“Don’t bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

As our resident English major and bookworm, it’s not all that uncommon for Dogfish Head founder Sam Calagione to send us the latest string of words that have sparked his curiosity. His most recent note came after an article found in The New York Times…

“Parents, activists, school board officials and lawmakers around the country are challenging books at a pace not seen in decades. The American Library Association said in a preliminary report that it received an ‘unprecedented’ 330 reports of book challenges, each of which can include multiple books, last fall.”

Book bans? Thoughts from our very own bibliophile –

Books be like beer. For Millenia there were awesome diverse distinct beers in every corner of the world. Then, thanks to the industrial Revolution homogenization and globalized beer, the world essentially got stuck with one kind of beer: inoffensive innocuous industrial light lager. Then home brewers started to revolt and brew cool bold shit again in the 1970s (think small printing presses and publishing houses as analogs to the lit world). People dug it. Then the Revolution took off and the vibrancy returned. Beauty is the eye of the beer-holder … I mean book-holder. At Dogfish Head we hope some of our beers offend you and some excite you and hit your pleasure buttons. Everyone’s palate is different. So is everyone’s mind. Our differences make us stronger and let us learn from each other. In our Dogfish Head x City Lights Inn’s library we have America’s best works of literature – some of them may offend some people – some of the will surely hit the pleasure buttons of every single reader out there.

Book bans are bullshit.