Burning Books

I had a long day of working at the university bookstore. School has started and the students are filing in to buy their textbooks. Some are also coming in to sell back some textbooks from the previous semester. I had an experience with a customer today, that was a especially interesting.

She wanted to sell us a couple of books, one was a text that we could use, the other was obsolete, an older edition. When I told her that we could only buy back one of her books, she seem fine with it. Which is nice because some students can get really disgruntled over that.

What was amazing was, the customer next to her chimed in to say: "Aw, that sucks when that don't take books back. My friends and I had a huge book burning party last year for the books we couldn't sell back!"

My jaw dropped. My customer also looked a little puzzled by the statement. "That's okay," she said slowly. "I'm pretty sure I can donate them somewhere."

And at this point, I could have (should have) held my tongue, but I'd never heard anything so. . . obtuse. "What are you," I asked (shrilly). "A Nazi?"

Of course, the young woman didn't know what I was talking about. She was about 20 and very proud of the fact that she socked it to the establishment. She shrugged. "I don't know, we thought it was fun."

Still amazed and still unable to keep my bloody mouth, I told her: "That's what fascists did during World War II." Again, the young lady didn't know what a fascist was or when World War II happened. Sigh.

Anyway the whole thing made me a think about how important books are. Even the ones you don't care for. To me, a chemistry book is the same as a copy of Moby Dick. Both are vital for society even if I can't see the importance in chemistry.

People burn books because they are afraid of the knowledge contained in them. They're afraid that knowledge will be read by people who will change the world. That is a real threat for those in control. Slaves in the American South weren't allowed to read because they might rise up and decide: "I might not need to be ruled by another human being."

The Spanish Inquisition burned the Muslim holy book, the Qur'an, in order to suppress a religious idea. The Nazis burned books to suppress a political ideology. A German writer by the name of Heinrich Heine, once wrote: "Where they burn books, so too will they, in the end, burn human beings." The Nazis burned a whole bunch of his books too.

Books were burned because of their filth content. Anything deemed pornographic by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (founded 1873). They were responsible for the destruction of about 15 tons of books for being "lewd."

Oh, and parents have partied around a bonfire of Harry Potter novels.

I'm just saying, there's enough trouble getting real sources of information in the world. There's no need for a college student to revel in the torching of information. When people in different parts of the world can't get a hold of books or freely print news, it doesn't make sense for us to just throw it all away.

So the next time you've got a textbook, any book, just laying around, and you don't want it. . . don't throw it in the trash, don't burn it! Donate it to ANYONE! Drop it off at the library, so something! Just let someone else learn something.