Thursday, October 29, 2009

A librarian's life is not an easy one

Let Me Re-Read It Alone A Few Times And Get Back To You

Maybe Ashcroft can hang a sheet over the Venus in the background.

Apparently two library employees - it seems to be unclear whether they were assistants or professional librarians - in Nicholasville, Kentucky have been fired for denying a child access to material the pair considered pornographic.

That material? Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

Personally, I don't remember any porn in that book, which suggests three possibilities: my aged mind can no longer remember what I've read, there was a distinct lack of explicit sexual content or it wasn't very good. I'd guess that would do for ranking them in descending order by likelihood, too, come to think of it.


Librarians Won't Give Child 'Porn' Book
- [WTVQ]

The original article says "a book from The League of Extraordinary Gentleman series". Tell me if any of these suppositions sound false:

It's in a library, so it's probably a collection, not an individual comic.

If it had been the first volume, the article would simply have said "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", not "a book from the series".

An explicit, realistic copulation between Allan Quatermain and Mina Murray is depicted in volume two.

That said, remember the two women were fired for taking it on themselves to decide that the 11-year-old shouldn't see this book. Library policy is that it's nobody's business but yours (and parents, in the case of a minor) what you read.

Posted via web from Dreaded Purple Master

1 comment:

Pat said...

Yes, LOEG in either I or II is completely inappropriate for an 11-year-old. In addition to scene you cite, there is also the horrifically violent beating of Mina by the Invisible Man (at which point I realized that the term pornography does not necessarily imply sex), or the even more grotesque (but played off-camera) encounter between Mr Hyde and the Invisible Man.