Preacher

PORNOGRAPHY AND OBSCENITY--D. H.

Lawrence -- Knopf ($1).

Author David Herbert Lawrence's latest novel, Lady Chatterley's Lover, had to be printed privately in Paris, pirated editions in the U. S. and England were book-legged to collectors of erotica. Authorities almost unanimously adjudged it obscene, pornographic. It was the story of an illicit love affair between an English lady and the gamekeeper on her husband's estate: all details were given, all Anglo-Saxon unprintable words were printed. Author Lawrence defended his book, attacked the literary pirates who had stolen it, in a preface (published separately last year in the U. S. by Random House), My Skirmish with Jolly Roger. Now he pursues the subject further, in a booklet called Pornography and Obscenity.

No defensive apologist, Author Lawrence moves briskly to attack settled notions. Says he: "Boccaccio at his hottest seems to me less pornographic than Pamela or Clarissa Harlowe or even Jane Eyre, or a host of modern books or films which pass uncensored. At the same time Wagner's Tristan and Isolde seems to me very near to pornography, and so, even, do some quite popular Christian hymns." Author Lawrence thinks the present attitude to pornography is pornographical, blames much of it on "the last century, the eunuch century, the century of the mealy-mouthed lie, the century that has tried to destroy humanity, the nineteenth century." Says Lawrence, if men had a sane feeling about sex, two things would disappear; the love lyric, the smoking-room story. "You can't do it by being wise and scientific about it, like Dr. Marie Slopes: though to be wise and scientific like Dr. Marie Stopes is better than to be utterly hypocritical. . . . The way to do it is, first, to fight the sentimental lie of purity and the dirty little secret wherever you meet it, inside yourself or in the world outside. ... It means fighting with almost every breath, for the lie is ubiquitous."

The Author. David Herbert Lawrence was born in Nottingham, England, in 1885, went to Nottingham High School, Nottingham University. In 1914 he married Frieda von Richthofen. Declared consumptive three times and unfit for service, he was hounded by the military police. After the War he left England, wandered through Europe, lived in Italy, Australia, now lives in the U. S., 15 miles from Taos, N. Mex. He was a great friend of the late great Katherine Mansfield, of her husband J. Middleton Murry.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.