The End of Obscenity: The Trials of Lady Chatterley, Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill Paperback – January 1, 1986

All the trials about obscene publications recounted by Rembar are about old fashioned old books: the trials took place in the 60s, but the books are much older: Lady Chatterley 1928, Tropic of Cancer 1934, and Fanny Hill...1748. People living in Europe had seen much worse in the meantime, and Harlequin has some volumes nowadays much more explicit and hot than these books. Rembar's is still the best book on that kind of censorship.These books were considered "classics" and therefore in my parents' library. I had much more trouble with Racine, which we had to study at school when I was 15, than with Lady Chatterley which was slightly boring to me. Racine is a French 17th century author who wrote a play about incest. Phèdre is in love with her son-in-law, but of course the reader is supposed to know that, nothing is said. As a result, I never understood the play: I could see the poor woman getting all hysterical every time her son-in-law appeared, but I had no clue: I did not have the concept...So whoever was on the board of education at the time probably did not know any better than me.I think pornography is in the eye in the beholder: if something seems dirty to you, do not read it: it is not good for you; if it seems beautiful, it is probably good literature too. Do not let the government tell you what to read.

This is a good down to earth discussion of the author's defense of three books deemed obscene, one of which was fought all the way to the Supreme Court. The book is fairly long but a lot of space is taken to cover transcripts of various court battles. My copy was a 1980s edition that had a brief introduction that argued (somewhat curiously) that the Miller ruling did not really change anything.

Twenty-five years ago, it was a crime to sell Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy in Massachusetts, or Edmund Wilson's Memoirs of Hecate County in New York, or Lady Chatterley's Lover anywhere. Henry Miller's works could come into his native land only in the hands of smugglers.The End of Obscenity describes the exciting trials of Lady Chatterly, Tropic of Cancer, and Fanny Hill, leading all the way to the Supreme Court, which cleared the way for their publication in this country. Charles Rembar's analysis of the legal background and strategy of each case is insightful and lucid. And the excerpts from the trial transcripts are often gripping, especially the excerpts from the expert witnesses who were called by the defense: Malcolm Cowley (who, in speaking of Lady Chatterley's Lover, said to a not particularly literary-minded examiner, "Sir, I will have to explain that the whole book is directed toward what doesn't happen in the book") and his fellow critics Eric Bentley, Alfred Kazin, and many others, joined by such political figures as Senator Edward Brooke, judges, postmasters and the writers themselves.Rembar's book deals not with the why of obscenity laws but with the how, and as a result often has a freshness that little recent writing on this subject can match.