In a desperate attempt to achieve my twin goals of becoming obscenely rich and obnoxiously famous, I became a poet. It didn’t work. But I was reading Luisa Zambrotta’s Words and Music and Stories yesterday, and she had a post about James Cabell and how he rose from obscurity overnight all because he wrote a book the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (Oxymoron Alert) achieved in getting banned. (http://wordsmusicandstories.wordpress.com/2022/04/14/fantasy-optimism). Perversely, writers become rich and instant celebrities whenever people try to ban their books. It makes me wonder why folks would want to ban anything they don’t like. If “offensive” books were only ignored (like any other book), those writers would remain impoverished and die alone.
My second thought was that’s brilliant! I’m going to do that. I started thinking of all the obscene topics that would get a book banned: war, cruelty, rape, adult diapers, hatred, and Coldplay. But when I went to various media outlets to conduct research, I found everyone was talking about these issues. The people in favor of obscenity (whatever that is) weren’t banned, and neither were the people who opposed it. Instead each side was treated with the same amount of contempt.
So now I’m bereft. If those topics won’t get my book banned, what will? Writing about people who want to be treated with dignity? About people who want to love each other without being assaulted? You can see how desperate I’ve become. Why would anyone ban a book for those reasons?
Luvgood Carp, Editor-in-Chief.
Pungent Sound Journal of Pulp Poetry 