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proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles in the so-called third world,
and the author points out that our development of anti-nuclear systems has
been sadly lagging, particularly in this administration. The trendy anti–
Americanism, particularly in the academy, and extending to many
scientists, has been highly critical of the Strategic Defense Initiative, and
has succeeded in cutting down the appropriations for them.
It
is a fright–
ening picture.
In both cases, that of education and that of national defense, it is the
culture that is responsible.
Norman Podhoretz had an interesting piece on pornography, art, and
censorship in the April issue of
Commentary
("'Lolita,' My Mother-in-Law,
the Marquis de Sade, and Larry Flynt"). One could disagree with some of
his views, such as the idea that the Modernists did not care about the so–
called general reader. Actually there are many kinds of readers, and it is
probably true that most Modernists were mainly interested in the upper
level of readers. For example, when E.M. Forster was asked for whom he
wrote-a typical question of interviewers-he replied that he wrote for
people like himself. But Podhoretz did not give simple answers to complex
questions. And I was struck by his remark that he'd become more conser–
vative as he got older-which seems also to be true of me. When we were
younger, we were both ready to accept pornography and "pornographic
art"-like everyone else. And we were against censorship in any form,
although we were not much interested in the First Amendment.
Roger Shattuck was concerned with the problem of pornographic
writing in his splendid book,
Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to
Pornography,
though he associated the problem of censorship with other
forms of knowledge that are or should be forbidden. He thought for exam–
ple that some of de Sade's works should not be available-and he cited
some instances where they induced criminal behavior. But it is not clear
how widespread is this effect. Nor, to further complicate the problem, do
we know how much criminal behavior is produced by people who have
not read material of this kind.
We also face the problem that many, if not most, people have these
thoughts whether or not they have read them or seen them in paintings.
And it is not considered good taste to express them publicly.
In
fact good
taste is a form of censorship. Moreover, civilization itself, as Freud and oth–
ers remarked, is an enforcement of censorshi p in the interes t of society as
a whole.
To Podhoretz's credit, he doesn't come to clear-cut conclusions nor
does he come out firmly for any kind of censorship. But he does say that
he wished that Nabokov had not written
Lolita.
