If you don’t like a book, don’t read it.
But you don’t have the right to say that because you don’t like a book, nobody can read it.
If I can do that, in other countries I can ban the bible. (And I’d bet money it’s already been done.) Do you like that idea?
Serioulsy, book-banning is an idea built on the idea that you’ll always be on top of the heap everywhere, and that things will never ever change. It’s a very precarious condition- suppose for a moment, just a moment, that democrats took the house, the senate, and the presidency all at the same time. (Unlikely, I know.) At that point they could try and ban all republican documentation and materials, give or take that pesky amendment. Would that be a good thing, objectively speaking? Lest you think this is fantastic, they’d hardly be the first government to ban a book.
Look, the reason you’re advocating banning this book (and I’m assuming here, feel free to correct me) is exactly not that the book is valueless - you don’t believe that; it’s because you think the book promotes or describes the wrong values. A valueless book would be of no concern to you, like the above mentioned book filled with only the letter A.
And there is a problem with that kind of argument. Lots of people - especially in the US - would probably think that any book promoting communism is promoting the wrong values; would you support the banning of Das Kapital? I’ve not read it, but from the bits I’ve read by Marx, I’d say he makes some interesting and worthwhile insights. In Germany, Mein Kampf is banned; I think Hitler was a nutcase, but I think it’s vital that people can read that book for themselves, if and when they choose.
I chose political books as an example here, but I suspect your outrage is more to do with the sexual aspects of the book. At least, you’re not crying out for the banning of books describing child murder, or the slaughter of animals for food. Why not?
Agreed.
Is there any subject matter for a book that you would say" That would be better off not published"?
Is there nothing that we as humans can agree to say NO to?
FWIW I just scanned the bookshelf to my right and picked out Stars in my pocket like grains of sand.
I don’t really care what you say, and you shouldn’t care what I say. I could do quite well without Dan Brown, Ayn Rand, or any romance novel. Most people probably could have done quite well without any book in my sf collection. For a book to be published, some person somewhere said that it is better for it to be published. If the book sells, some people somewhere thought it worth plunking down money for. Why do you consider yourself smarter than them?
Don’t be so dramatic. The world didn’t end when the movie SAW was released. Or when de Sade published his books 250 years ago.
The time spent on it could be better spent.
There are a zillion books that I think would be better off not published, including whatever the latest Chicken Soup for the Soul schmaltzfest is, and possibly including Hogg as well (can’t be sure because I haven’t read it*).
The question here is not whether it would be better for any particular book not to be published, but whether it would be better for us to forbid the publication of any particular book.
Forbidding the publication of a book has so many bad precedents and is so liable to pernicious abuse that I am very, very unwilling to consider it unless the reason for it is absolutely compelling.
I don’t consider distaste and revulsion, however natural and justified, for slimy skeevy squicky gross topics to be a compelling reason for censorship.
*Yes, I can be sure that I think the latest Chicken Soup book would be better off not published, whether I’ve read it or not. Believe me on this one. 
No, I was hoping that there are some things that all could agree are too far.
You have given me much to think about.
I see your point about UTC, but Hogg is not addressing anything of that nature.
Did you actually read the book?
-XT
I wasn’t looking for a power to ban books, just the feeling that there are some things as people we can agree are not needed to be written.
Maybe we need a book on turduckin necroiphilia, but with a dead puppy stuffed into a dead toddler, stuffed into a dead goat.
Shit, see what you made me do!
How long have you been on the Internet? You must not have had many accidental and unwanted hits in your searches or you wouldn’t be thinking that.
I suspect that there are certain types of books that get published in small editions to a limited audience. If everyone agreed something went too far, it wouldn’t get published, right? If we started free associating we’d probably come up with topics so weird or so preverted that no one has ever touched them. Then no one complains about them. You having a book to complain about contradicts your premise by its very existence.
ETA: You came up with a splendid example as I was writing. Or I hope it is just a splendid example, not a book proposal!
Considering the wide diversity of people, attitudes, mores, world view, taboos, etc just in America, let alone world wide, this doesn’t seem to be a very realistic dream. You need to understand that what YOU might find distasteful someone else might not…and vice versa.
-XT
Of COURSE most of us can agree that there are some things that don’t need to be written. That’s not the point.
The point is, if somebody else feels that one of those things DOES need to be written, do we need to prevent them from doing it?
To resist censorship is not equivalent to approving or condoning the censorable material.
So to answer the question in your thread title: We probably don’t need a book like Hogg. Probably very few if any of us have any interest whatsoever in reading a book like Hogg, or would get anything worthwhile out of it if we did. However, the distastefulness or uselessness of a book like Hogg is not a sufficient reason for forbidding its publication.
Actually, that is condoning it. But of course, they should condone it.
OK, but I don’t like it.
No. I am going with what has been posted.