By George Barnes
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Oct. 1, 2015 at 6:37 PM
Updated at 11:15 PM
FITCHBURG - Three years ago when archivist Asher Jackson began reading through the Robert Cormier archive at Fitchburg State University, what excited him was not the writings on censorship the Leominster author was famous for challenging, but a simple paragraph in a letter from 1998 replying to students who sent him their sequels to the novel "The Chocolate War."
The archive contains many, many items on censorship. Mr. Cormier was and remains one of the more censored and challenged authors in America, 15 years after his death. Censorship was an important part of a symposium on the author Thursday at Fitchburg State University, but those attending also got a look at the the kindly and respectful man who was arguably the founder of the genre of adult novels for teens.
Mr. Jackson said he still gets emotional about what he found in the letter while digging through the boxes of letters to and from Mr. Cormier. The long letter complimented the students about their efforts at alternative endings, their writing styles and clever ideas. He also mentioned that his manuscripts and materials had been gathered at Fitchburg State University, and he made the students a promise.
"I'm going to add your sequels to my collections," Mr. Jackson read, his voice breaking slightly at the thought.
Mr. Jackson said as an archivist, that statement changed his view of creating an archive. He realized Mr. Cormier was not just concerned about his own works.
"He wanted everyone to be part of the conversation," he said.
The university recently completed digitizing the Robert Cormier collection, which contains everything from orginal manuscripts to columns he wrote for local newspapers, including the Worcester Telegram and later the Fitchburg-Leominster Sentinel & Enterprise, along with many, many letters from youthful fans, as well as critics who found his work offensive or troubling. The university even has the old manual typewriter he used to write many of his books.
Mr. Jackson said since reading the author's response to the students, his focus with the Cormier archive and other archives the university has collected is to be as inclusive as possible, bringing many voices to the collections.
Censorship was a major issue for Mr. Cormier, who traveled the country challenging efforts to ban his works from schools and libraries because they deal with often troubling issues faced by young people. From 1990 to 1999, his book "The Chocolate War" was the fourth most frequently challenged book on the American Library Association's banned and challenged book list. During the same period his book "We All Fall Down" was the 41st most challenged, and his book "Fade" was the 65th most challenged. Over the next 10 years, "The Chocolate War" moved up to third most challenged, and "We All Fall Down" was at No. 30.
The symposium focused on the challenges of censorship, looking at its roots and the continuing problem in the modern world.
Katherine O'Toole Zephir, an instructional services librarian at Fitchburg State, said that although Mr. Cormier is no longer in the top 10 most banned authors on the American Library Association's annual list, his books are still the target of challenges.
"He is still one of the most banned authors," she said.
Ms. O'Toole Zephir said that students today may not be as familiar with Mr. Cormier's works as young readers were a decade or two ago, but she hopes through the archive to help develop an new appreciation of the groundbreaking work.
Angie Miller, a former teacher who is now a librarian for Meredith High School in New Hampshire, said she was in the third year of her seven-year teaching career when she came face-to-face with censorship. She said a school official came into her classroom and told her she had to take "The Chocolate War" away from her students. A parent had found eight places in the book offensive. A young teacher, she said, she allowed herself to be bullied into removing all the books from her classroom. She said the incident colored her career and got her thinking more deeply about censorship and the ability of teachers to fight it.
Ms. Miller, who participated in the symposium remotely, said she later received letters from parents of 36 of 38 of her students giving permission for their children to read "The Chocolate War." She did not return the book to her class, but after reading many writings and interviews by Robert Cormier, she had her class read Mr. Cormier's book "I Am the Cheese."
"And then we had lunch groups about Robert Cormier," she said. "I read Robert Cormier subversively for five years."
Panelists in Fitchburg brought their own experiences to the discussion. Fitchburg State history professor Daniel Sarefield told those attending that the Romans and especially the first Roman emperors were really the founders of modern censorship, but censorship has gone on since the written word was invented.
Angela Pitrone, an English teacher in New Hampshire, said that while working for a year in the United Arab Emirates she learned to accept extensive censorship, not only of materials, but of ideas offered for discussion. She said with little that she could discuss, she often just listened. She said in listening she learned that the students would find alternative sources of information and discuss those banned ideas among themselves, sometimes with significant misinformation.
Laura Baker, an American history professor at Fitchburg State, said the university was the site of a groundbreaking censorship case in the late 1960s and early 1970s when John Antonelli, the editor of the college's newspaper at the time, challenged censorship of articles he wanted to print and won a ruling in federal court that student newspapers could not be regulated nor have their funding withheld because of objections to what was printed.
Among those attending were members of the Cormier family. Daughter Chris Cormier Hayes sat on a panel talking about the founding of the Cormier collection. She said her father had options other than Fitchburg State, but he wanted his work connected to the community he wrote about and in. She said what strikes her about his work is how much he always focused on hope, decency and morality, even when his works dealt with difficult subjects.
"He believed in the kindness of humanity," she said.
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