Obscenity: Explicitly Ill-Defined : Books No More the Bugaboos

The thing about sex is that, as a topic, it generally makes people nervous. Not when practiced, necessarily, but when imagined, thought about or argued over.

For example, we have a history of jittery jurisprudence on what constitutes obscenity. Jitters can make for rather good language; Judge John M. Woolsey’s decision that James Joyce’s “Ulysses” was OK--probably our most renowned obscenity case--is dryly quotable.

Still, after deciding for himself, the judge felt compelled to ask a pair of friends to bolster his opinion, or at least his morale. And his prose took refuge in the ritual wobble that enlightened critics have traditionally used with risque stuff. “Emetic” not “aphrodisiac,” Woolsey said. It is a precursor of the “dull” or “unarousing” that seemed obligatory in reviews of sexy movies until half a dozen years ago. Even today, writers rarely concede in respectable print having been physically stimulated by a book or a film.

Legislative jitters, or pinpoint dancing, seems evident in the recent California decision, first to adopt and then to adapt, federal language about the kinds of redeeming values that would exempt explicit material from being considered obscene. These values, according to federal doctrine, should be “serious”; in California, they are to be “significant.”

As I say, it is an itchy topic. Wandering through the orderly stacks of the Boston Public Library last week, I passed the shelf that deals with sex. Everywhere else, Bostonian calm. At sex, Bostonian hysteria: Books were upended, wrenched sideways, spilled on the floor--Comstock’s poltergeist, perhaps?

Poltergeists aside, to think of the 1933 Woolsey decision alongside the current debate about pornography and the law is to notice how much has changed. Whatever the standard for obscenity may be, it’s clearly a whole lot looser than it was 50 years ago. Another change is the development of a feminist attack on some kinds of sexual explicitness. And finally, the battle line has largely shifted--from books to films, magazines and records.

Beyond occasional library controversies in some communities around the country, it is hard to conceive of another book campaign like those waged against “Ulysses” or, in the 1950s, against D.H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterly’s Lover,” Edmund Wilson’s “Memoirs of Hecate County” and Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita.” The rout of those who tried to prosecute--or ban--pretty well ended the likelihood of a serious threat to any serious or even barely serious piece of writing. At least for now.

From a writer’s point of view, this may not be a total blessing. If sexy books are no longer a main target, it is not only because we are more tolerant. It is because we care less about them.

Reading is not what it was, not as central to our culture as it used to be. It has competitors. Books are the medium of stimulation--hence of shock, of controversy--to smaller segments of the public. To some degree although by no means entirely--witness the romances--these segments tend to be highbrow or upper-middlebrow.

There is a curious historical parallel. In England and the rest of Europe, censorship has a long history. Originally it was for religious and doctrinal reasons, later for political reasons. Sexual matters could be treated by writers with great freedom into the 18th Century. The first successful prosecution for sheer indecency happened in the 1720s. Before that, judges had trouble defining indecency unless aimed at religion, the state or particular persons.

By the end of the century, everything had tightened up and societies for the suppression of vice were being formed. No doubt there are many reasons, but one cited by historians is the upsurge of literacy, largely through the spread of Bible-reading Methodism. As long as reading was more or less the prerogative of an easy-mannered upper class, tolerance was unthreatened. When reading became widespread, it was no longer a harmless luxury but a massive activity, to be closely watched.

Aside from the relatively sheltered status of books nowadays, it is hard to imagine a major rollback of the permissiveness we now enjoy, or suffer, in entertainments. If there has been a chilling effect, it seems more like a sneeze than pneumonia.

Still, it happened in the 18th Century. And it is touching to recall Sir Walter Scott’s story about his great-aunt. Ensconced in early Victorian morality, she asked him, nonetheless, if he could obtain the novels by Restoration writer Aphra Behn, which she remembered from her youth. Scott sent them to her in plain wrappings.

His aunt read one, and returned the others unopened. She was shocked, but she had a lovely historical perspective.

“But is it not,” she asked him, “a very odd thing that I, an old woman of 80 and upwards, sitting alone, feel myself ashamed to read a book which, 60 years ago, I had heard read aloud for the amusement of large circles, consisting of the finest and most creditable society in London?”