Word: books
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...fantasy, only slightly improbable, explores the effects of a brain operation that turns a 32-year-old moron into an intellectual genius, but one still plagued by psychic traumas inflicted in childhood. Cast in the form of the protagonist's diary entries, his is one of the most extraordinary books of the decade. Reading it is an amazing educational experience. One gets to understand the learning process, society's attitudes toward the mentally retarded, the difference between intellectual and emotional maturity, and the essence of human dignity. The author shows here a masterly ability to handle sensitive insights, pathos, humor...
...THERE they are: a supreme book, a good book, and a superior book. Yet the Rev. Hanson said of them that literary value "may be hard to find." Furthermore, another of the Supreme Court's criteria for obscenity requires that a work be "utterly without redeeming social value," whereas each of these three works-literary quality aside-is clearly a document of unusual social significance and value...
...result was the formation of a Book Review Committee, consisting of four members and two advisors (including Supt. Ryder). Last spring the Committee issued an official report of its activities and findings. The Committee decided to meet with members of the Telstar English Department in order to elicit its educational philosophy. They learned that the teachers viewed their task not as one of "getting students to memorize rules of grammar and traditional pieces of valued poetry," but rather as one of trying to "have students exposed to differing ideas and value systems in an effort to have them arrive...
Subsequently the Committee met with the Rev. Hanson and four of his supporters. This quintet aimed most of its artillery at the second book, The Emperor of ice-cream. Particular objection was voiced (1) to the protagonist's "irreverent" references to a statue and to his mother's religious values; (2) to the "gutter language" and reference to various anatomical organs: and (3) to two admittedly unconsummated sexual scenes that, it was felt, "could not help but sexually arouse children and adults alike...
After some discussion, the Rev. Hanson stated that the book was not "the real problem." What needed changing, he claimed, was the entire "humanities" approach of the English department, an approach that "poses many questions, but does not present answers." The minister went on to claim that "this humanistic approach presents a 'false God.'" and that "Telstar might go the way of many college campuses toward socialism and communism" (shades of the earlier Blue Hill fracas...