Independent Reading Post #4: Australia, 1950s Style (Prompt 4, Ch 7-8)

(image source: http://www.foothilltech.org)

Recognize the book above? If you had lived in Australia prior to the 1950s, it would have been completely unfamiliar to you.

The biggest shock for me in this book so far came in chapter eight, when Bryson mentioned that prior to the 1950s, over five-thousand titles were forbidden to be imported into the country, including Catcher in the Rye, A Farewell to Arms, Animal Farm, Peyton's Place, and (as pictured above) Brave New World. After 1950, only a few hundred books were banned from being imported. As if banning famous, classic books wasn't drastic enough, the Australians had no way of knowing what books they could not access because the list of banned books was kept secret. However, the titles of the books banned before 1950 were definitely the biggest shock, as I cannot picture our society without some of these major titles. This policy doesn't even make complete sense to me, as books like Brave New World seem relatively harmless and do not strike me as worthy of banning across an entire continent.

The other part of the chapter that came as a shock to me was Bryson's reaction to the pictures in the books that he found in a library that he visited. The pictures were of people living in Southern Australia throughout the 1950s and 1970s. From Bryson's description, their lifestyles seemed carefree, full of (as Bryson phrases it) "snazzy outfits," and in an ideal location: the developing Australian countryside. Bryson describes his reaction to the people as "There was something so marvelously innocent, so irretrievably lost, about the world back then... These people were happy. ...I wouldn't suggest for an instant that Australians are unhappy people now - anything but, in fact - but they don't have that happiness in their faces anymore. I don't think anybody does" (122). This photograph forced Bryson to make a comparison of the people's lifestyle and emotions between two different time zones that, to an extent, could probably apply to many other places in the world. I had never considered that the general demeanor of any society could be slightly less enthusiastic in present day, but after hearing Bryon's reaction to the photographs, I can definitely believe it.