Last year, entirely by accident, I stumbled upon a censorship scandal that had been buried for the past fifty years. The discovery happened at Saint Peter’s University, a small Jesuit school in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was an ordinary day at my work-study job in the library —a job which mostly consisted of scanning old documents, and on particularly exciting days, … [Read more...]
“My Friend the Censor”: Henry Miller, Huntington Cairns, and Tropic of Cancer
In September 1934 the American writer Henry Miller, age 42, had published in Paris his autobiographical novel Tropic of Cancer. In that same month, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic Ocean in Washington, D.C., the Secretary of the Treasury appointed a young Baltimore lawyer as the official U.S. Censor. One of the new censor’s first acts was to place Tropic of Cancer on the list … [Read more...]
Henry and Me
I first heard of Henry Miller, perhaps fittingly, when I lived with two other guys in East Vancouver. One of the guys had a friend who was a postman, the other guy was having an affair with the postman’s wife. There were a few awkward moments when he snuck her in for a night or an afternoon quickie, but, all in all, things went well and I saw a book which the postman had lent … [Read more...]
