Girls lean back everywhere: the law of obscenity and the assault on geniusOnly in our own time have writers and other artists been free to write, sing, and depict what they want. Girls Lean Back Everywhere shows how writers, artists, and their legal defenders achieved this precarious freedom by defeating, if only for the time being, their equally irrepressible antagonists. Girls Lean Back Everywhere is the story of how the arts in America finally came to be protected under the First Amendment, thanks to the stubborn resolve of a few artists, publishers, and exhibitors, together with the efforts of a handful of lawyers and the simple courage and moral brilliance of Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. But this book does far more than trace the triumph of a great legal principle. It is also a vivid portrait, told often in their own voices, of those remarkable twentieth-century artists who defied their powerful opponents and courageously insisted on their absolute right to free expression. Edward de Grazia has crafted an extraordinary chronicle of the battles fought and won in our century in behalf of free expression. In showing how this struggle affected the careers of such artists as Joyce, Lawrence, Edmund Wilson, Vladimir Nabokov, Henry Miller, William Burroughs, Lenny Bruce, and, in our own decade, Robert Mapplethorpe, Karen Finley, Holly Hughes, and others, de Grazia demonstrates the enormous price that these artists and our culture paid for their victories--the misery, the rejection, the energies wasted, the work not done. By the 1960s it had become clear that such writers as Joyce, Lawrence, Henry Miller, and William Burroughs were here to stay and that the Warren Court, led by Justice Brennan, was wise enough to ratify what the majority ofAmericans clearly wanted. But as de Grazia also shows in this brilliant book, the hand of the censor has not lost its cunning. As forms of expression undreamed of by the founding fathers approach--as art always will--the limits of public tolerance, the great achievement of Justice Brennan and the Warren Court will increasingly be challenged. The artistic freedom that our generation enjoys may prove to be only an interlude in the unending struggle between art and the impulse to suppress it. Girls Lean Back Everywhere is a landmark account of a historic and continuing struggle of the human spirit. |
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User Review - Bill_Peschel - LibraryThingFull of fascinating information about obscenity laws, pointing out how they're inconsistently (and sometimes illegally) applied, and how authors and publishers fought back and sometimes lost. Well worth the time to read. Read full review
GIRLS LEAN BACK EVERYWHERE: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius
User Review - Jane Doe - KirkusA verbose and sprawling, yet well-researched and compelling, narrative history of how literary iconoclasts have run afoul of censors in America. For more than 80 years, beginning with the so-called ... Read full review
Contents
Girls Lean Back Everywhere | 3 |
Fuck Up Love | 20 |
A Judicial Murder | 40 |
Copyright | |
29 other sections not shown
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Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius Edward De Grazia No preview available - 1993 |
Common terms and phrases
Abe Fortas Allen Ginsberg Amendment American appeal artistic attorney Author interview Barney Rosset Brennan doctrine Burger Burroughs censor Censorship Landmarks 1969 Chapter Chicago Chief Justice commission constitutional constitutionally conviction copies criminal D. H. Lawrence decision defend Doubleday edition Edmund Wilson Epstein expression Fanny Hill federal film Fortas Frankfurter Frohnmayer Ginzburg Girodias going Grazia Hecate County Ibid ideas issue John Sumner Joyce Joyce's judge jury Justice Brennan Justice William Kalven Knopf later Lawrence's lawyer Lenny Bruce letter literary literature Little Review Liveright Lolita Lover magazine mails Mapplethorpe Mencken movie Nabokov Naked Lunch novel obscene obscenity law opinion police political pornography prosecution prosecutors protected published Radclyffe Radclyffe Hall Roth Roth's Seltzer Senate sexual social importance social value suppressed Supreme Court Sylvia Beach Theodore Dreiser tion trial Tropic of Cancer Ulysses Vizetelly Vladimir Nabokov Warren women writing wrote York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Girls lean back everywhere: the law of obscenity and the assault on genius |
| Author | Edward De Grazia |
| Publisher | Random House, 1992 |
| Original from | the University of Michigan |
| Digitized | Jan 25, 2010 |
| ISBN | 039457611X, 9780394576114 |
| Length | 814 pages |
| Subjects | › Censorship Censorship - United States Censorship United States Censorship/ United States Law / Civil Procedure Law / General Law / Legal History Law and literature Literary Criticism / General Obscenity (Law) Obscenity (Law) - United States Obscenity (Law) United States Obscenity (Law)/ United States Political Science / Censorship Political Science / General |
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