Free The Day They Came to Arrest the Book by Nat Hentoff Page A

review committee.”
    “You
had better chair that review committee.” A new voice was heard in the room. A high, piercing voice. “Everybody knows you’re fair, so you’re the one to chair it!” the voice continued.
    “Why, thank you, my dear.” Forster bowed to his imitation of his wife. “But I don’t know that that’s a good idea, because later I’ll be chairing the meeting of the school board that accepts or rejects the review committee’s recommendation.”
    “Nonsense,” the piercing voice was heard again. “All you have to do when the review committee sits is to say you’re not taking part in the decision at that point. You’re just there to keep order since it’s a public meeting on a highly controversial matter.”
    Reuben Forster filled his pipe. “All right, my dear. That makes sense.”
    “Mr. Forster—” A squeaky male voice edged into the discussion. “We’ve had a lot of complaints about that new line of batteries. Customers say their being cheap don’t do no good if they give out right away.”
    “You are at the wrong meeting, Oliver,” Mr. Forster growled. “This is public business.”
       “I cannot believe this is happening,” Luke, sprawling in a chair, said to Barney in the library two days after the Matthew Griswold-Kent Dickinson debate. Nearly everyone else in the school had gone home, but they, along with Nora Baines, were waiting to find out whowould be on the review committee for the trial of
Huckleberry Finn
.
    “I cannot believe it.” Luke kept shaking his head. “Just a couple of weeks ago, on television, I saw that movie,
Fahrenheit 451
. You know, the one they made out of Ray Bradbury’s book. But that was in the future. Way in the future.”
    “Where you been?” Barney said. “This has been happening all over the country.”
    “Yeah”—Luke ran his hand through his hair—“but it hasn’t been happening to
me
. I mean, I heard some things last year about some books just dropping out of sight because Mighty Mike met with a parent or somebody, but I didn’t pay it much mind. I should have, I suppose, but I didn’t. You didn’t either.” He pointed at Barney.
    “What do you want with me?” Barney frowned. “I just became editor.”
    “But you were writing for the paper last year,” Luke said. “I don’t remember reading anything about behind-the-scenes censorship at good old George Mason. Or was that because Mighty Mike wouldn’t have let you become editor if you’d made that kind of noise?”
    “Damn it”—Barney glared at Luke—“you know better than that. I tried to nail down a couple of those stories last spring, but it was like catching smoke. Nobody would say anything. Mr. Moore would just give me one of those fat smiles. Mrs. Salters said she didn’t know what I was talking about, and when I got to one of the parents who’d supposedly complained, all she’dsay was she had nothing more to complain about. Anyway, good buddy, it seems to me we ought to concentrate on what’s happening
now.”
    “I cannot believe it,” Luke said again. “Next thing you know those firemen from
Fahrenheit 451
will be coming in
here
putting the torch to”—he waved at the shelves around him—“all of this. And then each of us is going to have to memorize a book to keep it alive for generations to come. Man, that’s hard work.”
    “Calm down,” Barney said. “No way this review committee is going to throw out
Huckleberry Finn
. But it is good to have all this out in the open now—so we can fight it out in the open.”
    Miss Baines, who had been leafing through the
Daily Tribune
, snorted. “Barney, I want you to think about what you just said. Here we’ve got a book on public trial. No matter how that trial comes out, I think it’s sad that it ever had to begin. You know, it’s never the book that’s really on trial. It’s the author, even if he’s dead. Remember that, Barney. Every time this sort of thing happens, it’s