Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression Review

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(More customer reviews)When I read this book I felt a certain nostalgia, because the "Howl" obscenity trial took place fifty years ago when I was a kid, and the Beatnik writers, of whom Ginsberg became the most famous, seem so rarified to me now. It's as though they had been filmed in black and white and the movies now jump and rattle as we watch them, the images scratched, browned and antiquarian. Also, it gave me considerable pleasure to know that the government censorship that the "not guilty" judgment in that trial abolished had remained abolished ever since.
In October, 2007, however, I learned that this is not true.
For the fiftieth anniversary of the trial, Pacifica Radio, the organization made up of the community-supported radio stations KPFA, KPFK, WBAI and others, considered the possibility of broadcasting a reading of the poem "Howl". It happens that, besides being the object of a landmark First Amendment freedom of speech judgment in a court of law, "Howl" is one of the truly remarkable poems of the twentieth century. So a commemoration of it seemed altogether laudable. But because of feared Federal Communications Commission rules on what constitutes obscene or unacceptable speech on the public airwaves, Pacifica determined not to do the broadcast on its stations. They worry that if the FCC fines them for broadcasting unacceptable speech, they will have to involve themselves in a freedom of speech trial, the costs of which could bankrupt Pacifica and put the stations out of business.
So the problem is subtler now than it was in 1957. You don't have to wait for actual censorship itself. The very fear that it will come causes organizations to muzzle themselves now. Perhaps you'd win in a trial. But you don't test the waters willy-nilly because you'll drown in the attorney fees that will result, no matter the judgment in court.
Luckily, though, we have the internet. The rules regarding broadcasting do not pertain to webcasts, and Pacifica has posted a reading of "Howl" by Ginsberg himself on their site (http://www.audioport.org/audioport_files/specials/Howl-Final-128.mp3) as part of a longer program in which a very illuminating discussion of the history of the poem's publication, the 1957 trial and the importance of the poem as literature can also be found. Besides the poem itself, the highlight of the program is a conversation with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, now eighty-eight years old, the San Francisco poet and bookseller who originally published "Howl."
The First Amendment right guaranteeing free speech is the issue here, even though it's being obscured by the FCC's self-important view of what constitutes "acceptable" speech. But even though the situation highlights the true dunderheaded silliness of the FCC's point of view, all is not bad, because the censorship of an artistic event by the government usually results in unruly fame for that event.
Poetry is not much read in the United States, and without the 1957 trial, "Howl" would probably have remained an important work by an obscure poet, read only by students in the academy and the struggling few who actually write poetry themselves. But because of the trial, Howl, And Other Poems has now sold almost a million copies, and continues to sell briskly. Happily, it is such a fine poem, so terrifying a view of contemporary society, and one so beautifully written that it is my opinion that few who read it will be unaffected by it.
Ginsberg was culturally prescient as well. In the second section of the poem, a long accusation of American industrial/government rapaciousness, he uses the figure of Moloch as a symbol of corporate indifference to the individual.
"Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose
blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!"
The biblical Moloch was one of the princes of Hell. A terrifying demon, he is described by Milton in Paradise Lost as "besmeared with blood/Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears," a fearsome devil who eats the children of the faithful. Ginsberg's Moloch is the self-serving corporate entity who, for money, foments armed conflict. A more accurate metaphor for the current war footing of the United States cannot be found.
Perhaps the muffling of "Howl" in 2007 will bring about the same firestorm of wild enthusiasm on the part of a general public that the 1957 trial caused. As was the case as described in this fine book by Nancy. J Peters and Bill Morgan, this would be a humorous and good thing, and it may just happen. One hopes that imaginative minds will prevail against the FCC watchdogs of your public morals, in the way that Judge Clayton W. Horn prevailed, who officiated at the 1957 "Howl" obscenity trial. He wrote in his opinion, "Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism?"
The answer, of course, is no.
Howl and Other Poems (Pocket Poets)

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