Editor:

I found the editorial on Monday, January 30 ("Book Banners Reading it Wrong") by Jessie Fillerup to be very interesting. As with most of her commentary, it provides only a single, narrow viewpoint of a complicated subject. I mean this as no slight to Ms . Fillerup; I, too, remember when I was young enough to know everything.

I would love to see her truly explore one of these issues in depth, though. It is easy to say, "Banning Books is Wrong." However, there are grave consequences to that viewpoint. Would Ms. Fillerup be so quick to defend a book that describes in detail h ow to build one's own machine gun? Is she aware that any middle school student in Tucson can get a UA library card, allowing them to read "The Anarchist's Cookbook" in Special Collections, which details the manufacture of high explosives and illegal drugs ?

Unlike Ms. Fillerup, I do not have all of the right answers to these complex questions. Unlike myself, however, she does not have all of the right questions.

I do not oppose the banning of books because it is inherently Wrong. I oppose it because it destroys far more than it saves. I am acutely aware, however, that making that choice puts me in the sometimes uncomfortable position of supporting the examples I have cited above, and not just the easily defensible ones like Huck Finn.

One final point: anyone who sincerely portrays Jane Eyre as "the intimate desires of a Victorian woman who attempts to have an affair with a married man" has either never read this fine novel, or did not understand it. Ms. Fillerup is certain that her s ister will grow to recognize the value of classic literature. Let us hope she does the same; I suggest she start with Jane Eyre.

J. Sean Keane
electrical and computer engineering graduate student