Ephemera: Banned for Lifers
"Your Income Tax 2015" is forbidden?
Forget reading 48 Laws of the Game-Pimpology by Pimp’in Ken…
The list is out of the books banned in Michigan Prisons. Bret hits the list with American Psycho. As does Alice Sebold with The Lovely Bones. But guess who hits the list four times!! With Haunted and Make Something Up and Stranger Than Fiction and Pygmy. Does that mean Fight Club gets a pass, finally?
Also banned are James Patterson, John Grisham, and anything D&D. Okay, everything D&D. Screw your First Amendment!
Thank you to Vice for the hat tip.
Yeah, and forget the Count of Monte Cristo prison break joke from The Shawshank Redemption.
In the 90's there was a magazine called "Prison Life." Their tagline was "Written by prisoners: for prisoners."
It published legal advice; rants against the Rockefeller laws; in-cell cooking tips; recipes on how to use condiments a million different ways; fiction and artwork by prisoners, etc.
Outside contributors like myself were called "free-worlders."
They used to commission me for illustrations. Not long after starting-up they landed a distribution deal. Started getting a lot of attention.
Within 18 months the magazine was banned from every prison in the US.
Put the entire enterprise out of business.
Sad.
Found my favourite on the list:
Classic Trains
Magazine banned for containing maps of Ontario Canada.
So pleased they consider Ontario maps a security threat.
Everyone knows you can stop and ask Canadians for directions anywhere anytime.