Melville House Books

In response to last Thursday’s vote by the U.S. House of Representatives to reauthorize 16 provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act, including the clause requiring librarians and booksellers to secretly hand over customer records, the head of the American Library Association has called the Act “Kafkaesque.” According to a Reuters wire story by Deborah Zabarenko, ALA president Michael Gorman says, “It’s very reminiscent of the ’50s and the ‘red scare’ where people showed up at libraries trying to find which political books professors had read, because they were going to be put on a communist list or something.” He added, “I’m much too fond of Orwell to call it Orwellian, but it’s Kafkaesque.”

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.