Censored

Written by an old man reflecting on his life in sex, this notorious memoir was banned almost everywhere.

• It’s nice to know I’m not the imagined reader of this book – wrong gender, wrong gonads
• Harris thinks pandering to girl readers stripped English literature of its earthy Shakespearean soul
• His curious yoking together of philosophy and porn isn’t always successful

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Frank Harris, ‘My Life and Loves, Volume One’ (1922)

Frank Harris

Previous episodes mentioned here:

The Memoirs of Dolly Morton

The Lustful Turk

Exchange and Mart

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What happens when an Irishman whose dramas offended audiences writes an autobiography? The state censors ban it.  

• One censor asked: are you going to allow the truth to be told about everything to everyone without qualification and at all times?
• On a practical level, reading O’Casey’s memoir like a censor is not easy.
• Obviously Catholic censors don’t approve of Protestants – they were all apostates and heretics, on a fast train to hell – but they didn’t like anti-clericalism either.

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A deep dive into the wonderful world of classified advertisements. You could buy nearly anything through Exchange and Mart: dogs, chickens, clothing. But if you look very closely, you can see why the censors decided it was ‘habitually and frequently indecent’.

• Without the post, E&M would never have existed – it was a business built on stamps and letters
• To avoid being prosecuted for obscenity, advertisers developed a whole language of euphemism to sell contraceptives
• What I love about classified ads is the mix of boring and ambiguous within them
• Selling birth control devices in Britain: https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2020/09/08/something-for-the-weekend-sir-buying-and-selling-condoms-in-britain/
• Fetishes in the small ads: https://www.cuirmale.nl/history/meeting.htm

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Isadora Duncan was an artist who lived (and died) in an extraordinary manner. Her autobiography tells how she conceived a radical dance manifesto while partying across Europe.

• This memoir sold extremely well in America, being reprinted 9 times in 10 months
• A lot of this book reads like a society gossip column.
• Duncan can’t help being political: everything she sees about her life and women’s lives is politics to her.

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Why did a children’s picture book provoke new form of censorship in Britain?

• Danish attitudes to children produced books that upset other European cultures.
• Before Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin was published in 1983, a member of parliament called Geoffrey Dickens called bookshops to boycott it.
• In 1988, a co-operative in Cork city called the Quay Co-Cop ran a bookshop that stocked what they said was the ‘most comprehensive and up-to-date selection of lesbian and gay titles in Ireland’.

Queer Ephemera:

https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/jenny-lives-with-eric-and-martin-a-special/id1488294070?i=1000464529828

A Different Country (RTÉ, 11 June 2021) https://www.rte.ie/player/movie/a-different-country/207293480017

Pages from the book here:

https://www.gayinthe80s.com/2012/06/1983-book-jenny-lives-with-eric-and-martin/

https://corklgbtarchive.com/

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For the first time on the podcast, it’s a publication that’s still banned in Ireland! According to Register of Prohibited Publications, Health and Efficiency is ‘unwholesome literature’. Naturally, we want to know precisely how this magazine is corrupting and degrading its readers. With Prof Annebella Pollen.

Here’s today's 'blacklist'

Annebella Pollen, Nudism in a Cold Climate: the Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th Century Britain (2021)

Annebella’s article in Health and Efficiency

Throughout the thirties in Britain, when Nudism was becoming more acceptable and even fashionable, there was a boom in nudist magazines and Health and Efficiency was one of the most popular. Annebella Pollen

This magazine was being sold to people who were enjoying looking at other people's bodies rather than rejoicing in the perfection of their own. Aoife Bhreatnach

You've given me an ambition to go to the British Library and sit in the naughty section. Aoife Bhreatnach

In Health and Efficiency magazine and other kind of naturist publications from the 1920s through to about 1970, they had really restrictive laws in Britain about what body parts could be shown and how. Annebella Pollen

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A train that could whisk its passengers across borders and into each other’s arms was definitely too dangerous for the censors. With Juliette Breton.

• There's something quite erotic and tempting about travel, the possibility that you can go anywhere, but also you can meet anyone. Juliette Breton
• So many thriller/adventure/spy novels from the period use trains as a kind of way of getting into the action. Juliette Breton
• The train is like the boat going across the River Styx – everyone gets on it eventually. Aoife Bhreatnach

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When Walter Macken dedicated his first novel to his Mammy, Agnes, he did not expect the censors to declare it ‘obscene’. How does a social-problem novel by a good Catholic offend the official arbiters of taste?

• Illegitimacy and pre martial sex are central themes and key plot devices.
• It's not as full throated an exploration of the relationship between man and sheep as you might expect.
• Macken went deep into our souls without us really noticing.

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Hailed as ‘Dirty Book of the Month’ by Time in 1966, this novel was an instant bestseller. But not in Ireland, where it was illegal to sell it between 1967 and 1979. What does this classic of women’s fiction have to say about feminism, sex and medicine? With Dr Cara Rodway.

• I think one of the reasons it was so successful is that it has a wonderful curtain twitching element: who are the real celebrities that it’s based on? Cara Rodway
• The first film has been somewhat resurrected in later years as a sort of camp classic. Cara Rodway
• I think cultural phenomena like ‘Sex in the City’ owe a lot to this novel and the narrative it created around women, friendship and work. Aoife Bhreatnach
• The image through the 70s and particularly in the 80s of the female bunk buster author - that definitely owes a lot to Jacqueline Susann and her success. Cara Rodway

Films adaptations of the novel:

Valley of the Dolls (1967, dir. Mark Robson)

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970, dir. Russ Meyer)

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This is the first banned book I’ve read that features both a foot fetish and communism. Gibbons writes satire so entrancing it’s can be hard to spot the filth but if the censors could do it, so could we. Or maybe the bewitching Englishness of the novel was too dangerous? With Dr Laura Ludtke.

• The novel induced that certain sweet boredom you get from reading a slow book where you look up and realize the world has moved on. Aoife Bhreatnach
• The names are so indicative in a very Dickensian and maybe even Austenian way. Laura Ludtke
• It's written from a very self-conscious readerly perspective. Aoife Bhreatnach
• You don’t call someone you’re trying to seduce, or maybe you do, Dad. Laura Ludtke
• I think the whole novel is driving the conflict between occlusion and transparency. Laura Ludtke

Dr Laura Ludtke’s LitSci podcast

Previous Censored episodes that link to this novel: Gibbons Cold Comfort Farm (1932), Powys, 'Mr Weston's Good Wine' (1927)

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