CHAIN REACTION

Most book stores put the latest Judith Krantz and Jackie Collins pot-boilers on display in their windows. But Walden Books in the Beverly Center has decorated its window with a host of tattered classics that have been recently banned in towns across America.

Heaped in a huge pile, with a can of gasoline and packs of matches nearby, the books represent an informal, chain-wide plea for literary freedom. A sign behind the volumes: “Those who cannot learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”

The banned works--culled from a list compiled by the American Library Assn. of books condemned by local libraries or school systems--include “Diary of Anne Frank” (challenged in 1982 in Wise County, Va.), “Color Purple” (rejected for purchase for its “troubling” ideas about race relations in 1984 in Hayward, Calif.), “Merchant of Venice” (banned in 1980 in Midland, Miss.) and “Catcher in the Rye” (banned for its “vulgarity, occultism and violence” in 1985 in Defuniac Springs, Fla.).

“Some of our stores just put up the display somewhere in the store, we put ours in the window,” said Walden staffer Gentry Johnson, who termed customer response as “overwhelmingly” positive. “We’ve had such a great reaction that we’re going to leave it up for a while. It’s been great for everyone’s morale here. People are really amazed that all these books have actually been banned. They wonder where in the world it could happen and we tell them--just go to Anaheim.”