Say Goodbye to John Steinbeck by Ken McGoogan

When people mounted a petition to ban Of Mice and Men from high school reading lists, I saw red. . . .
SAY GOODBYE TO JOHN STEINBECK

I read a book last Friday for the first time in 17 years
Now I don’t mean I perused the whole thing,
cause certain words pollute the atmosphere
On every second page I found profanity
In the mouth of this here penniless bum
Who was cussing and swearing and taking in vain
The names of the father and son

Chorus:
Say goodbye to John Steinbeck
Hey what’s a Nobel Prize?
Who needs Of Mice and Men?
In God’s Country we don’t sympathize
Hey, hey, say goodbye to John Steinbeck
He’s just the first on the list
Of Bleeding-Heart-know-it-alls
You give us time and we’ll get rid of the rest

Say goodbye to Bellow and to Hemingway
And say goodbye to Pearl S. Buck
Say goodbye to William Faulkner, say goodbye you’re out of luck
Say goodbye to Singer and Eugene O’Neill
And say goodbye to Morrison
Say goodbye Sinclair Lewis
In God’s Country we have just begun

The List of Nobel winners who live far away
It goes on and on and on: Garcia Marquez,
Canetti, Soyinka, in God’s Country they are going, going, gone
And we will not neglect to rid our own back yard
Of smut and filth and sacrilegious ink
Mitchell and Atwood, Richler and Laurence,
You can count on us not to blink

We’ll hunt down uppity writers and we won’t stop there
We’ll round up those who buy their books
We’ll stamp out reading in God’s Country
Except for what’s okayed by us
We’ll take these lowlife bookworms and those creeps and bums
The poor, the sick, the halt and the lame
We’ll take kids who crave a broad education
And ship the lot back whence they came