The Malta Independent on Sunday
Anthony Burgess and censorship revisited
Three books landed in my letter box this summer. Two sent, unexpectedly by English friends who had come to Malta, for us to enjoy their inspiring company. One is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. What a title. I can never remember it. You may recall that a film based on it has already been made and come to Malta. I missed the film but will catch up with it. The other is a book by a favourite author, Graham Greene: Monsignor Quixote, one of the few Graham Greene novels I have not read. Immersed in Catholicism it is no surprise that much of my reading during my 20s centred round ‘Catholic ‘ authors who apart from Greene included Evelyn Waugh and my absolute favourite François Mauriac. I cried when he died. I wonder if any of my grandchildren will ever read any of these books. ***
Well, the third book which arrived a few weeks ago was not so much of a surprise for I was expecting it. However, what I was not expecting is this elegant publication published by Pariah: Obscenity & The Arts. It opens with an essay by Prof. Andrew Biswell, whom I had met in Malta last October when he came to chair a symposium on Anthony Burgess held in commemoration of Burgess’s centenary of his birth. The title of the book is the same title Burgess used for his very popular public lecture in Malta in June 1970 and which is published in this book. ***
From Prof. Biswell’s essay, The Context of Obscenity & the Arts I learnt many new things about Burgess, one of them that he did not become an opponent of literary censorship when he was living in Malta in the ‘70s but it all started when he was a schoolboy in Manchester in the 1920s and 1930s when D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover and James Joyce’s Ulysses were banned. “From the banning of Joyce and Lawrence in his youth, Burgess established a set of principles that he would reiterate whenever, in adult life he was asked to put forward his views about censorship,” Professor Biswell writes. In the ’60s Burgess was defending writers like William Burroughs ( The Naked Lunch) and Hubert Selby’s ( Last Exit to Brooklyn) and writing in The Spectator and other publications in defence of writers and reputable publishers and questioning “whether members of the moralistic procensorship lobby are even qualified to understand the artworks they would ban.” ***
The Burgesses came to Malta in 1968 to be faced with more censorship. Among the author’s papers Prof. Biswell found a list of forty-seven books confiscated from Burgess’s library by the General Post Office. Four books were eventually released but the rest were incinerated. Burgess was particularly enraged when his own work was banned. A list of these titles is provided in the book and also online.
I am naturally delighted that my Anthony Burgess interview which appeared in The Sunday Times of Malta, 7 June 1970 (under my maiden name) has been included.
In the book this is followed by the brilliant talk which Burgess gave, under the auspicies of The Malta Library Association entitled Obscenity & The Arts which had drawn a huge audience especially as it followed my provocative interview about censorship in STOM in which Burgess ruffled many feathers. The Library Association published the talk. The magnetic tapes of the lecture were turned into typescript and the editing done by Burgess himself.
Germaine Greer is co-editor with Anthony Biswell and has contributed an essay Dirty Books and Laughing Stocks.
Malta may have had its strict censorship laws but Greer points out “back in London the counter-culture was enduring wholesale persecution. The obscene Publications Squad regularly raided the offices of underground magazines and removed anything it felt justified in removing.” She writes that although in Malta Burgess may have been seriously incommodated by the refusal of the Maltese authorities to allow him access to certain publications “he endured nothing remotely like the harassment and oppression that were the daily fare of British hippies and yippies throughout the 1960s and most of the 1970s. Only one of his ninetyodd books was pulped, but not for obscenity. As in the vast majority of cases, the first edition of The Worm and the Ring was pulped because of libel.” For Burgess was sued for libel as one of the characters he had portrayed was easily identifiable. According to Burgess, and I’m quoting from Greer’s essay here: “Heinemann (Burgess’s publishers) sent her (the victim) a hundred pounds. The case never came to court but The Worm and the Ring joined the immeasurable mound of pulped books. This was no way to earn a living.”
Greer is not particularly kind to Burgess. On the contrary but at least she seems to be fair.
Greer then gives the example of Francis King who had to sell his house to raise money to pay the legal costs of defending a suit brought by someone he had caricatured in his novel A Domestic Animal, another book which was pu lped . “British libel law,” she writes, “remains a principal limitation on freedom of speech, not just in Britain but across the world and into cyberspace.”
Yes, I would like to add my own favourite quote regarding freedom of speech from John Stuart Mill who is best known for his book On Liberty and yet: “The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.” Yes, freedom too has its limitations. You simply cannot hurl abuse at others and hope to get away with it. There are many photos, many of which have never been published and help to enhance the book further. Not that it needs it. The editors also included a piece of music for solo piano, composed by Burgess in Malta and no doubt inspired by the festa fireworks in Lija. The last is an article by Burgess a copy of which he had given me: Gladly My (Maltese George) Cross I’d Bear a delightful piece of writing which was published in Punch, 10 June 1970. So full of humour and such brilliant writing. What a genius he was. This is 160 pages of delight, erudition, controversy and more. A gem of a book which will please many and not just students of English Literature. If you wish to order a copy do so with one of the Agenda bookshops. mbenoit@independent.com.mt