Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?
JA
October 22
I’m sure many of you will have heard by now about the ludicrous decision of Australia Post to remove three of the Penguin Classics from their stores and cart them right back to the publisher from whence they came.
Last week, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Anaïs Nin’s The Delta of Venus and Michel Foucault’s The History of Sexuality were all pulled from post shop shelves, apparently after customer complaints. According to Crikey and the Sydney Morning Herald, a spokesperson for Australia Post, Alex Twomey, said that the books were ‘inappropriate for a mainstream shop like Australia Post’:
We tend to stock fairly standard middle-of-the-road type products, given that we serve all parts of the community and they're not the sort of thing we would normally have. There's no criteria. It’s on a case-by-case basis. Like any other product it was purely to fit with our brand and business… We’ve got no issue with the books. We are not seeing it as a censorship issue or calling for them to be banned.
Yet no matter what kind of spin you put on it, this is clearly regressive behaviour, which again harks back to the days when books were treated as smut rather than literature. Behind it are the assumptions that consumers are not capable of making intelligent decisions about their purchases, that children’s innocence is paramount and that anything related to sex must be pornographic and therefore improper. As a government-owned corporation, Australia Post has simply shown that it will panic at the smallest kick of dust and do anything to preserve a conservative brand image.
The Popular Penguins range has been a huge success in a climate when it is increasingly difficult to sell titles – they’re affordable, diverse and easily recognisable in their eye-catching (but not-even-remotely-explicit) orange and cream covers.
Strangely enough, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was banned in Australia until the 1960s, remained unscathed. Presumably Australia Post are okay with references to ‘fucking’ and ‘cunt’, but not so much a Foucauldian analysis of sexuality and repression.
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Comments
22 Oct 09 at 8:00
"not so much a Foucauldian analysis of sexuality and repression" ... or the tedious inventions of a strapped-for-cash US Parisian exile
...22 Oct 09 at 9:28
I'm finding it hard to get worked up over this, except inasmuch
as the episode shows that Australia Post didn't consider the books
as books, with actual content and stuff, beforehand - they must
have just taken delivery of a mixed set of units. Which I do find
irritatingly naive.
Still, if AP customers were annoyed by the books (and I can
imagine idly picking up the Nin, in particular, and being surprised
and embarrassed) then I don't think AP is required to keep offering
them for sale. I can't see what would be gained for Literature by
desiring everyone to be nonchalant about Lolita. It is a pretty
confronting book.
22 Oct 09 at 9:45
I do agree with you, Laura, about AP's right to respond to market forces - what interests me is their sense, when they placed the order, that Penguin classics would be all nice and lovely for their family audiences. As you say, no understanding of books as books.
...22 Oct 09 at 10:00
I agree that AP should probably have thought about this more thoroughly beforehand, but I don't think this move was just a response to market forces. AP appear to have sent back the books because of their content, not because they had boxes of unsold books taking up space their storeroom.
I agree that these books are confronting, but I think we benefit from being confronted every now and again. If AP customers don't want to read Lolita & co, then couldn't they simply put it back and let those who might be interested browse?
...22 Oct 09 at 11:19
I remember when the post office was somewhere to buy stamps and mail letters. Now you can hardly get to the counter because of all the crap they're selling.
I think it's sad. Yes Lolita is confronting and I don't think it should be dealt with lightly, but Nabakov is difficult, no twelve year old is going to accidentally read it.
This Australia Post banning is interesting to me not so much as a one of incident, but rather as a symptomatic story that's indicative of a slow slippery slide into an Australia that is driven by conservative forces who do not make up the majority of the population.
...22 Oct 09 at 12:34
This is not really about 'market forces' or even literature, of course. It's about sad, sick, repressed people claiming to be 'mainstream' and forcing their narrow-minded views on others.
I wonder how I'd fare if I complained about being offended by the Bible or some other religious-oriented text on sale in a post office? (Must check if they have any CS Lewis!)
...22 Oct 09 at 12:39
That's a good point, Paul. You would not fare at all well.
...22 Oct 09 at 12:44
Who knows, Paul.. I don't think the Post Office sells Bibles,
although they do of course sell Christmas stamps. Penni, Australia
Post have not 'banned' these books.
22 Oct 09 at 13:14
Isn't Australia Post government-owned? Isn't there than some way we can ask our representatives in the government to reverse this decision? Or is that just wishful thinking from someone who stopped reading exclusively science-fiction/fantasy after experiencing Lolita?
...22 Oct 09 at 14:14
SMH picked up the yarn from us. Not that I'm at all churlish about such matters.
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