A member of the Dorchester District 2 school board has borrowed three copies of Catcher in the Rye from two Summerville, South Carolina–area high schools and says he intends to pay for the books rather than return them. Anticipating that his fellow board members will oppose his request to have the title banned from school libraries, Howard Bagwell told the September 7 Myrtle Beach Sun News, “I understand they have their own opinions, and that is OK, but I want everyone to know how I feel.”
Bagwell’s challenge is the second one in a decade that he has brought against the classic coming-of-age novel by J. D. Salinger. A member of the board for 20 years, Bagwell saw his 1993 request defeated on appeal to the board by 6–1.
“It is a filthy, filthy book,” Bagwell told the newspaper. “It has 269 some odd pages or so, and if you took out all the [profanity], the sarcasm, the mockery of old people, the mockery of women and decent people, you would get to read about 10 minutes’ worth.”
Posted September 10, 2001.