The problem of bad books

 I think almost all people who speak of getting “bad” books out of our libraries are dangerous idiots who would have gladly and thoughtlessly joined the Nazi Party in the 1930s. Almost all, but not quite.

John Maynard Keynes brought up the idea of an Index Expurgatorius 101 years ago. He had in mind a process by which bad books would disappear from general circulation. Perhaps, like some Confederate monuments, they’d disappear into museum vaults. But they wouldn’t get in the way of people trying to learn.

Keynes’s Treatise on Probability, published in 1921, had a lengthy bibliography, and by way of explanation he said this:

• He hadn’t read all the books listed.

• The list was too long and included “dead treatises and ghostly memoirs,” i.e., bad books.

• Fewer than 100 useful books had been written on the subject. Libraries of course had more.

Then he said this:

At present a bibliographer takes pride in numerous entries; but he would be a more useful fellow, and the labors of research would be lightened, if he could practice deletion and bring into existence an accredited Index Expurgatorius.

Keynes was no supporter of ignorant people who want to burn any book they don’t have the ability to grasp. He knew that the process of getting rid of the bad, the confused and the outdated could only “by accomplished by the slow mills of the collective judgment of the learned.”

But he was musing aloud because he knew that the way to encourage students to study a challenging topic was to have them read good books, rather than bad ones.

And so we’re back to the idea of a canon.

The problem is always: Who gets to decide which is better — indeed, which is acceptable?

I like Keynes’s suggestion, “the collective judgment of the learned.”

By contrast, I don’t think you could do worse than the State Board of Education in Texas. The board’s judgment is narrow, rather than collective. It celebrates the ignorant and excludes the learned.