Banned In New Orleans
Feeling like Maurice Girodias of Grove/Olympia Press circa 1959 ...the black shadow of censorship once again snarls its toothless yet ugly snarl..and today the stench emanates from a highly surprising corner...BOOKSTORE OWNER!
There was a time in this great country of ours (theres) when books like 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' where tossed on to a presidents desk with a paramount air of importance and disgust. "This writing constitutes a grave menace to all and any Sir. It must...I repeat...IT MUST BE BANNED!" This from (true story-check it out) Arthur Summerfield, Postmaster General. He dropped the tome onto the president's desk and had all the dirty parts underlined for him. Ike was quoted in TIME and Newsweek "Terrible, we can't have that" giving the go ahead to Summerfield, "Go ahead and prosecute anywhere possible against LADY CHATTERLY".
This rabid attitude towards readers and writers, free thinkers and free persons from a sitting president.... and a man who willfully supported the atom bombing of two non military cities in Japan just a few short years before, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in a grandiose attempt to make a point. Obscene is of course a matter of degrees.
Fast forward 45 years, in an age of self actualization and an advent of tolerance and acceptance the last place one expects to encounter the braying Ass of censorship is in a small bookstore on Maple Street in old New Orleans. Much less from the owner of the bookstore. The editors of Promethean Books where banned from the store proper and the new release they were placing was BANNED by the owner with a hilariously narrow-minded scolding , tongue-lashing and finger waggling that rivals the real.
The book HOW TO BURN DOWN THE HOUSE: THE INFAMOUS WAITER AND BARTENDER'S SCAMBIBLE has now joined its illustrious forebearers in CENSORSHIP....very least among them Nabokov's 'LOLITA ', Genet's 'OUR LADY of the FLOWERS', Hank Miller's 'TROPIC OF CANCER' and 'SEXUS, NEXUS, and PLEXUS', William S. Burroughs' 'The NAKED LUNCH' , Ginsberg's 'HOWL' not to mention Swift's 'A MODEST PROPOSAL' and so on. Being in with this group is an honor and we remain indebted to Maple Street Bookstore for their small mindedness, shortsightedness and utter lack of imagination.
Hope the cookbook's selling BIG for ya!!!
There was a time in this great country of ours (theres) when books like 'Lady Chatterly's Lover' where tossed on to a presidents desk with a paramount air of importance and disgust. "This writing constitutes a grave menace to all and any Sir. It must...I repeat...IT MUST BE BANNED!" This from (true story-check it out) Arthur Summerfield, Postmaster General. He dropped the tome onto the president's desk and had all the dirty parts underlined for him. Ike was quoted in TIME and Newsweek "Terrible, we can't have that" giving the go ahead to Summerfield, "Go ahead and prosecute anywhere possible against LADY CHATTERLY".
This rabid attitude towards readers and writers, free thinkers and free persons from a sitting president.... and a man who willfully supported the atom bombing of two non military cities in Japan just a few short years before, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in a grandiose attempt to make a point. Obscene is of course a matter of degrees.
Fast forward 45 years, in an age of self actualization and an advent of tolerance and acceptance the last place one expects to encounter the braying Ass of censorship is in a small bookstore on Maple Street in old New Orleans. Much less from the owner of the bookstore. The editors of Promethean Books where banned from the store proper and the new release they were placing was BANNED by the owner with a hilariously narrow-minded scolding , tongue-lashing and finger waggling that rivals the real.
The book HOW TO BURN DOWN THE HOUSE: THE INFAMOUS WAITER AND BARTENDER'S SCAMBIBLE has now joined its illustrious forebearers in CENSORSHIP....very least among them Nabokov's 'LOLITA ', Genet's 'OUR LADY of the FLOWERS', Hank Miller's 'TROPIC OF CANCER' and 'SEXUS, NEXUS, and PLEXUS', William S. Burroughs' 'The NAKED LUNCH' , Ginsberg's 'HOWL' not to mention Swift's 'A MODEST PROPOSAL' and so on. Being in with this group is an honor and we remain indebted to Maple Street Bookstore for their small mindedness, shortsightedness and utter lack of imagination.
Hope the cookbook's selling BIG for ya!!!
posted by Anonymous at 1:51 PM
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