In general, I don't censor books for content at the store.
I follow a librarian's code of not banning––but not emphasizing––offensive stuff.
Actually, it's rarely a problem because mostly I go by what sells, and I've found that right-wing stuff doesn't sell here, anyway. I don't bother to put it out.
Ditto old liberal stuff--really, any political books that aren't current don't move. (And the market is flooded with old copies of books by Glenn Beck and Michael Moore anyway.)
BUT... yesterday I set up this side-by-side: The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea + Moby Dick (aren't I clever?) and took its photo.
Only this morning, posting it here, did I read the blurb on the cover of Sailor:
"A Novel of the Homicidal Hysteria that Lies Latent in the Japanese Character".
???
OMG. What rubbish! And not written by the author, but the publisher.
I am taking that off the shelf. Or, maybe I should stick a sticker on the cover? Or over it? At the very least, not face it forward.
Another question:
What to do with the first English translation (1933) of Mein Kampf ("My Struggle")? Someone donated it to the store a few years ago, and it has sat since then on the shelf of "books to look up" by my desk.
I have looked it up--it's worth some money (like a hundred bucks), and it has some historical interest...
But I hate to put it out. It feels polluting. So I don't.
I've thought about asking a university library if they want it, or what to do with it, but I haven't gotten around to doing that.
So it just sits there.
I did put out a copy of The Turner Diaries, but it was marketed by Barricade Books (1996) as a warning. Big red letters on the cover says "This book contains racist propaganda" and that is "being published to alert and warn America".
I didn't even google it when I put it out--just marked it up a tiny bit (I think $1.99 instead of .99). But--wow--looking for it now, turns out Amazon pulled this book after the January 2021 attack on the US Capitol--even this version of it-- "for providing a roadmap to last week’s deadly attack on the US Capitol".
My bookseller's immediate reaction was, "I should have priced it higher." (And it does go for up to $100 online.)
But also, and more importantly, Should I have sold it?
I'd still say yes, because of the publisher's presentation.
I'd add a sticker to the cover now. After the words, "The FBI said it was the blueprint for the OK City bombing...",
I'd add ". . . in 1995" [kids won't even know] "and for the 2021 attack on the US Capitol".
Thoughts on this quandry are welcome.
