'For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government officials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned; bookstores were raided; publishers were fined; and writers were charged and even jailed. But in the 1970s, that all changed.
'In 1970, in great secrecy and at considerable risk, Penguin Books Australia resolved to publish Portnoy’s Complaint — Philip Roth’s frank, funny, and profane bestseller about a man hung up about his mother and his penis. In doing so, Penguin spurred a direct confrontation with the censorship authorities, which culminated in criminal charges, police raids, and an unprecedented series of court trials across the country.
'Sweeping from the cabinet room to the courtroom, The Trials of Portnoy draws on archival records and new interviews to show how Penguin and a band of writers, booksellers, academics, and lawyers determinedly sought for Australians the freedom to read what they wished — and how, in defeating the forces arrayed before them, they reshaped Australian literature and culture forever.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Anti-censorship, rather like anti-hanging, is one of those causes of the 1960s and early 1970s that has come to occupy an uncertain place in the collective memory of that time. Rather like the movement against capital punishment, it has suffered for many of its greatest triumphs being the work of liberals rather than revolutionaries. Each, however, was at work in Australia and in this excellent book, Patrick Mullins finds a place for both.' (Introduction)
Unsolicited Smut : A Nation of Prudes and Wowsers
James Ley Reviews 'The Trials of Portnoy' by Patrick Mullins
2020
19498503
2020
single work
review
'It’s instructive to remember what a relatively illiberal society Australia was only a few decades ago and this account of the obscenity court cases about Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in the early 1970s – written by a young author who wrote a much-praised biography of Billy McMahon – is a good reminder of this. When Gough Whitlam came in, everything changed so that Australians saw a fuller version, say, of Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris than the British, but the period was a crossroads.' (Introduction)
