Synopsis
The lawyer who argued and won the Tropic of Cancer censorship case before the Supreme Court chronicles the history of censorship in a country that guarantees free speech. 20,000 first printing. $20,000 ad/promo.
Reviews
A remarkable tour de force of literary/legal sleuthing, this massive chronicle of the conflict between artistic expression and censorship covers a vast terrain, from the burning of Zola's novels and the imprisonment of his English publisher, Henry Vizetelly, to the controversies over Robert Mapplethorpe's photographs and rap group 2 Live Crew's record album. De Grazia, a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York City, who successfully argued the Tropic of Cancer case before the Supreme Court, focuses on writers, publishers and booksellers who stuck their necks out. Through a lively account of the trials and tribulations of James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, Theodore Dreiser, Henry Miller, Allen Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce and others, he demonstrates how interference with creativity by prosecutors, police and judges violates First Amendment freedoms. De Grazia anchors his arguments in legal scholarship.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A verbose and sprawling, yet well-researched and compelling, narrative history of how literary iconoclasts have run afoul of censors in America. For more than 80 years, beginning with the so-called ``Comstock Act'' of 1873, the federal government and the states cracked down on sexually oriented material, until the Warren Court, led by Justice William Brennan, sought to protect creative expression by taking on the nettlesome issue of defining obscenity (notably through the ``utterly without redeeming social value'' criterion). First Amendment attorney de Grazia (Law/Cardozo Law School; co-author, Banned Films, 1982)--who argued the landmark obscenity cases involving Tropic of Cancer and Naked Lunch--details the legal and personal reverses and victories experienced in this struggle by authors, publishers, and booksellers. Quoting extensively, even ad nauseam, from the participants, his account is at its most riveting and accessible for nonlawyers in depicting the adversity faced by the likes of Lawrence, Joyce, Dreiser, Edmund Wilson, Henry Miller, Burroughs, and Nabokov. Like many an author whose years of work have left him loath to leave anything out, however, de Grazia could have used an editor less squeamish about reducing his frequent redundancies and tangents (although the book is about American law, foreign cases involving Zola's La Terre and Radclyffe Hall's lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness are covered at length, as are the nonliterary trials of Lenny Bruce). Predictably, the author sees recent imbroglios involving 2 Live Crew, Robert Mapplethorpe, Karen Finley, etc., in the light of past cases, barely acknowledging new concerns about sexual violence, government art-funding, or the need to shield children from ever more explicit material. Despite its flaws, then, an essential reference on how artistic rebels have defied social norms on creative expression-- and on how the judiciary has responded in incremental, sometimes contradictory, ways. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
De Grazia ( Censorship Landmarks , LJ 2/15/70; Banned Films , LJ 11/15/82), a renowned defender of First Amendment rights, has written a comprehensive but very readable and thought-provoking history of literary censorship and the continuing legal and constitutional struggle to define "obscenity." He enhances our understanding of the ongoing conflict between art and censors by interspersing gossipy background stories with the candid, inspiring, and sometimes desperate words of authors James Joyce, Henry Miller, Vladimir Nabokov, and William Burroughs; famous publishers; and others. De Grazia firmly believes that the enlightened interpretations of the First Amendment evidenced in landmark Supreme Court decisions on Joyce's Ulysses (1933) and Miller's Tropic of Cancer (1964) have been eroded by the Burger and Rehnquist courts. Librarians have only to look at recent controversies over National Endowment for the Arts legislation and the 2 Live Crew trial to understand his warning that the "power of art to offend and alarm seems to be as great as ever." Highly recommended as required reading for all librarians and everyone interested in intellectual freedom issues. For "The Coming Censorship: A Talk with Jason Epstein," see Behind the Book, p. 112.--Ed.
- Jacqueline Adams, Carroll Cty. P.L., Westminster, Md.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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