John Steinbeck banned the book from the county's publicly funded schools and libraries. It was burned in Salinas on two different occasions. In 2003, a school board in Mississippi banned it on the grounds of profanity. According to the American Library Association Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004, with "Of Mice and Men" ranking sixth out of 100 such books in the United States. The award of the 1962 Nobel Prize for Literature to Steinbeck was controversial in the United States. The award citation lauded Steinbeck "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as
Lenny and Carl member number 12 of the Springfield chapter of the Stonecutters secret society. In the episode "Half-Decent Proposal", Lenny is shown to have little regard for his own life: "Quick and pointless, that's the death for me." Another example of his apathy towards salvation is that he shrugs after being pulled from a ladder which would have seen him and Homer to safety. Excluding unnamed background characters, Lenny is one of the few Springfield residents to persistently resist the lure of the Movementarians. Lenny is a member of the Republican Party, as indicated in "Bart-Mangled Banner" (2004) when he reveals his