Few books have caused as big a stir as John Steinbeck’s The
Grapes of Wrath, when it was published in April 1939. By
May, it was the nation’s number one bestseller, but in Kern
County, California—the Joads’ newfound home—the book was
burned publicly and banned from library shelves. Obscene in
the Extreme tells the remarkable story behind this fit of
censorship.
When W. B. “Bill” Camp, a giant cotton and potato grower,
presided over its burning in downtown Bakersfield, he
declared: “We are angry, not because we were attacked but
because we were attacked by a book obscene in the extreme
sense of the word.” But Gretchen Knief, the Kern County
librarian, bravely fought back. “If that book is banned
today, what book will be banned tomorrow?”
Obscene in the Extreme serves as a window into an
extraordinary time of upheaval in America—a time when, as
Steinbeck put it, there seemed to be “a revolution . . .
going on.”
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