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permitted the Knoxville City Board of Review to suppress any publication
that it considered to be obscene. The target was Peyton Place; local dealers
were forbidden to sell it. When one indignant newsstand owner tested the
ordinance, it was ruled unconstitutional.
Peyton Place was banned in Ireland on May 6, 1958. A prohibition order was
published in the Iris Oifigiuil, the only official source from which booksell-
ers [and readers] might learn of a new prohibition order, in which all articles
blacklisted by the Irish Board of Censors were listed. According to the Cen-
sorship of Publications Bill of 1928, the notice in Iris Oifigiuil should be suf-
ficient evidence in the courts of summary jurisdiction as to the character of the
publication, despite the acknowledgment by justices quoted in Adams s thor-
ough study of Irish censorship laws that this gazette is not a publication which
booksellers are addicted to reading. The Irish Board of Censors found the work
188
PEYTON PLACE
obscene and indecent, objecting particularly to the author s handling of
the characters sexuality, acts of incest, and promiscuity. The work was offi-
cially banned from sale in Ireland until the introduction of the Censorship of
Publications Bill in 1967 reduced to 12 years the duration of a prohibition order,
and the work was among 5,000 titles released from the list of banned books.
Also in 1958, a shipment containing copies of Peyton Place was confiscated
by Canadian Customs officers and further copies of the book were refused
entry. To determine if the novel was obscene, the Canadian Tariff Board
held a hearing at which a professor of English and a former professor of
history gave testimony on behalf of the book. Based on their testimony, the
tariff board handed down a ruling that permitted the entry of Peyton Place into
Canada. In its statement, the board observed that the witnesses testimonies
gave a distinction between obscenity and realism in literature and an inter-
pretation of modern fiction.
The novel was one of several paperback books considered objection-
able for sale to youths under 18 in State v. Settle, 156 A.2d 921 (R.I. 1959).
In 1959, the Rhode Island Commission to Encourage Morality in Youth
brought action against Bantam and three other New York paperback pub-
lishers whose books were distributed throughout the state of Rhode Island
by Max Silverstein & Sons. The commission notified Silverstein that the
Bantam Books paperback editions of Peyton Place and The Bramble Bush were
on their list of objectionable publications that they circulated to local police
departments. Unwilling to risk court action, the distributor retrieved unsold
copies of the books and returned them to the publishers, who appealed first
to the Rhode Island Superior Court, which upheld the ban, and then to the
United States Supreme Court, which reversed the decision. In rendering
a decision, in Bantam Books, Inc., et.al., v. Joseph A. Sullivan et al., Supreme
Court Justice William J. Brennan stated that informal censorship may suf-
ficiently inhibit the circulation of publications to warrant injunctive relief . . .
[but] criminal sanctions may only be applied after a determination of obscen-
ity has been made in a criminal trial. Although the commission had no legal
means of extracting compliance from Silverstein, Justice Brennan noted, its
means of intimidation and the threats to institute criminal proceedings fol-
lowed by police visits plainly serve as instruments of regulation independent
of the laws against obscenity.
FURTHER READING
Adams, Michael. Censorship: The Irish Experience. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama
Press, 1968.
Beattie, A. M., and Frank A. Underhill. Sense and Censorship: On Behalf of Peyton
Place. Canadian Library Association Bulletin 15 (July 1958): 9 16.
Booth, Wayne C. Censorship and the Values of Fiction. English Journal 53 (March
1964): 155 64.
Davis, Kenneth C. Two-Bit Culture: The Paperbacking of America. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin, 1984.
189
THE PHILANDERER
Ernst, Morris L., and Alan U. Schwartz. Censorship: The Search for the Obscene. New
York: Macmillan, 1964.
Loth, David. The Erotic in Literature. New York: Dorset, 1961.
Pearce, Lillian. Book Selection and Peyton Place. Library Journal 83 (March 1958):
712 13.
THE PHILANDERER
Author: Stanley Kauffmann
Original dates and places of publication: 1952, United States; 1953,
England
Original publisher: Simon & Schuster (United States); Secker & War-
burg Ltd. (England)
Literary form: Novel
SUMMARY
The Philanderer was first published in the United States in 1952 under the title
The Tightrope, and reviewers immediately compared it to James Joyce s Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man for its ability to excite the reader s feelings. In par-
ticular, although some critics lauded the author s ability to relate details that
provided a realistic view of the protagonist, others observed that, as New York
Times reviewer Richard Sullivan put it, the effect of this kind of detail upon the
reader gives rise to a pertinent question, that of simple propriety.
The novel provides a tawdry and maudlin view of life in which a 33-
year-old man attempts to eliminate the desolation from his life by engaging
in selfish and meaningless sexual affairs. The work provides an account of
this man s extramarital affairs, as well as his thoughts regarding his wife
and children and his unfathomable need to take revenge on the world.
To avenge himself for wrongs that he never identifies, the main character
decides to have an affair with every attractive woman he meets, viewing
them as the janes, the jazzy, jazzy janes whose existence offers him a chal-
lenge. He is anxious, at first, in his mission of seduction, but he finds that
the women whom he pursues offer little resistance. Seducing the wife of his
boss almost costs the philanderer his job, but he manages to escape discov-
ery and to continue his seductions until he finds that no amount of illicit sex
can fill the emptiness that he feels.
CENSORSHIP HISTORY
The Philanderer received strong reviews by critics who approvingly noted that
it condemned the behavior it portrayed. Walter Allen, writing in the April
25, 1953, issue of the New Statesman, observed that the novel provided as
devastating a criticism as any I ve read of the consequences of the tradition of
American adolescent competition in sexual experience that we have already
190
THE PHILANDERER
had described for us by Dr. Margaret Mead and Mr. Gorer. Still, legal
authorities on the Isle of Man had already condemned the novel after police
received a complaint that a person could obtain the books at Boots Library.
The high bailiff had felt bound by existing law, however outmoded, to act in
some manner, but he imposed only a one-pound fine on the work and created
a criminal record for the novel.
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