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Free Speech, Censorship Petitions, and Book Burning

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Above: The original 1787 manuscript of the United States Bill of Rights, ratified in 1791.

by Jim Denney
author of Your Writing Mentor C. S. Lewis

I recently learned of a petition, signed by hundreds of people calling themselves “members of the writing, publishing, and broader literary community” who “care deeply about freedom of speech.” So far, so good. I’m a big advocate of First Amendment freedoms myself. I’m sure you are, too.

But then the petition goes on to call for a certain book and author to be cancelled. The petitioners claim, “We cannot stand idly by while our industry misuses free speech to destroy our rights.”

Hold it right there! How can you say you “care deeply” about free speech—then complain that someone “misuses” free speech by speaking or publishing a viewpoint you dislike? The word free in “free speech” means that no one else gets to decide how I use (or “misuse”) my speech. How I use my speech is 100 percent my call.

The publication of the book in question would not destroy anyone’s rights. That’s a specious rationalization. Fact is, none of the petition signers have any idea what’s in the book, because it hasn’t been written yet.

The petitioners state, “We are not calling for censorship.” Yet the point of their petition is to demand that a publisher cancel a book deal and deplatform an author. If that’s not censorship, what is?

I’m not going to say who the author is or what the book is supposedly about. If you want to know, I’m sure you can google it easily enough. I don’t care about the politics of the author or the politics of the petitioners. What’s at stake here is a vital and transcendent principle—the principle of free speech.

I’ve seen attacks on our First Amendment freedoms from both the Left and Right. To me, viewpoint censorship is always wrong, no matter who is doing it. All attempts to silence political, religious, and philosophical viewpoints are wrong-headed and a violation of our American freedoms.

Many people mistakenly think that only governments can censor. But censorship is the suppression of speech or public communication, whether it is conducted by governments or private institutions or an Internet petition. It’s the next-worst thing to book-burning.

The suppression and destruction of authors and their books has always been a weapon of repression. In 213 BC, the newly crowned Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang ordered the torching of books so that he would not be compared to rulers of the past. The Great Library of Alexandria and its manuscripts were burned several times, including a partial destruction when Julius Caesar laid siege to Alexandria in 48 BC and a complete destruction when Caliph Omar invaded the city in AD 642. British troops vengefully torched the United States Library of Congress during the War of 1812. Book-burning was a major feature of Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jewish people and their contributions to society. Book-burning was also a central strategy employed by Mao in the murderous “Cultural Revolution” of 1966 through 1976.

Book-burning is always a detestable act. But I submit to you that suppressing a book before it’s published may, in fact, be far worse than burning it after it’s published. It would be impossible in today’s world for book-burners to incinerate every copy of a book once it’s published. But a censorship petition seeks to suppress ideas before they reach the printing press.

No matter what our politics, we should resist the censorship of information and ideas in any form. Anyone who tries to suppress speech, deplatform an author, or pressure a publisher into canceling a book is like a villain straight out of Fahrenheit 451.

Are there forms of speech that are not and should not be protected? Yes, absolutely! Speech that threatens violence or incites people to lawlessness is indefensible. Speech that defames and unjustly destroys reputations is indefensible. Speech that harms or undermines the innocence of children is indefensible.

You may ask, “What about the people who signed that petition? Do they have a First Amendment right to try to cancel an author?” My answer: Yes, absolutely! And I will defend their right to do so, even as I disagree with them and criticize them for it. A petition is free speech, and the signers of the petition should be free to post their wrong-headed notions on the Internet.

In a free society, we need more speech, not less. We need arguments. We need counterarguments. We need bad ideas that will lead to better ideas. We need to hear ideas we don’t want to hear. We need information and history lessons and discussions and understanding. We need to listen and we need to speak. We need freedom, not censorship.

The petitioners call themselves “members of the writing, publishing, and broader literary community.” I saw a lot of booksellers, publicists, and librarians—and yes, a few who listed themselves as authors. But I didn’t see any signers of the stature of, say, Stephen King or Margaret Atwood on that petition. There’s good reason for that. Professional writers know how dangerous censorship is to their own creative freedom.

The First Amendment was written specifically to protect unpopular speech, speech that is in danger of being suppressed. It’s precisely the speech that sparks anger and controversy that must be defended. Speech that offends no one needs no protection. 

The freedom to write and publish our ideas is part of our uniquely American heritage. We all have a duty to protect freedom of speech, including the speech of people with whom we disagree.

Here are a few lines from “America Has a Free Speech Problem,” New York Times Editorial Board, March 18, 2022:

“For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.

“This social silencing, this depluralizing of America, has been evident for years, but dealing with it stirs yet more fear. It feels like a third rail, dangerous. For a strong nation and open society, that is dangerous.”

America does have a free speech problem. The freedom to write and publish is fragile, and it is under assault. Use it. Value it. And above all, defend it.

A Friend I’ve Never Met

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by Jim Denney, author of Your Writing Mentor C. S. Lewis

A few years ago, I was reading an autobiographical book by J. B. Phillips called Ring of Truth. In that book, Phillips recounted a startling conversation between himself and C. S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia. What makes this conversation so remarkable is that Phillips claimed it took place after Lewis’s death.

Ring of Truth by J. B. Phillips

Phillips began his account of this strange conversation by stating that he was skeptical of all paranormal claims, adding that he was “as unsuperstitious as they come.”[i] Phillips went on to say:

A few days after [Lewis’s] death, while I was watching television, he “appeared” sitting in a chair within a few feet of me, and spoke a few words which were particularly relevant to the difficult circumstances through which I was passing. He was ruddier in complexion than ever, grinning all over his face and, as the old-fashioned saying has it, positively glowing with health. The interesting thing to me was that I had not been thinking about him at all. I was neither alarmed nor surprised. . . .

 A week later, this time when I was in bed reading before going to sleep, he appeared again, even more rosily radiant than before, and [he] repeated the same message, which was very important to me at the time.[ii]

In Ring of Truth, Phillips did not elaborate on the matter that was troubling him. But he later related this incident to London journalist Dennis Bardens. Phillips told Bardens he had been dreading the process of dying. It seems that Lewis wanted Phillips to know that, as a Christian, he had nothing to fear from death or even the passage through death.[iii] Lewis’s message to Phillips: “It’s not as hard as you think, you know.”[iv]

I can’t say whether Lewis appeared to J. B. Phillips as a spirit, a hallucination, or a dream. But I trust Phillips’s truthfulness. I’m convinced that he gave an accurate account of his perception of these encounters with Lewis.

This account by J. B. Phillips makes me wish that I, too, could have a personal encounter with C. S. Lewis. I would like to be mentored by Lewis the thinker, Lewis the man of reason and faith, and Lewis the writer. I would like to take my questions to him, spread them out before him, and hear him say, “It’s not as hard as you think, you know.”

Adapted from a photo by The Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick, Ireland. Public domain.

Out of a desire to hear C. S. Lewis speak to me and mentor me, I wrote a book called Your Writing Mentor C.S. Lewis.

Lewis never wrote a book on writing, yet he did describe his creative process in a number of speeches, essays, and letters to is fans. He has left us a treasury of writing wisdom. I have spent countless hours combing through his writings and the many books and articles written about him. Out of that research I’ve distilled his writerly insights and habits into this new book, Your Writing Mentor C.S. Lewis. In the process of researching and writing the book, I feel I’ve heard him teaching and mentoring me.

C. S. Lewis wrote at least twenty-two nonfiction books, fourteen novels, two science fiction short stories, several collections of essays, and enough letters to fill multiple volumes. He produced all of this literature and these letters while maintaining a full-time career as a professor of English literature, first at Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925-1954), then at Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954-1963). The key to Lewis’s amazing literary output is that he was a “writer in overdrive.” That is, he wrote with amazing speed in a state of unconscious creative flow. In the process, he wrote intuitively and brilliantly.

J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, once called his friend C. S. Lewis a man of “great generosity and capacity for friendship,” adding:

The unpayable debt that I owe to him was not “influence” as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my “stuff” could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more, I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.[v]

It’s true. Tolkien began showing Lewis passages of his sprawling myth of Middle Earth early in their friendship. For years, Lewis was Tolkien’s sole encourager, the only person helping to motivate Tolkien to push his epic tale to completion. If not for Lewis, the world might never have heard of The Lord of the Rings.

On April 15, 1918, the world nearly lost C. S. Lewis. On that day, nineteen-year-old Second Lieutenant Clive Staples Lewis of the Somerset Light Infantry took part in an assault on German positions in the French village of Riez du Vinage. An artillery shell exploded near Lewis, killing one of his close friends and nearly killing Lewis. He carried shrapnel from that shell in his chest for the rest of his life. Had Lewis died that day, there would have been no Screwtape Letters, no Space Trilogy, no Chronicles of Narnia—and probably no Lord of the Rings.

Imagine a world without the writings of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. Now imagine a world without your ideas, your insights, your stories. The world needs your vision, insight, and imagination. That’s why I wrote Your Writing Mentor C.S. Lewis. My goal in that book is to energize you with the same principles that empowered Lewis and urged Tolkien onward. Here’s the Table of Contents from the book:

Available Now from Amazon.com

1. C. S. Lewis, Writer in Overdrive
On Lewis’s amazing ability to write quickly and brilliantly.

2. A Childlike Approach to Writing
How to shed the inhibitions and self-defeating habits that hold us back.

3. Keeping Up with Lewis
A step-by-step explanation of how to get into “flow” so we can write quickly and freely “in overdrive”—as Lewis did.

4. Why We Write
An examination of Lewis’s motivation for writing—and developing our own sense of mission as writers.

5. The Discipline of Writing
How to write consistently and productively every day, as Lewis did.

6. The Craft of Writing
How to write effectively and brilliantly, as Lewis did.

7. Escapism, Art, or Allegory?
Should we write merely to entertain—or should we strive for higher art and deeper meaning?

8. Writing for Children
Lewis’s insights into the special needs of young readers.

9. Other Worlds, Other Realities
Writing fantasy and science fiction.

10. Five Thousand Words or Less
The special rules (which Lewis exemplified) for writing short stories.

In my study of C. S. Lewis, I discovered that he wrote with amazing speed in a state of creative flow. This book will show you how you can write quickly, freely, and brilliantly as Lewis did. So let me introduce you to this wonderful friend I’ve never met—my writing mentor, and yours, C. S. Lewis.

[i] J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth: A Translator’s Testimony (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1967), 88.

[ii] J. B. Phillips, Ring of Truth, 89-90.

[iii] Dennis Bardens, Mysterious Worlds (New York: W. H. Allen, 1970), 126.

[iv] Marie A. Conn, C. S. Lewis and Human Suffering: Light Among the Shadows (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2008), 1.

[v] Humphrey Carpenter, ed., The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000), 362.

An Excerpt From YOUR WRITING MENTOR C.S. LEWIS

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An excerpt from Chapter 1 of Your Writing Mentor C. S. Lewis:

In the summer of 1932, C. S. Lewis astonished himself.

It had been a busy and stressful year, with a heavy schedule of lecturing, tutoring, and student examinations. Yet Lewis had a book inside him that desperately wanted out—an allegory of his 1931 conversion to the Christian faith. As he told his boyhood friend Arthur Greeves in a July 1932 letter, he hadn’t had time to read a book during the past eighteen-week term, much less write one.

In August, Lewis took a cross-channel boat to Ireland for a two-week visit with Greeves. He arrived at the Greeves family home in Belfast on August 15, and stayed until August 29. He hadn’t planned to write during his visit with Greeves, but somehow, amid the afternoon walks and late-night conversations with his closest friend, something wonderful happened:

Lewis wrote a book.

When he boarded the boat to return to England, he had in his luggage a nearly-complete handwritten draft of what would be his first published novel, The Pilgrim’s Regress. It totaled more than 60,000 words. During those two weeks, he had averaged about 4,300 words per day.

In the fall of 1932, Lewis made revisions and edits. His brother Warren, recently retired from the army, typed up the revised manuscript with a carbon copy. Lewis mailed a copy of The Pilgrim’s Regress to Arthur Greeves, who read it and sent back a list of suggestions. By late January 1933, J. M. Dent & Sons of London, publisher of the Everyman’s Library series, accepted The Pilgrim’s Regress for publication. Upon its release later that year, literary critic Bertrand L. Conway (Catholic World) called it “a caustic, devastating critique of modern philosophy, religion, politics, and art.”

Though it is not Lewis’s best-known or best-loved book, The Pilgrim’s Regress has endured and is widely considered a classic work of philosophical fiction. It’s all the more remarkable that Lewis composed the book in a mere two weeks.

[This excerpt is from Chapter 1: C. S. Lewis, Writer in Overdrive]

To discover how Lewis learned to write quickly—and how you can write quickly and brilliantly as he did—read Your Writing Mentor C. S. Lewis, available now in trade paperback on Amazon.

Images: Bronze sculptures of Aslan (top) and Tumnus the Faun (right) at C. S. Lewis Square in Belfast, a public space commemorating Belfast-born author C. S. Lewis and his creations from the first Narnia novel, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Photos by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash.

Ray Bradbury and Groucho Marx

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I recently discovered that Ray Bradbury made an appearance with Groucho Marx on the 1950s quiz show You Bet Your Life. At age thirty-five, Ray had two novels and a short story collection to his credit (The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and The Golden Apples of the Sun), as well as the screenplay for John Huston’s motion picture Moby Dick. It’s an entertaining TV appearance from May 24, 1956. Among other things, we learn how Ray Bradbury met his wife. Ray is on-screen during the first eight minutes of the program. Enjoy.