My Banned Book

Like most librarians (and most non-librarians of my acquaintance), I’m not a big fan of censorship.  Unless there are really vile exigent circumstances, I prefer to choose my own reading, viewing, and listening material rather than have Big Brother in some guise pre-determine what’s not good for me.

The American Library Association’s Banned Book Week having just concluded (they’re against banning rather than for it), I heard a story on The Takeaway a few days ago about book banning in libraries and schools.  That made me recall an incident from when I was attending the School of Library and Information Studies at Wayne State University over 30 years ago.

And about the time I got a book removed from a library's collection.

I was taking a class in collection development—how to build and maintain a library’s collection so as to best fulfill the institution’s mission statement while adhering to the budget.  The instructor (Edith Phillips, if I remember correctly) gave us an interesting assignment.   We were to imagine ourselves as directors of public libraries.  An upset patron had come to us demanding that a particular book be withdrawn from the collection.  Each of us was to choose a controversial book and then write a paper explaining how we’d handle the situation, balancing our professional standards and personal dedication to the First Amendment against the standards of the community (as if those could actually be determined).

This being very early in the 1980’s most of my fellow students (women—I was always in the minority in my classes . . . and in my workplaces) chose the 1971 classic, Our Bodies, Ourselves.   I’d never read it, but I assumed it to be along the lines of How to Keep Your Volkswagen Alive:  A Manual of Step-by-Step Procedures for the Compleat Idiot (another best-seller of the same period) only with a different focus.  Seriously, I knew that the women’s health book was highly controversial.  And I’m pretty sure that all the women argued against banning the book.

I chose a different approach.  Years earlier, I’d been a part-time student assistant in a university library (not Wayne State University) with closed stacks.  When we weren’t paging books requested patrons, we reshelved returned books.  And when we were caught up on that, we were supposed to perform shelf reading—working our way through the collection shelf-by-shelf to make sure no books had been misshelved.  (It was even more boring than it sounds.)  While shelf reading, I ran across a truly disturbing book.

Take Your Choice:  Segregation or Mongrelization was a racist polemic by a guy named Theodore Bilbo.  He’d served two non-sequential terms as governor of Mississippi and then a single term in the U.S. Senate.  Those were his qualifications for opining on the issue of segregation.  I’d never seen anything like it.  I found it irresistible in a repugnant sense, like a terrible traffic accident you can’t take your eyes off.  I smuggled it home (I wasn’t about to let anyone see me checking it out), read it cover to cover, and smuggled it back in.

Mr. Bilbo purported that the book was an objective look at the issue, even quoting from published sources.  Well, actually all of quotes were from the same source—a self-published book by another racist crackpot.  Bilbo’s basic thesis was that the colored folk were happy in their assigned place and so were the white folk in their assigned place.  That’s the way that God set it up, and Mississippi wasn’t going to mess with God’s Divine Plan so long as he (Bilbo, not God) was in charge.

Having received the assignment from Dr. Phillips, I returned to those closed stacks (I had connections).  The vile book was still there.  They’d installed a theft detection system since my previous escapade smuggling it into and out of the building, but I knew how to beat it.  (No, I won’t tell you . . . librarians have professional secrets, just like magicians do.)  Taking it home, I re-read it. It was every bit as appalling as I remembered it being.

 

When I wrote up my paper, I fully endorsed removing Take Your Choice:  Segregation or Mongrelization from the imaginary collection I supervised as pretend library director.  The subject matter wasn’t the issue.  My main reason for agreeing to remove the book was that it contained demonstrably fraudulent information that purported to document the genetic inferiority of blacks to whites.   Had the book used similarly false documentation to prove the contention that the earth is flat, I similarly would have acceded to a patron request to withdraw it even though the flat earth theory is hardly a burning controversy.  Furthermore, there were practical risks in keeping the book in the collection.  Had someone with an ax to pick against my imaginary library somehow run across it, they’d have had a perfect gallows from which to hang me and my library.

When I turned in the paper, I clipped it to the book.  Not only did I get an A on the paper, Dr. Phillips had me read it to the class to demonstrate that there are situations in which removing a book from a collection can be justified.

Finally, I returned to the library from which I had smuggled out the book.  Disregarding the alarm that went off when I entered the building (“It’s okay—I’m smuggling your book back in rather than out”), I walked back to the Director’s office.  I knew her personally (we used to play pinochle with mutual friends some weekends), so I thought the book should be brought to her attention.  I dropped it on her desk and gave her the short version of my story.

The next time I visited that library, I checked the catalog.  The book had been withdrawn from the collection.

 

Postscript:  So much for relying on my memory of events thirty years in the past.  The library director cited in the post has contacted me to point out two facts:

1. The stacks were no longer closed when I returned to the library to retrieve the book for my library studies assignment.
2. She has never engaged in censorship,

My first error was semi-intentional.  Even as I wrote the post, I was trying to remember when the stacks had been opened to the public.  Despite my uncertainty, I succumbed to the temptation to embellish the story.  (And I did know how to beat the theft detection system originally installed in that library.

The second error was the result of a false memory on my part.  I just checked their online catalog (as I should have when I writing the post), and the book is still in their collection.  I owe the director an amends for implying that she would have removed an objectionable book as the result of a patron complaint.  (For that matter, I never actually complained or requested that the book be withdrawn.)  Censorship is a slippery slope to venture out on.  The case can certainly be made that there's historical value in retaining artifacts of an earlier time even when they've become controversial.  It may be difficult for a college student of the early Twenty First Century to believe that a governor and senator would ever publish anything as insensitive and potentially incendiary as that book was. 

So I hereby apologize to said director for my error.  She is a woman of principle whom I've long admired.  I was wrong, and I thank her for correcting my mistake.
 

Detroit's Elephant Man

Years ago, I knew the Elephant Man.

No, he didn’t have a horrible disfiguring medical condition like John Merrick was portrayed as having in Victorian London in the 1980 Oscar winning film, The Elephant Man.  Instead, he was obsessed with elephants.  Their anatomy.  Their physiology.  And above all, their behavior.

I came to know Jeheskal Shoshani (but everyone called him Hezy) when I worked at Wayne State University’s Science and Engineering Library from 1979-1985.  My main responsibility was document delivery and interlibrary loan—obtaining from other libraries the books and periodical articles that WSU grad students and faculty needed but which were lacking from our own collection.  And this friendly guy with a gray, grizzled beard kept on requesting literature about elephants.  Not just recent stuff, but publications from the early 19^th Century and even earlier.

Over time, I got to know Hezy.  He was an Israeli who had somehow found himself pursuing a PhD. in evolutionary biology in Detroit.  And he wanted to know everything about elephants.  Reputedly, he had grown fascinated with the creatures while employed as an elephant keeper at the Tel Aviv Zoo.  I knew for a fact that he founded and published Elephant, the world’s only periodical devoted entirely to that subject.  And his fame had grown to the point that he was approached as a subject authority in the formulation of answers to two questions for television’s Hollywood Squares quiz program.  The questions were:

1. How much can an elephant can pee in one session; and
2. How high is the elephant’s eye that’s alluded to in the title song of the musical, Oklahoma.

I don't remember the answer to either question.  Nor did Hezy, until he took extensive measurements.

But it wasn’t until after I left WSU in 1985 that Hezy embarked on perhaps his most famous adventure.  After determining that it had been well over a century since the most recent full-scale dissection of an elephant, he decided that it was time to dissect another one.  Surely advances in technology and technique would lead to more knowledge about elephant anatomy.

That posed a problem.  One can’t simply order a preserved elephant corpse from a scientific supply house the way one can a fetal pig or a dozen frogs.  So Hezy turned to the network of contacts he’d built up over the years with elephant keepers at US and Canadian zoos and circuses.  He began closely tracking the health of elderly and/or ailing elephants throughout North America.

Eventually, he got the good news (good for him, not so good for the elephant) that an elephant had passed away at Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey winter quarters in Sarasota, FL.  “Don’t bury the body,” Hezy told them by phone.  “I’ll take it.”

Legend has it that McDonald’s reneged on an earlier promise to loan him a refrigerated truck whenever a dead elephant became available, but that sounds like an urban legend to me..  All I know is that Hezy and a colleague grabbed a plane from Detroit to Sarasota and then caught a cab to a U-Haul franchise.  It turned out that U-Haul didn’t rent out refrigerated trucks, so they rented the biggest truck available and drove to the circus grounds.

Loading the elephant corpse into the back of the truck turned out to be more difficult than they had anticipated.  They ultimately had to remove the head and have the forklift load first the remaining body and then the head into the truck.  (Not having brought his dissection instruments, Hezy had to borrow a chain saw to perform the decapitation.)

Then they made their way to northbound I-75 and put the pedal to the metal.  This was Florida in the summer, and they were carrying a multi-ton load of fresh meat.  They only got pulled over once, when an Alabama state trooper asked them what their rush was.  “We’ve got a dead elephant in the back that we need to get into a refrigerated lab in Detroit ASAP,” Hezy replied.  After the skeptical trooper confirmed the story (yes, that was a dead elephant in the back of the truck), he let them off with a warning to keep to somewhere near the posted speed limit for the remainder of their trip through Alabama.  After that, they would be in someone else’s jurisdiction.

I can’t say how long it took them to drive the 1,232 miles to Detroit, but I’m willing to bet it was less than the 20 hours that Google Maps says the trip should take.  After successfully offloading the elephant's body and head into the refrigerated lab that WSU had reserved for Hezy’s project, it was time to scrub out the rental truck and return it to a local U-Haul franchise. No word on how they explained what must have been a interesting lingering odor.

The dissection went well.  Hezy and his cohorts took their time and did a thorough job.  Among other things, they counted 148,198 fascicles (tiny muscle bundles) that give elephants such precise control over their trunks.

Today, there’s an exhibit in the lobby of the Science Library where I used to work that documents the project.

 

Unfortunately, the Science and Engineering Library was permanently closed in August, 2013.  No word on whether the exhibit will be moved.

After finally earning his Ph.D. at WSU, Hezy settled permanently in the metro Detroit area.  Marrying another elephant enthusiast named Sandra, he joined the faculty of the Biology Department of Oakland Community College in Detroit’s northern suburbs.   When a crew from the Oakland County Road Commission unearthed some large bones in Rochester Hills, Hezy and his students excavated the mastodon remains. 

But there wasn’t much opportunity for fieldwork in Oakland County, especially after the Detroit Zoo decided in 2004 to send their two elephants (Wanda and Winky) to the Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee so that they could spend their remaining years in more natural conditions.

He was able to spend some of his summers on the faculty of the University of Asmara in Eritrea and performing research funded by the Born Free Foundation in the United Kingdom.  And then he moved on to Addis Ababa University in 2007, teaching and studying the same group of elephants who migrate seasonally between the two countries.

That’s where Hezy was when he met an untimely end on May 20^th, 2008.  He was one of the victims of a public minibus bombing by terrorists in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 



The Elephant Research Foundation that Hezy founded in 1977 survives him, as does the Jeheskel (Hezy) Shoshani Library Endowed Collection that’s housed in the WSU Science Library.  During his career, Hezy published nearly 200 scientific papers and edited one popular book (Elephants: Majestic Creaturesof the Wild [New York:  Checkmark Books, 2000]) and coedited a technical volume (The Proboscidea:  Evolution and Palaeoecology of Elephants andTheir Relatives [London:  Oxford University Press, 1996]).



I’ve learned a little about elephants over the years.  We know that they’re highly intelligent and social creatures.  They’re able to communicate across distances measured in many miles by subsonic vocalizations that are undetectable to the human ear.

I like to think that's how word of Hezy’s demise spread from one elephant to another throughout Africa.

           Hezy’s dead.

           No!  What happened?

           Did something happen to Hezy?

           That’s so sad.  He was such a kind man.

I further like to think that his pachyderm pals arranged a memorial service for him.  Imagine a pre-ordained time when every elephant around the world stopped in his tracks, paused for a moment of silence, and then raised his or her trunk and sounded a mournful trumpet.

Rest in peace, Hezy.  You're not forgotten.