Originally Posted by Karen 24th February 2006


The Ginger Man was banned as being pornographic for many years and Mr. Donleavy had a hard time getting it published in it's entirety. Actually, for whatever reason, it was just published in Ireland within the last few years.

Being as PG13 as possible, was this book what you thought it would a "banned" book would be?

( Life was very different back then.)

Lynxxx67


Having not read anything that has been previously banned - never was a very big reader till recently - there's little I can compare it to. Ofcourse the one other book that comes to mind, infamously banned for it's 'pornographic' nature, was 'Lady Chatterleys Lover'. But again one I've never read, so cannot compare it's context to the time it was banned. Having said that, I have read a couple of pretty 'trashy' novels where little is left to the imagination, just fast and furious 'there on a plate' descriptions of the act of 'love'. Here though, in TGM, these acts are for the most part written very metaphorically - ie, descriptions of bodily organs and such are not graphically written, they are suggestive! Maybe at the time they found the mere suggestiveness to be more provocative, than the use of out and out graphic terminology, who really knows? I just find it intreguing that we have been able to read cheap smut novels for what seems like a good 2/3 decades, but more solid works of literature are kept from the shelf.

Will have to come back to this later.

Karen


I just thought it would be interesting to see what people thought a "banned" book would be like, as I don't know if there are any modern day banned books.

I just want everyone's thoughts about what they expected they would read in a previously banned book. LOL .

Lynxxx67


Lol! Sorry for waffling there, Karen. If it's simply a case of asking, 'is it what I expected a banned book to be like?', then I'd have to say no, it isn't. But I can prehaps understand why it was at the time. To me the measure of how pornographic/sexist/blasphemous/whatever a book is, depends on the context it is set in...i.e. I found the book funny/touching in part so not as offensive as it could have been.

Karen


Aha! LOL That's kinda what I was wondering about. Now that we are talking about it and meant it include this in today's question... I wonder how much of the various bannings over the years have been "political" in nature? TGM has also been called a satire on social and class morals.

Deppraved


Although I found nothing at all graphic about the way any of the sexual encounters were written, it was of course the nature of the sexual encounters that were probably the reason for the banning, that and the way it portrayed the Irish in an unfavorable light - oh!, and the four letter words.

Sebastian is a bit of a predator, methinks - a philanderer; a defiler of virginity.

But it was a bit harsh to ban this book--it wasn't all that offensive! Things have changed a lot in 50 years!!

I did feel it was pretty tame for a "banned" book.

Karen

Me too! And I have to agree, things have changed a lot in 50 years. I think we should ask JPD about this...

Giselle


good idea for a question, karen.

yes - a lot of has changed in 50 years and i didn't see anything offensive compared to our standards of today. but if we look at it from the 1950's perspective - his infidelity, his irreverence toward family, the church, the excessive drinking.....i guess it doesn't surprise me that it was banned.

i don't think it would have been banned here in the u.s. - even in the 50's. not that we didn't have our own prudishness and our share of banned or attempts at bans....such as "peyton place", henry miller's "tropic of cancer" and "tropic of capricorn".....

and there's still a lot of controversy over books that are made available in school libraries.