even books

Who would ever ban a book? Apart from the guy who played Hitler in the final and best Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade? Heaps of people, that’s who – and Australia has a particularly sticky record of it. Elmo Keep and I talked about some of the notable bannings Australia and overseas (Jackie Collins’ 1969’s The Stud, anyone?) and the future of banned books in the world of internet free-for-all with Jesse Cox late in September.

They’ve taken down the podcast so unfortunately you can’t download and listen to our dulcet tones on repeat, so here’s some interesting tidbits to sate you…

How do books get banned?

WHO bans WHAT has been historically messy in Australia, thanks to our overlapping Federal and state legislations: it could be state, it could be federal, it could be the Attorney General, it could be the postal service, it could be the ‘dirty books detail’ of Customs.

Each state had an ‘Obscene Publications Act’, plus there was a ‘Customs Act’ monitoring national borders.

It even sometimes came down to the discretion of the printers, some old fuddies not wanting to set rude words in type.

Things commonly banned: erotica, sex outside marriage, euthanasia, birth control, illicit substances, anarchic texts, homosexuality, so-called obscenities and incitements to violence. Restrictions are usually based on the vague idea of whether it’s ‘likely to cause offence.’
It is only usually unlawful to import, sell or deliver.

Australia in the 1930s and 40s was the height of censorship, with around 5000 books on the banned list.

The Office of Film and Literature Classification in 2006 became known the Australian Classification Board. (omitting Literature from the title, however, some ‘permittable’ publications are still evaluated by the Board)

Some notable bannings:

Lady Chatterley’s Lover

Written by DH Lawrence, this was first published by a porno printing press in Italy and Paris (1928/1929)

In it, Lady Chatterley has an affair with her working-class gameskeeper, Oliver Mellors. Here’s a racy bit:

“And this time the sharp ecstasy of her own passion did not overcome her; she lay with hands inert on his striving body, and do what she might, her spirit seemed to look on from the top of her head, and the butting of his haunches seemed ridiculous to her, and the sort of anxiety of his penis to come to its little evacuating crisis seemed farcical. Yes, this was love, this ridiculous bouncing of the buttocks, and the wilting of the poor insignificant, moist little penis.”

Banned in Britain until 1960 when Penguin took it to court under new obscenity legislation and it was declared ‘not guilty’. Despite this, in 1961 the ban was retained by the Menzies government in Australia. Famously, a copy was smuggled into Sydney via 34 separate letters.

Finally hit the shelves in 1965 when it was published locally (thus circumventing customs).
In Oct 2009 the book escaped the Australia Post banning of three ‘challenging’ books (Nabokov’s Lolita, Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus and Foucault’s History of Sexuality, despite its liberal use of the C and F words).

Slaughterhouse 5

This 1969 time-ripper by Kurt Vonnegut was still being banned as of August 2011 – with a Missouri highschool striking it off the syllabus for creating: “false conceptions of American history and government or that teach principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth,” even though Vonnegut was a decorated war veteran.

An anonymous donor along with the Kurt Vonnegut Library offered to donate free copies to any of the 150 students who had been meant to study the text.

Even Books did a Slaughterhouse 5 musical spectacular once at TINA! It was a choose-your-own-adventure and there was a real-live Montana Wildhack living in a space zoo.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Despite the book’s use of the ‘N’ word over 200 times, this seminal American classic by Mark Twain was most often banned for its ‘coarse’ language:

“Huck not only itched but scratched, and he said sweat when he should’ve said perspiration.” (Brooklyn Public Library, 1905)

The Anarchist Cookbook

William Powell, 1971

The author of this 1971 cult classic tried to ban his own book after converting to Christianity in 2000 – unfortunately for him, he no longer owned the rights.

1984

George Orwell, 1949

Ironically, for a book sending a grim message about totalitarian censorhip, this Orwellian tour de force is frequently censored or banned, even for its supposed ‘pro-Communism.’

The Satanic Verses

Salman Rushdie, 1988

One of the most inflammatory novels ever written, this book resulted in a riot in Pakistan and the death of five people, a death warrant on the head of the author valued at $1 million, and the death of a Japanese translator who was ‘stabbed to death’ for his involvement. This is for its approach to the Islam faith – throughout, Rushdie refers to the Prophet Muhammad as Mahound (a medieval name for the Devil.)