Posted on 02/05/2014 5:08:14 AM PST by Freelance Warrior
OMSK, February 4 (RAPSI) – A commission of the Pushkin Library in Omsk, Siberia, ruled that Theodore Dreiser’s novel The Financier must not be issued to minors, a library official told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.
Library Deputy Director Oksana Moskovtseva said they were acting in accordance with the law On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development.
“New books are printed with age ratings marked on them. For books that were printed before 2012 we have a special commission of library staff that decides on their age suitability,” Moskovtseva said. “It’s difficult to make a decision because the phrasing of the law is not totally clear. We have decided against issuing Dreiser’s Financier to children because the Eksmo Publishers has rated the book 18+.”
The Pushkin Library contains 3.5 million books, says Moskovtseva, including 200,000 works of fiction, most of which have no age-suitability labels. The law On Protecting Children from Information Harmful to Their Health and Development came into force on September 1, 2012.
Under the law, information producers and providers – newspapers, magazines, television and radio broadcasts, movies, websites, etc. – must assign a rating to their content or provide a warning message, limiting the information to users over a certain age. Age ratings for children over six, 12, or 16 years are assigned depending on the degree of the texts or images’ potential psychological harm to children, especially if they contain adult language or scenes of violence, or may encourage the use of drugs, alcohol, or tobacco.
Is there a problem there?
Probably since T. Dreiser is considered a classical American writer (in the USSR and Russia - for sure, internationally - maybe, according to the wikipedia article).
He was an extreme leftist.
All the more reason to keep him away from impressionable kids.
So, today in Russia extreme American leftists go to the same category as porn goes.
Betcha I’m the only FReeper who’s actually been to Omsk - twice - back in 1993.
I read a biography of Dreiser and when I came across a story of him participating as a teenager in hanging a cat or cats from trees, my opinion of him went into the tank and has never recovered.
Yes he could turn a phrase, no doubt, but I think he was also mentally disturbed and at the very least, very, very dissatisfied and wanting to subvert society since he was not “from the good side of the tracks” back when that meant something.
I think some novels of him are far from any political calls, including "The Financier". Portraying the society negatively, probably, but nothing about subverting it. I think "The American tragedy" is the same, but I've never read it, just watched a film.
“Sister Carrie” which I read in high school, was subverting in its way. Our English class took away from it that his sister (and it was based on reality) “fell into bad ways” and was not sorry for it or doing badly.
I think it was one of many many novels that took a step and found it was accepted and book by book kept going down decade after decade so that by the 1970’s “Last Tango in Paris” was being passed around calmly in high school.
Not to say great books have not been written, but by and large society today is not celebrating them, they are too busy enjoying the muck. And as it has been said of muck-rakers, “You can rake the muck this way and that, but it is still muck.”
Being a Communist, Dreiser was popularized in the USSR (in any library, a source for English textbooks, as well as translations), together with a couple of other American authors. In absence of other sources his novels provided a picture of American society to an average Soviet. So this ban is big enough news in Russia.
Yes, bless them, the Russians seem, for now, to be going the opposite way that we are.
How many minors - anywhere - voluntarily read Dreiser?
not really a problem
ban?
Not a huge loss, IMHO. On the other hand, handing little Ivan a bottle of vodka and a Tolstoy novel during a cold, grey Russian winter is a sure recipe for suicide...
“Betcha I’m the only FReeper who’s actually been to Omsk - twice - back in 1993.”
__
Bet you’re right. :-)
.
Real life is continously proving othervise: Tolstoy novels are a part of the Russian school curriculum. But vodka may really add something (not in the curriculum).
No, of course. Just a library refused to lend the book to a 16 y.o. girl, explaining that it had rated it 18+ according with a recently passed law.
That isn’t a ban though, that’s a restriction
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.