later throughout the American political landscape.

However, poetry and scandal were partners long before the Beatniks. Lord Byron managed to lead a shockingly unconventional life expressed in his poetry, and was notably and perhaps accurately described by Lady Caroline Lamb as “mad, bad, and dangerous to know.”  Oscar Wilde was imprisoned for his lifestyle and self expression.  Walt Whitman, arguably now America’s most beloved poet, horrified the nation with his raw, honest writings in the Victorian Era.  In another part of the world, Boris Pasternak, author of Dr. Zhivago, was imprisoned by the Marxists for his poetry and fiction.

Poet's rocking chair on the second floor

  

The role of the creative spirit and the intellectual, liberal or conservative, is to push boundaries, explore the edge, and provoke society into re-examining world views and social mores. The nonconformist challenges our sanguine acceptance of the status quo and threatens those who disagree or fear change.

Banned books display

 During the last week of September libraries set up displays to mark “Banned Book Week” to highlight the works that have been the targets of censorship battles over the years. Banned Books Week is sponsored by the American Booksellers Association; American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression; the American Library Association; American Society of Journalists and Authors; Association of American Publishers; and the National Association of College Stores.  It is endorsed by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The list of banned books is long and includes many classics such as Moby Dick, To Kill A Mockingbird, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Canterbury Tales, and The Great Gatsby. The displays illustrate the important role libraries and all citizens play in protecting the right to read and intellectual freedom.

 City Lights photo of banned books display (1950's)

Over the decades, in their role as the archives for civilizations and the written word, libraries have emerged as the somewhat embattled and scarred guardians of the First Amendment and intellectual freedom.  Funded by taxpayer dollars, there is a delicate tension between honoring the opinions and the community values of some users, and the philosophical principles that guide developing collections that reflect the wide range of intellectual and artistic expression.

Nearby mural with suspended book mobile

The truth is that any public library worth having contains a large number of materials that any number of people could find objectionable.  In my own experience, it is difficult to know what someone might file a complaint against next.  I firmly believe that each person has the right to personally reject reading or watching a work. Every parent has the right and the responsibility, to monitor what their child reads or watches.  However, it is a significant and sometimes dangerous leap to assert that a book, program or film is not suitable to be read, viewed or attended by anyone else in the community, or by extension, anyone at any time.

Censorship and burning books and libraries goes back two thousand years to the recorded burning of a library in China in 223 BC.  The King of England had the entire collection of the University of Oxford Library torched in 1683.  During the 1930's the Nazi Party was well know for instigating public book burning pyres. The Union of Soviet Socialists Republic implemented one of the most extreme, systematic, and extensive state ordered programs of destroying libraries and books in recorded history.  As recently as the 1990's all of the Albanian-langauge collections in the libraries of Kosovo were burned and destroyed under orders from the Serbian government.

The destruction of all materials considered subversive or dangerous would have brought civilization to a grinding halt.  From the revolutionary Declaration of Independence; to Martin Luther’s Ninety- Five Theses; to Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech; the introduction of radical new ideas and ways of thinking, and the struggle to assimilate or reject these ideas have shaped human history.

Quote embedded in alley

When I strolled down the Jack Kerouac Alley last week I noted John Steinbeck’s words,  "The free exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world.” On the  interior wall of City Lights there is a flamboyant hand scrawled poster that speaks even more directly to the  importance and power of free speech.  The poster proclaims,  “Printers' Ink is the greater explosive."                              .