Portnoy and the complaints of the Australian censors – Sydney Morning Herald

Yet so many of these witnesses did like and admire Roths extraordinary ode to masturbation. Then editor of The Age, Graham Perkin, the pioneer of Australian journalistic pluralism, says Portnoys Complaint is a quite rare combination of high tragedy and high comedy. On the other hand, the historian Manning Clark describes the book as a complaint against God.

Book censorship trials are sometimes about great works of literature such as Flauberts Madame Bovary and Joyces Ulysses, and sometimes they are about minor works by great writers as with D.H. Lawrences Lady Chatterleys Lover. The Portnoy case is in the latter category.

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Sometimes the defenders of Roths epical saga of onanism are very high and mighty, as when the critic and subdean of arts at Melbourne University, Dinny OHearn, says to the prosecutor with a fierceness that does not hide his disdain, We dont use terms like plot. McPhee is full of recollected admiration for Patrick Whites very measured testimony, where he speaks with such gravity about the ordinariness of obscenity.

And we get Peter Bennie, the warden of St Pauls College at Sydney University, citing The Kinsey Report and explaining that the practice [of masturbation] is almost universal in the career of males and therefore quite a normal one in discussing the career of an adolescent.

You have to pinch yourself at the thought that this is Australia in 1970 free love, hippiedom, sexual experimentation yet here are barristers talking about do-it-yourself sex as if it were one of the horrors of the earth.

The law does come across as a bit of an ass, whereas both Michie and the assembled literary world are impressive. Michie had 75,000 copies of Portnoys Complaint just begging to be sold. He cleverly turned the book into an instant bestseller, while provoking Chipp so that he would have been happy to see him in jail.

There are brilliant, brutal ploys by prosecutors, who effectively block expert evidence and make it difficult for the literati to celebrate Roths book without defining it. The University of Western Australia librarian, Leonard Jolley, husband of Elizabeth, is a persuasive voice for sanity: When I got the book, I thought I was justified in getting it.

In the end everything is confounded by paradox. Judges conclude the book is obscene but does have literary merit. The juries are incapable of reaching a verdict. There seems to be nothing to do with Portnoys Complaint but sell it and read it. Patrick Mullins has told this story as well as you could hope it would be told.

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Portnoy and the complaints of the Australian censors - Sydney Morning Herald