|
|
warren c. e. austin
|
 |
Likes it here |
Location: Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 247
|
|
|
Background note: A certain little "frog" - errrr, maybe a not so little one at that - many of us have come to know, and love or hate, having created a furore with a recent thread here at A Place of Safety (and elsewhere evidently) suggested this topic to me during an e-Mail dialogue he and I have been pursuing. Unfortunately is now ducking for cover because he feels he should not be the one to broach this subject. I, however, do feel that it has merit; and therefore, suggest we all give this some consideration.
It would appear that especially of late, and this is by no means a recent phenomenon, authors - gay and straight alike - are being vigorously harassed and driven away from endeavours by a motley crew of disparate, yet conjoined and concerted, groups wishing to silence their thoughts.
My friend the "frog" asked of me, "Isn't there a better way to protect these authors?", prefacing his enquiry with the statement "In the last two days all kinds of horror stories have surfaced concerning gay and even straight authors being harassed. Several were harassed by religious groups."
I wonder at this too, having had some personal experience with this situation, although not directly, but more through that of my great-grandfather. I ask all of you to ponder what we collectively could do to protect "our" present-day authors from harassment, and ask you to consider my family's own experience in this arena.
Picture if you will the 1880's, North America in the midst of sweeping change from being a "new" frontier, and well on its' to becoming much as we know it's society today.
To this scenario, add a man of considerable means, one of great substance - having both real property and considerable political clout - who, because of circumstance could only live the life he would have wanted for himself through the media of his dreams, and the writings those dreams subsequently fostered; writings I might add that during his lifetime were known only to a precious, and favoured few; each of whom had received signed, leather-bound and gilt-embossed folios of his work as he produced them; each of whom having been, at one turn or another, the very catalyst for the content of one these especial, and remarkable stories; stories that chronicle the temper and mores of the times; none of which could ever be said to have seen the light of day during their currency.
Were in not for the concerted efforts of then radical, and in their time much defamed and derided, "Pulp" Press of the late 1920's and early 1930's, these stories would not be at all known to anyone, outside of perhaps those recipient's own families.
My family to their credit, when the first of my great-grandfather's work appeared under the imprimatur of "Athenaeum" in 1927, and later others either at "Grove Press" or "Millwood" in 1933, 1934, and 1935, chose not to pursue any Copyright infringement, choosing rather that they be published "anonymously", and for the duration of the firestorm that their public release brought forth, remained stoic, yet resolute in their resolve for having not done so.
This issue again surfaced during my lifetime. In 1973, my father, donated the only known complete set of my great-grandfather's writings to the Metro-Toronto Reference Library, where they continue to reside, hidden from view by all but scholars, and other notables, amongst perhaps one of the finest collections of erotica known to mankind. I like to think my father having come to the realization that my great grandfather's work were now to be hidden, and never widely available, after my family had been relentlessly pursued for two-decades to make the gift, that this was largely behind his decision in 1974 not to halt the filming, near our home in British Columbia, of the best known titles of those that had been printed during the Depression.
To this day, all 18 novels remain on the Vatican's notorious codex "Index librorum prohibitorum".
Arising out of consensus amongst my remaining family, a circumstance I am bound by, as are all others, these books will probably will still never be widely available. For you see the subject matter detailed through these novels still has the power to shame their individual sense of moral turpitude, and none, other than I, will willingly bear that, even during these much heralded enlightened times.
What is so remarkable about my family's present attitude is that all of us grew up in a climate where "pornography" was never a taboo. My brother and I, and our children in turn, as my father and his sister before us, found content of a widely disparate and erotic nature, routinely shelved with more mainstream fare. These works were never hidden from view, could be discussed and debated at the dinner-table if we so chose, and secreted away in our rooms to do with what we would, with nary a comment being made by another amongst the family. The intent behind this attitude, and the availability of such material, being to remove any stigmata associated with their content, and in having done so the desire for covert adulation of the art-form. It worked. It worked very well, that is until my brother married into a family that embraced the religious fervour currently sweeping the World. Now what had been commonplace and not very remarkable, and as a consequence of little interest to either my brother or I, has become something dirty, vile, abhorrent and heretical.
I cannot but help wonder at the wisdom of my family's present course, nor that that our World seems to be hell bent on taking.
Warren C. E. Austin
Toronto, Canada
|
|
|
|
|
[  ] |
A Place of Safety
Search
Help
Register
Login
Home
Authors and their being "harassed" for their writings. 
