On the 16th of November, Kurt Vonnegut sent a letter to Charles McCarthy, the head of the board of Drake High School, North Dakota. Charles McCarthy had, a few weeks previously, ordered the burning of all 32 copies of Slaughterhouse-Five.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

Worth reading in its entirety.