Tropic of Cancer
Today there was a used book sale in the lobby of my office building to support charity. There were slim pickings, but I did find a book that I've been wanting to read for some time, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. The reason, interestingly enough, had very little to do with the book and mostly revolved around a dissenting opinion in a Pennsylvania Supreme Court obscenity case about the book, Commonweatlh v. Robin, in 1966. The majority opinion failed to find the book obscene within the meaning in First Amendment jurisprudence. Justice Musmanno, didn't like the book, but if I were the publisher of it, I'd put this on the jacket:
The decision of the Majority of the Court in this case has dealt a staggering blow to the forces of morality, decency and human dignity in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If, by this decision, a thousand rattlesnakes had been let loose, they could not do as much damage to the well-being of the people of this state as the unleashing of all the scorpions and vermin of immorality swarming out of that volume of degeneracy called the "Tropic of Cancer." Policemen, hunters, constables and foresters could easily and quickly kill a thousand rattlesnakes but the lice, lizards, maggots and gangrenous roaches scurrying out from beneath the covers of the "Tropic of Cancer" will enter into the playground, the study desks, the cloistered confines of children and immature minds to eat away moral resistance and wreak damage and harm which may blight countless lives for years and decades to come.
That's just the introductory paragraph, it only gets better. The opinion can be found at 421 Pa. 70 (Pa. 1966).
The decision of the Majority of the Court in this case has dealt a staggering blow to the forces of morality, decency and human dignity in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. If, by this decision, a thousand rattlesnakes had been let loose, they could not do as much damage to the well-being of the people of this state as the unleashing of all the scorpions and vermin of immorality swarming out of that volume of degeneracy called the "Tropic of Cancer." Policemen, hunters, constables and foresters could easily and quickly kill a thousand rattlesnakes but the lice, lizards, maggots and gangrenous roaches scurrying out from beneath the covers of the "Tropic of Cancer" will enter into the playground, the study desks, the cloistered confines of children and immature minds to eat away moral resistance and wreak damage and harm which may blight countless lives for years and decades to come.
That's just the introductory paragraph, it only gets better. The opinion can be found at 421 Pa. 70 (Pa. 1966).
posted by Jason at 11:15
2 Comments:
Quite a dissenting opinion. Good grief, I had heard of the book but that's enough for me to keep it in mind for future reading, as well.
Dude, I must now read that book just to see what in it inspired that opinion.
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