Is it Black and White or more “Grey”?

In order to survive one must have a plan and I think it is not only insightful, it is necessary (Asato, 2011).  I’m not sure how often censorship matters come up in the public library setting today.  When I was working in a public library, we didn’t have many controversies, at least ones I can remeber.  However, as I posted previously, the Fifty Shades of Grey caused quite a stir in some Florida counties this past year. 

So it may be easy to say “I would stand for intellectual freedom,” but could we today as we navigate our lives during the worst financial crisis in generations?  It’s a point worth thinking about for our institutions and ourselves.  We have mortgages, car payments.  Some of us have children.  We all have bills to pay.  Would we really be expected to lose our jobs over a Fifty Shades of Grey?  Would we be willing to sacrifice public funding over Fifty Shades of Grey?  Is this book “important” enough or do we pick our battles and wait for “better literature”? 

We can look to the past for guidance.  Two areas of censorship are fascinating and possibly quite disturbing.  The first occurred immediately after World War II in response to the growing “Red Scare” and the rise of McCarthyism.  The second involves the post-9/11 threat and the removal of GPO documents.

During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, the New York Public Library and its librarians often came under attack because of the content of its holdings or because of some associations it had with scholars (Francoeur, 2011).  The library was able to weather these storms and “survive” by taking a pragmatic approach.  When its personnel was attacked using “red-baiting techniques” it vigorously defended them.  Many times, however, when general attacks were levied in the press, it would use the influence of its powerful board members to obtain relief, usually through retractions.  When interest groups challenged its holdings, the NYPL would hide behind bureaucratic language in giving a vague response.  Lastly, when controversy appeared to be on the horizon, the NYPL would quietly change its conduct to avoid drawing its attention to itself and its “questionable” holdings (Francoeur, 2011). 

So in this drastically repressive age, the NYPL survived by being flexible.  It should be noted that the library never destroyed or banned any of its “questionable” material.  It just hid them.

More recently are our experiences with the USA PATRIOT Act (USAPA).  After the events of 9/11, the federal government sought expanded surveillance powers.  In casting its net, the USAPA targeted libraries as an area of concern because of the availability of computer terminals for public use and the nature of the library as a repository of information, some of it governmental. 

Libraries were uniquely aware of such situations after the problems with the Library Awareness Program  (Matz, 2008).  They challenged such governmental invasions of privacy as required by the ALA Code of Ethics (ALA, 1996, 2004, 2008).  In 2002, the ALA had adopted guidelines for dealing with government requests for information.  When the ALA raised issues with the USAPA, Attorney general John Ashcroft dismissed them as “breathless reports and baseless hysteria” (Matz, 2008, p. 77). 

Unfortunately, in 2005, breathless and hysterical librarians in Connecticut were issued with a request for information that included a gag order, prohibiting them from discussing the case or even the fact that they were litigants in Doe v. Gonzales, the style of the case after the Connecticut library consortium decided to challenge the request.  Eventually the consortium was successful in court. 

The response of the Connecticut library consortium was helped by the fact that the ALA had guidelines in place for government requests and had been constantly educating its membership regarding the USAPA.  It took a lot of personal courage by the librarians because if they violated the gag order, they were subject to criminal penalties (Matz, 2008). 

However, could we do the same if the stakes were not so high?  What if it didn’t involve such weighty constitutional issues?  Would we be willing to lose our jobs for a romance novel?  Perhaps the answer isn’t black and white, but “grey”. 

References 

American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights, http://www.ala.org/advocacy/ intfreedom/librarybill, accessed on November 7, 2012.

American Library Association. (2004). Core values of librarianship, http://www.ala.org/offices/oif/statementspols/corevaluesstatement/corevalues, accessed on November 17, 2012. 

American Library Association. (2008). Code of ethics of the American Library Association, http://www.ala.org/advocacy/proethics/codeofethics/codeethics, accessed on November 17, 2012. 

Asato, N. (2011). The Origins of the Freedom to Read Foundation: Public Librarians' Campaign to Establish a Legal Defense against Library Censorship. Public Library Quarterly, 30(4), 286-306. doi:10.1080/01616846.2011.625598 

Francoeur, S. (2011). Prudence and Controversy: The New York Public Library Response to Post-War Anti-Communist Pressures. Library & Information History, 27(3), 140-160.

Matz, C. (2008). Libraries and the USA PATRIOT Act: Values in Conflict. Journal Of Library Administration, 47(3/4), 69-87.

Ulysses - A Short History of Censorship

“[T]he answer will be that it is filthy and filthy books are not allowed to be imported into this country." (Casado, 2000, p. 484) 

That’s usually how these things start and with Ulysses, James Joyce’s masterpiece, there was no exception.  What is unusual, however, is the way and magnitude with which the issue was settled. 

Allow me to be a little more personal with this post because I thoroughly enjoy the subject.  As a professed and incurable bibliophile, collecting Ulysses is my passion.  I own twelve separate printings of this work .  Why?  Because, fortunately for us, Joyce was a constant (and horrible) editor, sometimes correcting the wrong manuscript. So each printing is different (Slocum, J. & Cahoon, H., 1971). 

When I read the ALA website, I was stunned at the paucity of information for Ulysses which simply states: “Burned in the U.S. (1918), Ireland (1922), Canada (1922), England (1923) and banned in England (1929) (ALA, n.d.). 

Ulysses was not only burned, it was banned, seized and zealously burned with enthusiastic fervor. 

By the time the censors finished their work, Ulysses had virtually been banned in the entire English-speaking world.  This unity in action prompted a comment from Joyce that this should make him eligible for a Nobel peace prize (Vanderham, 1998, p.4). 

The censorship history of Ulysses is essentially a history of its publication.  Perhaps no modern book from the outset received so much scrutiny from censors where it substantially affected its entire publication and printing history. 

Due to its questionable content, Joyce was unable to get a printer in England (Casado, 2002). Thus, Ulysses first began as a serialization in March 1918 in Margaret Anderson’s literary magazine The Little Review (Ellman, 1982, p. 421) for which Joyce would write one chapter and then have it printed.  Surprisingly, the first hint of censorship came not from the authorities but from fellow author and foreign editor for The Little Review Ezra Pound who proposed several edits to keep it from being censured by the U.S. authorities.  Joyce often refused (Vanderham, p.18). 

Eventually, Ulysses was seized on four separate occasions by the U.S. Post Office between 1918 and 1920, before serialization ended in December of that year, leaving the last four chapters unprinted.  This was due both to an accident of circumstance and by purposeful intent. 

When The Little Review began serialization, the magazine was already under the watchful eye of the U.S. government as being a politically subversive magazine.  With World War I in the backdrop, anarchists and communists were spreading their propaganda.  Thus, by 1917, The Little Review was being monitored by the time the first installment of Ulysses was mailed.  By January of 1920, the U.S. Post office had seized and destroyed copies of The Little Review three times (Vanderham, p. 2). 

Margaret Anderson chanced on a fourth and sent an unsolicited copy of the July –August 1920 issue to the daughter of a prominent New York lawyer.  She was appalled by its language.  The distraught father complained to District Attorney Joseph Forrester and John Sumner from the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (Vanderham, p. 38).  The editors of The Little Review were charged under section 211 of the Criminal Code and trial was scheduled (Casado, 2002, p. 91).  John Quinn, counsel for the editors argued that Ulysses did not provoke immoral desires, citing as evidence the fact that the District Attorney had just read portions of the offending text into evidence without any desirous effect.  The judges laughed at this argument and then convicted Anderson, fining her $50 and prohibiting her from publishing any more of the book.  Ulysses was thus banned in the United States (Vanderham, p.3). 

Ulysses met the same fate in England when the Deputy of Public Prosecutions declared the book to be obscene.  This was done despite the fact that he admits “I have not had the time nor, I may add, the inclination to read through this book.”  (Casado, 2000, p.483).  By January of 1923, England had declared the Book undesirable and began seizing it from the posts under section 42 of the Customs Consolidation Act of 1876.  Ireland and Australia had done likewise.  A formal ban, which was irrelevant because it could not be printed or imported into England, came later. 

By the 1930’s, Ulysses had been printed in France and Germany, included some very famous unauthorized copies.  Several scholarly works analyzing Ulysses were written, all for a book that could not be read. 

Seeing its literary value, Bennet Cerf of Random House hired famed civil rights lawyer Morris Ernst to litigate the issue of its exclusion.  Ernst obtained a copy of the Paris edition of Ulysses, had numerous scholarly reviews of the work pasted inside the front cover, and had it imported into the United States, making sure that it was seized by U.S. Customs, and then litigated the seizure (Vanderham, p.88). 

Ernst’s defense was radical.  He did not try to argue that the book was not obscene as had countless other attorneys defending previously seized books.  Using one piece of evidence, the copy of Ulysses with the critical reviews pasted into it, Ernst argued that it was a piece of esthetic art.  Because there is no obscene art, Ulysses cannot fit the definition of obscenity under the statute (Vanderham, p.97).  After trial and briefing on the point, Judge John M. Woolsey ruled in favor of Random House, declaring that Ulysses was not obscene in December of 1933.  More importantly, by siding with Ernst’s argument, Woolsey declared that since Ulysses was a piece of esthetic literature, it could not be banned.  Judge Woolsey’s opinion was so powerful that Cerf had it reprinted in the very beginning of the Random House edition.  The next year, Ireland lifted its ban, with England following in 1934.  The rest of the English-speaking world soon followed (Vanderham, p. 5). 

 (Marilyn taking a break)

 

Ulysses, sometimes called the longest day in literature, marks a turning point in the history of censorship.  By successfully advancing an esthetic theory of literature, wholesale national banning of books through prior restraint would become more difficult in the future. 

References

American Library Association.  (n.d.)Banned and/or challenged books from the Radcliffe Publishing Course top 100 novels of the 20th century, http://www.ala.org/advocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengedclassics/reasonsbanned, accessed on November 7, 2012. 

American Library Association. (1996). Library Bill of Rights, http://www.ala.org/advocacy/ intfreedom/librarybill, accessed on November 7, 2012.  

Casado, C. (2000). Sifting through Censorship: The British Home Office "Ulysses" Files (1922-1936). James Joyce Quarterly, 37(3), 479-508. 

Casado, C. (2002). Legal Prudery: The Case of “Ulysses”. Journal of Modern Literature, 26(1), 90-98. 

Ellman, R. (1982). James Joyce. Oxford University Press: New York. 

Slocum, J. & Cahoon, H. (1971). A Bibliography of James Joyce [1882-1941].  Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. 

Vanderham, P. (1998). James Joyce and Censureship. New York: New York University Press.

 

Banned Books Week

What do we do?  Should we keep vigilant in our awareness but moderate in our actions?

I just read a blog post from the Annoyed Librarian http://blog.libraryjournal.com/annoyedlibrarian/2012/09/24/a-solution-looking-for-a-problem/ and I am not sure of her argument.  She makes the distinction between Ulysses, a book she states was actually censored, to other books that were "removed" from some libraries but not "censured" everywhere. 

I think her argument's main point rests on a distinction without a difference.

Is there a legal difference between removing a book and censoring a book under the law?  I'm not aware of one.

The Annoyed Librarian makes a great argument (one argued by govenment many times before) that if a book is available somewhere, then it is not censured.  For example, if the county commission banned Timmy's favorite book from his library, well Timmy could just a) hop on a bus and go to a different library, or b) buy the book himself.

Unfortunately, this argument often fails because the book is being banned by a governmental agency (First Amendment incorporated to the states) without a significant government purpose.  We don't look to "availability in other jurisdictions" as the appropriate test for censureship  (and let's not forget they were censuring Ulysses for our sake, just like they "removed" Fifty Shades of Grey from the libraries in Brevard County. To protect all those young mothers from this "mommy porn").

If that was the case, we could "remove" all questionable books because they would be available at the Library of Congress.

The Annoyed Librarian was right about one thing:  that Ulysses was censured.  The reason that is true is that Ulysses was the last book to be legally censured in the U.S.  This doesn't mean, however, that governments won't keep trying to censure books by "removing" them.