Concerned that bookstores might object to the obscene language in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the publisher dispatched an editor to help the author with the necessary changes.

Having met with Steinbeck, the editor, armed with a list of objectionable words and their replacements, duly arrived at Western Union and handed it to an operator to be transmitted to New York. "You," the horrified operator cried after glancing over the list, "are obviously not a Christian, madam!"

[According to Herbert Foerstel's Banned in the USA, Of Mice and Men ranks as the second most frequently banned book in the United States. (The Grapes of Wrath? Number 34.)]