Dead People Sit On My Bed

rbmoney.TakeThisOut@spamblock.syr.edu wrote:

> Ian wrote:
> > rbmoney.TakeThisOut@spamblock.syr.edu wrote:
> > .....
> > >
> >
> >>Not in what I've read, but I haven't read a great deal. Far as I have
> >>seen he didn't partake of the newer freedoms of language in the
> >>post-WWII era.
> >>
> >>Randy M.
> >>
> >
> > To be painfully precise, Randy, the watershed was - in the UK anyway - in
> > 1963 (Ah yes, I remember it well) with the Crown prosecution of Penguin Books
> > for publishing the officially banned Lady Chatterley's Lover.
> > The Establishment lost, and it was anything goes from then on. Before that,
> > if you printed or published or broadcast the dreaded F--- or C--- words, and
> > some others for all I know, you faced a heavy fine and possibly a stretch in
> > prison.
> > I cannot recall even once seeing anything stronger than a 'bloody' or
> > some mild blasphemy in print before '63.
> > Not sure what the situation was from 1950 in the USA - maybe it varied between
> > individual States?
> > --
> > Ian
>
> Hi, Ramsey and Ian.
>
> If I'd thought a bit more before posting, I might not have phrased it
> that way. I might even have remembered that a local (Syracuse, N.Y.)
> bookstore won a major court case in the early '60s also concerning
> Lawrence's LCL. That case broadened the range of material that could be
> mailed in the U.S.
>
> What I was thinking about when replying to Chris was the way writers
> like Norman Mailer were pushing at the bounderies in the mid- to late
> 1940s. He could not use F---, but he used "fug" (as I recall) instead
> and while it looks odd now, it got the job done at the time and helped
> lay the foundation for later legal wars. But I really couldn't see

Funny, I was thinking about his Naked and the Deadjust after
posting - I obtained it from a private lending library in Glasgow, maybe 1953 or
4 (the free municipal libraries wouldn't have had it for some years in those
prim days!).
Seem to remember its publication caused some slight stir in Britain.

> Aickman being interested in pushing those kinds of limitations.
>
> Randy M.
>
Well, you have to remember, in the days he was writing in (1930s - 1950s?)
people in real life spoke very differently; I don't say no one ever swore,
ever, but it was more restricted, I think, and almost never used by men in the
presence of women, even among the working class among whom foul language was
customary.
One place I was working, in the mid Sixties, for example, we and the lorry
drivers liberally sprinkled our exchanges with it, but when a female from
the offices came tripping through to go to the traffic manager's office,
it ceased instantly. It was just automatic.
Things have changed .....
I've no objection to the most obscenely foul language in a novel, provided
it's in the correct context of its setting and time. You couldn't really
write a convincing story set in Vietnam or Gualdacanal, or 1917 Flanders
without the dialogue including it, but in an Agatha Christie set in 1947 or a
Lord Peter Wimsey story or a Jeevs tale, seems to me it would be unnecessary
and jar horribly.
--
Ian

Ian wrote:

> rbmoney.TakeThisOut@spamblock.syr.edu wrote:
>
> > Ian wrote:
> > > rbmoney.TakeThisOut@spamblock.syr.edu wrote:
> > > .....
> > > >
> > >
> > >>Not in what I've read, but I haven't read a great deal. Far as I have
> > >>seen he didn't partake of the newer freedoms of language in the
> > >>post-WWII era.
> > >>
> > >>Randy M.
> > >>
> > >
> > > To be painfully precise, Randy, the watershed was - in the UK anyway - in
> > > 1963 (Ah yes, I remember it well) with the Crown prosecution of Penguin Books
> > > for publishing the officially banned Lady Chatterley's Lover.
> > > The Establishment lost, and it was anything goes from then on. Before that,
> > > if you printed or published or broadcast the dreaded F--- or C--- words, and
> > > some others for all I know, you faced a heavy fine and possibly a stretch in
> > > prison.
> > > I cannot recall even once seeing anything stronger than a 'bloody' or
> > > some mild blasphemy in print before '63.
> > > Not sure what the situation was from 1950 in the USA - maybe it varied between
> > > individual States?
> > > --
> > > Ian
> >
> > Hi, Ramsey and Ian.
> >
> > If I'd thought a bit more before posting, I might not have phrased it
> > that way. I might even have remembered that a local (Syracuse, N.Y.)
> > bookstore won a major court case in the early '60s also concerning
> > Lawrence's LCL. That case broadened the range of material that could be
> > mailed in the U.S.
> >
> > What I was thinking about when replying to Chris was the way writers
> > like Norman Mailer were pushing at the bounderies in the mid- to late
> > 1940s. He could not use F---, but he used "fug" (as I recall) instead
> > and while it looks odd now, it got the job done at the time and helped
> > lay the foundation for later legal wars. But I really couldn't see
>
> Funny, I was thinking about his Naked and the Deadjust after
> posting - I obtained it from a private lending library in Glasgow, maybe 1953 or
> 4 (the free municipal libraries wouldn't have had it for some years in those
> prim days!).
> Seem to remember its publication caused some slight stir in Britain.
>
> > Aickman being interested in pushing those kinds of limitations.
> >
> > Randy M.
> >
> Well, you have to remember, in the days he was writing in (1930s - 1950s?)
> people in real life spoke very differently; I don't say no one ever swore,
> ever, but it was more restricted, I think, and almost never used by men in the
> presence of women, even among the working class among whom foul language was
> customary.
> One place I was working, in the mid Sixties, for example, we and the lorry
> drivers liberally sprinkled our exchanges with it, but when a female from
> the offices came tripping through to go to the traffic manager's office,
> it ceased instantly. It was just automatic.
> Things have changed .....
> I've no objection to the most obscenely foul language in a novel, provided
> it's in the correct context of its setting and time. You couldn't really
> write a convincing story set in Vietnam or Gualdacanal, or 1917 Flanders
> without the dialogue including it, but in an Agatha Christie set in 1947 or a
> Lord Peter Wimsey story or a Jeevs tale, seems to me it would be unnecessary
> and jar horribly.
> --
> Ian

Ian, Robert actually started writing his published fiction in the late
forties or early fifties and carried on until 1980/81.

You're right about context, although Evelyn Waugh didn't use any
four-letter vulgarisms in the war trilogy that I can recall, despite
sprinkling his letters to Diana Cooper with them.