The Responsibility of Freedom

Abstract

The Responsibility of Freedom Eric Miles Williamson Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression Edited by Bill Morgan and Nancy J. Peters City Lights http://www.citylights.com 224 pages; paper, $14.95 In the United States, writers fret a great deal about "freedom of the press," worrying that if we can't say naughty words our literature will suffer enormously. After all, without a "shit," a "fuck," a "cunt," and an occasional "asshole," what the fuck would our literature be? American writers, compared to writers from most othercountries, enjoy a freedom of expression that is unparalleled. Here in the United States, writers can say just about anything they want to say without fear of public outcry or censorship. This is largely because here in the United States no one pays much attention to writers who aspire to the condition of literature. In Europe or South America, by way of contrast, literary writers are often public figures: Rómulo Gallegos, his country's foremost novelist , was elected president of Venezuela in 1948. Mexico's greatest novelist, Carlos Fuentes, served as his country's ambassador to France. Mario Vargas Llosa nearly became president of Peru in 1990. In many other countries—notably Catholic ones—if one is a writer, one is not reviled and mistrusted as writers are in Protestant America: writers in other nations are respected intellectuals and role models for their people. We in Pinocchio America prefer to let actors, puppets incarnate, be our mayors, our governors, our presidents—making no pretense to their actual functions with respect to the corporations they serve. Our writers we ignore as so many crybabies, perverts, druggies, and drunks. And so American writers can shit, fuck, cunt, asshole, and gosh-golly-god-darn it all they want, and they don't go to jail for it. Samuel Delany can publish his vile, shit-and-cum-soaked Hogg (1995) and his only punishment is the book's obscurity. Why bring attention to the silly people, when in this country a book that gets banned will invariably make the writer famous? It's better to let the petulant children cry themselves asleep and into oblivion. In Shakespeare's day, playwrights were required to submit their manuscripts to the Master of Revels, whose job it was to comb the plays for not only obscenity, but unfavorable depictions ofpeople in positions ofpower. Aplay that even hinted at criticism of the court could land the author in the Tower or Old Bailey's. Ifthe playwright wanted to comment on the court ofKing James, for instance, he not only had to set the play in a foreign land (Italy was a favored foreign stage set for comedies, and Rome was the favored guise for political intrigues), but he'd better be certain the characters in the play bore no resemblance to any bigwigs . Take, for instance, Ben Jonson's Sejanus: His Fall (1603); though the play very closely follows actual recorded history as told by Tacitus, and though it contains no overt references to King James, it landed Jonson in jail. Censorship was serious business. In 2006, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the publication ofAllen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), a book to which we owe much in terms of our current wide-sweeping freedom of expression. Howl is arguably the most important book of American poetry of the twentieth century. This is not to say it is the best book, but, to be sure, no other single volume of poems has had greater social ramifications than Howl. Not only did its trial set the precedent for allowing naughty words into print, but Howl is the book at the bookstore that's most likely to have been browsed by people too cheap to purchase it. People who don't read poetry read Howl. Undergraduates discover it and decide they want to be poets or poet-dropouts or poet-stoners. Hillbillies in Missouri find it in their teenager's room in their single-wide and bum it. College professors get threatening calls from infuriated parents and Bible-beating Jesuspeople. Posturing poets perform it (with emotion) at Banned Books events. Michael McClure can't speak a paragraph without name-dropping...