WOW! Women On Writing Blog: John O'Hara

Banned Books Week: John O'Hara Story, and Win an Amazon Gift Card!

Saturday, September 24, 2011

To commemorate Banned Books Week, The Muffin is participating in the Banned Books Week Blog Hop sponsored by I Am a Reader, Not a Writer. All of the posts and prizes are related to banned books so stop hopping and see which of your favorite reads might have once been banned. So after you enjoy our post, stop by I Am a Reader, Not A Writer and start hopping!

Blog Hop Giveaway:

If you would like to win a $20 Amazon Gift Card to purchase your favorite banned book, please leave a comment at the end of this post to be entered in a random drawing. The giveaway contest closes Saturday, October 1 at 11:59 PM, PST. For an extra entry, link to this post with the hashtag #bannedbooks, then come back and leave us a link to your tweet. We'll be announcing the winner here at The Muffin on Monday, October 3. Good Luck!

John O'Hara -- Banned in His Own Hometown

Small towns are usually inordinately proud of their native sons (and daughters). They name streets after them, they erect statues, they have festivals celebrating them. Pottsville, Pennsylvania does all this for John O'Hara, author of short stories and novels such as Appointment at Samarra, BUtterfield 8, and Ten North Frederick from the 1930s to the 1970s. Pottsville didn't always think of O'Hara so fondly.

You would think an area known as the home of the country's oldest brewery and anthracite coal would be excited to add "home of famous author" to the list. Perhaps...if it had been anything except O'Hara's books. Like William Faulkner, O'Hara wrote novels thinly based on the area where he grew up. Pottsville became Gibbsville, and other towns and businesses in the Schuylkill County area were re-christened with easy to decipher names. Readers around the country loved O'Hara's novels filled with sex, drinking and scandal. The people of Pottsville, certain the characters of Gibbsville were THEM, were not as in love with books they felt were revealing all the town's secrets to the world.

So the area libraries "restricted" O'Hara's books. Yes, they had them but they didn't want them to fall into "innocent hands" so the librarians kept them hidden behind the desk. You had to come up and ask specifically for these books so scandalous they couldn't even be placed on the shelves! It was the 1950's...asking for an O'Hara book was the same as marching up to the bespectacled librarian and shouting, "I'm a sex maniac! Give me Playboy! Give me the Kama Sutra! Give me O'Hara!" And, since it was a small town, within days everyone--including your mother and your minister--would know what book was on your TBR pile. I can't imagine many people checked out O'Hara's books. By restricting O'Hara's books, the libraries effectively banned them.

Thankfully, restriction has gone the way of bespectacled librarians shushing visitors to the library. John O'Hara has claimed his rightful place on our shelves and no one is shocked to see a patron checking out Ten North Frederick. In fifty years I wonder how many of the uproars over books will seem laughable to us?

Tell us, what banned books have you read? Which do you intend to read to celebrate Banned Books Week? You can find a list here.

Blog Hop Giveaway:

Win a $20 Amazon Gift Card!

1. For your first entry, just leave a comment on this post! Leave a comment or tell us what banned book you've read (or intend to read) to be entered in the random drawing.

2. For an extra entry, link to this post on Twitter with the hashtag #bannedbooks, then come back and leave us a link to your tweet.

This blog hop giveaway closes Saturday, October 1 at 11:59 PM, PST. We will announce the winner in the comments section of this post on Monday, October 3 and if we have the winner's address from the comments section, we will also notify the winner via email.

Good luck!