Howling for Censorship:
Censorship, publicity and the Howl Trial
When Ginsberg was ten years old he took his fathers copy of Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure by John Cleland to his room. On discovering it missing his father quickly took the illegal book away from the child. However, this is not where John Cleland and Allen Ginsberg parted ways; later a common fate was to tie them together. As Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure made censorship history by being the first known U.S. obscenity case involving a book and its publisher, Ginsberg’s Howl And Other Poems made history by being the first book and publisher brought to trial that won on the basis of the Roth case. Seven years later the ban on Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure was finally lifted, also using the ruling of the Roth case, and could join Howl And Other Poems, Ulysses and other controversial books on the shelves.
Since John Cleland’s book was banned and its publisher arrested, the U.S. has seen Chaucer, Aristophances, Daniel Defoe, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, William Faulkner, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, D.H. Lawrence, Théophile Gautier, Oscar Wilde, Leo Tolstoi, Walt Whitman and Henry Miller on the censored books list. However, legal censorship often has an adverse affect and makes the books it aims to prevent reaching the public more visible; the outcry against being suppressed gains public sympathy, curiosity, and attention making books and their authors famous. As Coetzee points out in his book Giving Offense
The book that is suppressed gets more attention as a ghost than it would have had alive; the writer who is gagged today is famous tomorrow for having been gagged.(Coetzee 43)
In his analysis of censorship Coetzee looks at Russia under Stalin, noting that the communist leader rarely arrested writers. He believes it was the recognition of the ability of writing to prosper under scrutiny that stayed Stalin’s hand, knowing that repressing a talented writer was often the very thing that would immortalize their work and their message.
The word of the master author has a disseminative power that goes beyond purely mechanical means of dissemination. The master’s word, particularly in cultures where an oral base survives can spread by word of mouth, or from hand to hand in carbon copies (samizdat’, literally, self publication); even when the word itself is not spread, it can be replaced by rumours itself (Coetzee 43)
When Mandelstam was arrested for reciting an unflattering poem about Stalin to his friends and associates the leader questioned Boris Pasternak and asked if he was a master writer. Pasternak correctly took this to be a question over whether or not he would be disposable. When told the poet was indispensable Mandelstam was sentenced to internal exile. Stalin rarely arrested writers but instead made them apologize and many like Mandelstam ended up writing poems in his favour. While he rarely censored writers he made them censor themselves through fear; Mandelstam’s wife recalls destroying some of his poetry and describes the Stalin’s method as being akin to having their tongues cut out and being forced to glorify him with the stumps. Coetzee went further in this analysis describing the method as a form of poet castration.
Stalin and his apparatus castrated a generation of writers, robbing it not only of its generative power but of its power of historical witness and therefore of its political power. By the wounds he inflicted, Stalin in effect ensured that he could not be repudiated even after his death; by this means he intended to guarantee himself a backhand immortality (Coetzee 113)
Though it often appears in different forms there has always been censorship; in some cases it is the writer in the editing or even destruction of a book, the publisher in refusing to take it on board or omitting parts of the text, or the public by refusing to read the material. Often, however, the censor is legal and comes with drastic consequences like imprisonment, or in some places death. It is this legal censor that often acts as a publicist and brings books from obscurity into the public domain.
The United States of America in the 1950’s was a very different place to Stalin’s Russia, people were not afraid to state their opinions for fear of being executed, but selling obscene books did carry jail time and could financially cripple businesses. When Howl And Other Poems was first printed in 1956 Ginsberg was an unknown writer struggling to make ends meet and Lawrence Ferlinghetti was new to the publishing scene with City Lights Press still in it’s first year. While Ginsberg’s book was a form of social critique, which painted a very unflattering picture of the U.S. government Ferlinghetti was not worried about the political content; he was concerned with the use of offensive words. So, with Ginsberg’s help, he blanked out many of the four letter words to avoid being censored and contacted the Civil Liberties Union to see if they would come to their aid if there were an issue. Concern would be raised about the language and descriptions rather than the political ideas expressed.
When, on March 25th 1957, 520 copies of Howl And Other Poems were seized it came as a surprise to both writer and publisher. Prior to getting copies printed in England Ginsberg articulated doubts over the necessity for extra copies of the book in a letter to Lawrence, as he did not believe it could sell that many.
Why [reprint] 1500 copies?? Can you sell them? There are a number in the 8th St. Bookshop, buried under Rexroth’s title, but nobody I know in the Village has seen or bought it. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 49)
However when he heard news of the seizure he immediately recommended journalists Ferlinghetti could contact for publicity. Ferlinghetti had a similar reaction and ordered an extra 2500 copies to be printed in the US and thanked MacPhee in the San Francisco Chronicle for the free publicity.
San Francisco Collector of Customs deserves a word of thanks for seizing Allen Ginsberg's “Howl And Other Poems and Other Poems” and thereby rendering it famous. Perhaps we could have a medal made. It would have taken years for critics to accomplish what the good collector did in a day, merely by calling the book obscene. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 107)
The situation was not seen as a big threat, Howl And Other Poems seemed to benefit more than anything else. But when the Howl And Other Poems publisher resurfaced in the press again it was a lot more serious; a City Lights Bookstore employee had been arrested for selling the book, so Ferlinghetti had handed himself over to the police putting his business on the line and risking jail time.
Ginsberg, on hearing of the arrests, felt revolutionary and expressed a wish to return all of the offensive four letter words to the text if the book won its case. He also wished to read the poem Howl in public again believing the poem had achieved a new level of realism by being suppressed and fantasized about being dragged away by police. His reflections on repression had proven real and the poem rang more true for him than it did before.
It might give it a reality as a “social protest” I always feared it was lacking without the armed bands of outraged Gestapo. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 63)
Rather than destroying remaining poems and writing Odes to his suppressers as Mandelstam felt forced to do in Russia, Ginsberg wanted to make the offense larger, to challenge the censors further. Censorship proved to be inspiring for his writing and motivated him to publicize his book further.
The trial was watched by many in the literary community, as two months previous to Ferlinghetti’s arrest the Roth case had finished, though it had delivered a guilty verdict it set a new precedent for other obscenity cases which would be applied for the first time in the Howl And Other Poems trial. This stated that “All ideas even having the slightest redeeming social importance – unorthodox ideas, controversial ideas, even ideas hateful to the prevailing climate of change” (MacMillan 375)
The defense used this new ruling as its main argument for the book calling forward nine different literary experts and writers to testify as to the poems literary importance. He also gave details of other books that had been classified as obscene in the past stating that works that often go down in history for their literary merit are often suppressed at first by those that do not understand them.
Your Honour, what shall I quote to convey the thought that great works and classics of literature are at first condemned by those who see destruction in everything they cannot understand and find pornographic skeletons in every closet?
I point out that Voltaire’s Candide was originally condemned as obscene because it dealt with sex. But even the prosecution’s star witness says that this work is a classic. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 193)
He went onto add that anything can be twisted into something unsavory if people are so inclined, but in the same light others who keep an open mind can find beauty in the same materials.
Words dealing with and describing sex do not destroy literary merit….Seek filth and you will find it. Seek beauty of narration and you will find that too. But to find filth you must search for it with a wanton mind and a willing application. Any book can be declared unsafe since a moron could pervert to some sexual fantasy to which his mind is open the listings in a seed catalogue. Not even the Bible would be exempt (Morgan, Howl On Trial 193)
The judge was in agreement and in his deliberations spoke out against the censorship of literature, stating that different words are used in all walks of life and that a word can have various meanings in different contexts. The case was dismissed setting censorship history. The actions of Ferlinghetti in publishing the poem and putting his livelihood on the line defending it inspired many other law cases. Grove Press, who also published poems by Ginsberg, began an expensive campaign to clear banned books of literary significance and in 1965 was brought to court for William Bouroughs Naked Lunch a book Ginsberg helped to edit and defended on the witness stand.
While in current times people still try and get books banned it is almost unheard of significant works of literature to get legally censored, however that is not to say that censorship does not still exist. On November 24th 1987 Federal Communications Commission decided that indecent material could only be aired on the radio between midnight and 6am. The question of what was indecent came into play and again the poem Howl faced censorship. Following a costly trial after airing a programme on homosexuality Pacifica was reluctant to broadcast Ginsberg’s famous poem, which was due to be aired on many stations as part of a weeklong protest against censorship called “Open Ears/Open Minds”.
This ban was more insidious than the first because it was the self-censoring stations themselves who prohibited his poetry, for fear of losing their licenses. Allen found that he had no law to fight, no statute to overturn. His poem was not obscene, but still it could not be read. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 222)
The hours were eventually extended and a 6am to 8pm ban was put in place. Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg were unable to do anything as there was no law to overturn, Howl was being censored by the radio stations for fear that it would be deemed obscene. There was no need for legal censorship fear alone had made radio stations over cautious about what they put on air and so they censored themselves.
This form of self censorship is the most common in Britain and America today. In certain parts of America schools and libraries refuse to stock Harry Potter because it goes against Christian beliefs. Sometimes the books find it hard or even impossible to get through a publishing house. This self-censorship is a lot wider than before as they are not just being censored for obscenity now, but also political and economic interests. As a lot of publishers are now part of conglomerates there is less that can be said without offending someone in the company or related to the company; there is also the company’s reputation and other books with conflicting views to consider. A well-known case in recent years was when Harper Collins would not publish Chris Patens book for fear of damaging relations with China. In the BBC News article ‘Rupert Murdoch faces authors' revolt’ Roy Greenslade correctly assessed in situation when he stated that in a business as big as Harper Collins, there will be conflicts between editors who want to publish freely and managers who might be trying to do deals with the people and organizations their editors are criticizing.
Legal censorship of the 1950’s was a battle against unreasonable officials, but the most common form of modern censorship is, like in Stalin’s Russia, driven by fear. Conglomerates fear of damaging the company’s reputation, relations, profits or simply clashing with other publications in another part of the company. Radio stations censor materials for fear of losing their licenses, their reputation and to avoid lengthy legal battles. As the censors of today are often the very organizations that fought to publish controversial books in the past a lot of books simply never get made. There is also the drawback that if people censor themselves and simply do not read your book, or make others embarrassed to read it there is no cause for outcry. There is no large oppressor to fight, no cause for media hysteria and support, the book simply fades into obscurity and dies.
To date City Lights pocket book version of Howl And Other Poems has sold almost a million copies, Allen Ginsberg has become one of the most famous poets in the world and the publisher Ferlinghetti himself managed to sell over a million copies of his own book “A Coney Island of the Mind” going on to become Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Had Howl And Other Poems been published to day it may not have received the same level of fame, and if it had it would have been a lot slower route and not have the same level of publicity. As Luther Williams aptly put it on the stand:
The best possibility now in Howl’s survival is for it’s value as a bit of literary history. I think this case will draw attention to it. It, perhaps, will have a wider readership than it might have otherwise had, and may go down in history as a stepping-stone along the way to greater or lesser liberality in the permitting of poems in its type of expression. (Morgan, Howl On Trial 150)
Poetry best sellers are now made by Nobel Prize committees and other literary panels. The books must pass through all levels of scrutiny and spend years trying to make it the top. Then a different type of literary judge awards them fame, and even then the public interest and sales figures are unlikely to reach that of Howl And Other Poems. For small publishers and unknown writers legal censorship can be a blessing in disguise.
Appendix
Books
Morgan, Bill and Peters, Nancy J. Howl on Trial. Ed. Bill Morgan. San Francisco. City Lights Books. 2006
Coetzee, J.M. Giving Offense Ed. J.M. Coetzee. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. 1996.
MacMillan, P.R. Censorship and Public Morality Ed. England. Gower Publishing Company Ltd. 1983
Ginsberg, Allen. Howl And Other Poems. Ed. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. San Francisco. City Lights Books. 1967.
Websites
City Lights Bookstore
San Francisco Chronicle: A howl that still echoes
http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/10/28/DD27873.DTL
Allen Ginsberg Official Website
Interview with Ginsberg
http://www.zorca.com/ginsberg/
History: Getting obscenity on the books
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA04/kane/30scensorship/beginning.htm
Rupert Murdoch faces authors' revolt http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/analysis/61122.stm
