Audio Books Face Censorship Threat : Rights: Activists warn that recorded literature could be tarred with same brush being used against music tapes.

What do the expletive-laced lyrics of the Miami rap group 2-Live-Crew have in common with F. Scott Fitzgerald’s literary classic, “The Great Gatsby”?

Produced as an audio book--on tape, compact disc or record album--”Gatsby” and other published works join rock and rap bands in the domain of recorded sound. As such, audio books have come under the same threat of censorship that has been hovering over the music industry.

Although officials at companies that manufacture audio books label the threat as “ludicrous,” civil liberties activists and anti-censorship crusaders warn that the crackdown on violence, sexual content and obscenity in rock and rap music could spill over to recordings of literature.

“I can’t imagine intelligent people spending their time trying to legislate this,” says Duvall Hecht, founder and director of Books on Tape in Costa Mesa, which produces 2,500 unabridged titles, making it the largest manufacturer in the country.

But the recording industry, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, has been taking the issue of censorship of all recorded sound seriously for some time. Audio books are “part and parcel of the same issue,” says Noel Salinger, a national spokesman for the ACLU.

Within the past year, some 15 state legislatures have considered proposals that would require records, tapes and CDs to carry labels warning customers of explicit lyrics about sexual activity, illicit drug and alcohol use, violence, suicide and Satanism. The recording industry has been trying to stave off such proposals with a voluntary labeling plan: Works considered to be offensive would bear a shining yellow sticker warning, “Explicit Lyrics--Parental Advisory.”

In response to the industry’s recent assurances that they will implement such measures, most bills pending before state legislatures have been withdrawn or defeated in committee within the past several weeks.

Nonetheless, record industry executive Danny Goldberg, head of The Musical Majority, an anti-labeling lobbying group, and a Los Angeles ACLU official, warns, “The threat’s not dead.”

State legislators are waiting in the wings to see if and how the record industry will regulate itself, says Goldberg, who led a 10,000-strong anti-labeling rally in St. Louis last week. If they don’t get what they want, he says, “legislators are saying, ‘We’ll be back next year.’ ”

Of the two remaining state initiatives, a Pennsylvania bill would require warnings on “indecent” recordings. Two tough bills in Florida would ban the sale to minors of any recording containing lyrics describing sex, illegal drug and alcohol use, murder and suicide. As Robyn Blumner, who head’s the state’s ACLU chapter, points out, this would put some of the world’s great operas--Richard Wagner’s “Tristan and Isolde” (sex outside marriage), Giuseppe Verdi’s “Il Trovatore” (infanticide and fratricide) and Charles-Francois Gounod’s “Faust” (promotion of Satan worship)--off limits to music lovers under 18.

The plight of book buffs would be even more outrageous, anti-labeling advocates say. In an article in the ACLU’s spring newsletter, Blumner says that J. D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” and D. H. Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” would warrant labeling against sexual content.

Audio book producers say the labels would constitute a sweeping censorship of recorded literature.

Hecht points to such potentially pernicious blockbusters, taped by his company, as Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger,” Ken Folletr’s “Pillars of Fire,” and John Le Carre’s “The Russia House.”

“All of our books have violence, sex and explicit language,” Hecht says. “Those are the ingredients of bestsellers today. They are also the ingredients that are used to create works of art.”

Some consumers have expressed concern with explicit material in audio books. Hecht says his catalogue warns buyers of tapes the company considers to be egregiously violent, and offended customers are refunded the amount of the purchase. “But most people are aware that anything written since World War II is going to have four-letter words and tough scenes,” he says.

Indeed, the written word in general has become more realistic. “The literary device of allusion has atrophied,” says Hecht. “The public today, including the intellectual upper crust, likes things to be explicit.”

Tape producers acknowledge that this explicitness becomes more dramatic when passages are read aloud. “I can see why people might be concerned because the impact is quite different,” says Henry Trentman, president of the Maryland-based firm Recorded Books.

“When you read to yourself you tend not to notice (bad language and explicitness). But when you listen to a book, you can’t censor the words as you hear them. You can’t skim.”

But neither Trentman nor most of his customers are proponents of censorship. In their 1989 catalogue the firm published a consumer’s letter suggesting that books, like films, should be rated, and asked customers to respond. Though some replied that they agreed with the letter-writer, Trentman says, “The general consensus was they didn’t want anybody rating books.”