Girl, Bowdlerized

by Chris Bodenner
A censorship scandal at a Westchester high school taught me a new word:

Pages from the middle of the book [Girl, Interrupted] have been torn out by the school district after having been deemed "inappropriate" by school officials due to sexual content and strong language. ... "[But] since the book has other redeeming features, we took the liberty of bowdlerizing," [said the English Dept. chair].

"Bowdlerizing is a particularly disturbing form of censorship since it not only suppresses specific content deemed 'objectionable,' but also does violence to the work by removing material that the author thought integral," said Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It is a kind of literary fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting audience."

(Hat tip: Crooks And Liars)