The

Right

to

Read

by Joseph Hansen

Few will deny that today's novels are far franker in their handling of sexual matters than were those of even 20 years ago. Most of us who can think at all, think this is a healthy development, an honest state of affairs. That Catcher in the Rye, Another Country, City of Night are on sale not only in drugstores and supermarkets but in the bookstores of our junior colleges and universities is an advance toward a truer understanding of human relationships and of the basic importance of sex to happiness than was afforded earlier generations.

But any action begets reaction. So-called Citizens Committees for Decent Literature are forming all across the country. In their attitude toward the rule of law they resemble the White Citizens Councils of the South. They are in fact vigilante groups. They ride estate wagons rather than horses. Their weapons are not six shooters and ropes but intimidation and boycott.

They pressure the local supermarket manager, the drugstore and liquor store owner until he removes from his racks the magazines and paperback books they assert must be kept from children. Most store owners are afraid not to cooperate. They place the offending items-those they have

room for under the counter, forcing those who want them to ask for them.

This is not an effective way to merchandise magazines and paperbacks. They are designed to sell on appearance. Nor have druggists, grocers, liquor dealers time to devote to pushing items on which the profit is seldom more than a few pennies. The result, after a time, is that certain packages of books and magazines are returned to the distributor unopened. Obviously if this happens often enough and widely enough, publishers will stop issuing the offending publications.

Evidently some inroads are being made.

A recent issue of Writer's Digest printed a summary of the manuscript needs of one of the larger publishers of paperback fiction, until now well-known for its liberal approach to sex. In this write-up what do we find? Taboos. In the second half of the 20th century, in the most technologically advanced civilization the world has ever known, this witch doctor word, taboo, and its witch doctor implications are actually set out in black and white by a group of (one supposes) adult males engaged in what was once one of the most dignified and significant businesses in the Western world--the publishing business.

What are these taboos? "Drug addiction, male homosexuality, pregnancy and/or abortion." That the publishers in question actually believe the public does not want to read novels in which these elements figure seems impossible. Don't they read magazines and newspapers, listen to radio, watch television, check the bestseller lists of hardcover books? These topics are not only of intense interest to today's citizen, they are of real importance.

If the public did not want to read about male homosexuality, for ex-

5