FEBRUARY 9th, 1956: The censorship of books was one of the great liberal issues of the mid-20th century, as well as being a matter for occasional hilarity. Myles na Gopaleen (Brian O'Nolan) took up the issue in one of his more straightforward and (mostly) serious Cruiskeen Lawn columns.
AS A rule, I keep far, far away from this newspaper’s correspondence columns. It is not a question of fear, but rather of etiquette. It is not funny for one funny man to be funny at the expense of other funny men. But let’s break the rule for once, and be serious for a moment.
About once every two months, our good editor is inundated with letters about the Censorship of Publications Board, otherwise the Smut Board. Uniformly, they are letters of denunciation. I have no individual in mind when I say that almost everybody who groans publicly about literary censorship reads nothing and writes nothing. Behind such complaints one can discern some aspect of the insanity known in this country as “politics”. That’s why the Smut Board calls for some Cruiskeen therapy, a fancy term for straight thinking and plain speaking.
Intrinsically, the Smut Board is a joke. The imposition of literary standards of moral propriety by parliamentary legislation is in itself a fairly dirty joke. When the Parliament in question is the Dayl of Erin, it is permissible to relax and even grin. The Irish are surely entitled (of all people) to be Irish.
It is not illegal to read a book banned by the board, though, if it were, it is a law I and many other people would cheerfully break. Any person who wishes to read a banned publication and has not the wit to procure it needs to have the head carefully examined, the muscular reflexes checked, and some spinal fluid extracted for microscopic analysis. For such a person is surely a half-wit – though in charity and generosity I may err in that fraction.
Having said all that, I find myself in the queer situation of having to defend the Smut Board. Ireland, north as well as south, subsists in a maze, or Celtic twilight, of hidden, underhand and undeclared censorships. The literary censorship in the 26 is explicit and, ludicrous though it be, the publications banned are listed in the official publication known as Iris Oifigiúil. This newspaper usually reproduces the list. Some other Dublin newspapers ban publication of the list of what is banned. This censorship of censors is characteristically gadelic procedure.
In practice, the banning of a publication has only two real results. Shops will not risk being charged with "exposing" the publication for sale, which is by no means the same as not having it for sale. The second result is that public libraries, sustained from the rates, impose additional thousands of pounds of a burden on the excruciated taxpayers by buying new books and having to withdraw them when they are subsequently banned, often years after publication – indeed, fractions of centuries later as in the case of Proust's Temps Perdu, a book generally regarded as tame and dated. Joyce's Ulyssesis not banned at all, and was recently on open sale in Dublin. That odd fact lends colour to the allegation that members of the Smut Board do not read the works referred to them, but only the marked passages.
I disagree with the people who think that Ulyssesis a "difficult" or obscure work, but its mental ingestion in full calls for intelligence, maturity and some knowledge of life as well as letters. I have examined the list of the members of the Smut Board. I am satisfied (to use the ridiculous clause so beloved of our parliamentarians) that three at least are persons of the mens sana in corpore santa claus class, to quote the immortal words of Cicero. Why doesn't somebody send in a marked copy of Finnegans Wake?
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