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Occasional examples unpredictably presented. February 2002 |
The Cogs and Wheels
of Samuel Roth's Publicity Machine
of Samuel Roth's Publicity Machine
Anthony Comstock's legacy didn't end with his death in 1918. His New York Society for the Suppression of Vice continued on under the leadership of John Saxton Sumner, whose rigid moral standards combined with deputized powers meant that any bookdealer or publisher of erotic material could suffer suppression, seizure of goods, and even arrest.
Often, seizure of goods was the beginning and end of a NYSSV action. That was the case when Sumner seized the February 1927 issue of Samuel Roth's Two Worlds Monthly and Beau magazines: Sumner received a complaint about the contents and raided the distributor. When word got back to Roth that his magazines had been seized, he visited Sumner, attorney in tow, and advocated for a review of the magazines.
Sumner argreed to the review the magazines and he cleared Two Worlds Monthly for release. Beau, however, was a different matter. Its contents included the often-suppressed Letter to the Academy of Brussels, a tract by founding father Ben Franklin about, of all things, farting. Sumner found it and Paul Morand's Finding Your Woman in Paris offensive, and he refused to let Roth distribute the magazine within New York City.
A key figure among marginalized publishers in the inter-war period, Roth was a determined and unflinching character. Noteverything he did was kosher - he pirated an expurgated version of Lady Chatterly's Lover and published expurgated excerpts of James Joyce's Ulysses without direct permission of the author - and he was one of a handful of publishers that came under Sumner's scrutiny time and time again.
Oddly enough, something of a interdependency developed between the suppressors and the suppressed in the years between the first and second world wars. The latter justified the former's existence, but the former certainly gave the latter higher profile through well-publicized seizures. And Roth knew how to play off of a suppression; evidence of which shows loud and clear after Beau's February issue failed to appear at area news stands.
In the March issue of Beau, Roth ran an article which detailed the events of the suppression, then offered signed copies of the magazine to the first 200 takers. In it, he made clear that Beau appealed to men of taste and means, and he wouldn't take advantage of the seizure to open his doors to the masses, playing off not only his readership's self-image, but the widely-held belief that even if the educated class (professors, doctors, lawyers, etc.) could employ their intellectual powers to fend off the ill effects of erotic matter, the uneducated masses could not. (And this is just one of many class arguments against erotic materials). Employing this tactic, Roth elevated Beau above the sex pulps, bibles, and readers of his day; the magazine's New Yorker-like appearance portrayed it as something high brow.
It's interesting that the March 1927 issue of Beau had contents that, at first glance, look as objectionable as the February issue. Pieces entitled A Successful Mistress and How Men Make Love - In Burma could've raised eyebrows. And I can't help but wonder if Roth ran Is Bootleg Better Than Pre-War Stuff as a tongue-in-cheek parallel to the recent suppression. But the magazine escaped notice.
Not long after this suppression, in June 1928, Roth suffered a raid on his actually offices and an arrest. Already on parole for the mail order distribution of The Perfumed Garden, Roth's parole was revoked and he served time in prison for various publishing activities.
Today, many of the titles that earned Roth jail time remain in print and are widely available. They're as close as your local bookstore. Others are availabe on the antiquarian books market. None are suppressed any longer.
Additional source: Gertzman, Jay A. Bookleggers and Smuthounds: the trade in erotica 1920-1940. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.