By Michael Miner
What, then, of the word with which it was confused? Can it ever be put up with? A couple of weeks ago the Midwest Bookhunters–80-some dealers of rare old books–held their spring fair at Navy Pier. That isn’t where they’d wanted to be. A year earlier they’d gathered at the new Gentile Center of Loyola University. The daylong fair was a success, and the Bookhunters hoped to return. But a problem arose.
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“It is my hope that you can understand our desire to uphold our mission and purpose and why we must ask for exhibitors to comply by not displaying any materials of an offensive nature.”
Tom Zimmerman, the suburban used-book dealer whose committee oversaw the fair, received the letter. He told me last week he could only guess which books had offended the security guards. Possibly Nigger, the autobiography of Dick Gregory. Possibly Conrad’s Nigger of the “Narcissus.” “A couple of the dealers feature collectible African-American material,” he said. “Books from the 20s and 30s–it wasn’t uncommon to have that in the title.”
The dealer described the letter Zimmerman had received from Loyola. “The sentiments reflected in that letter are contrary to the Jesuit tradition which I was taught early in life. I wonder if the person writing it really had the authority to speak for the University in such a manner. An attitude of censorship is not what I was brought up to expect from a Jesuit institution.”
However Loyola reasoned, it was by a process that the university was reluctant to illuminate. When we first spoke, Elizabeth Wilson, Loyola’s director of media relations, knew nothing about the Bookhunters episode. “Suffice it to say,” she told me, “that we don’t invite opportunities for offensive materials or those not consistent with our mission to be on display at the university.”
“I know how they’re trying to make it sound,” says Sandra Bell.
