Now add to the unfairness and malignancy of the attack its no less
disconcerting arbitrariness and fortuitousness, and the path of the
American author is seen to be strewn with formidable entanglements
indeed. With the law what it is, he is quite unable to decide _a priori_
what is permitted by the national delicacy and what is not, nor can he
get any light from the recorded campaigns of the moralists. They seem to
strike blindly, unintelligently, without any coherent theory or plan.
"Trilby" is assaulted by the united comstockery of a dozen cities, and
"The Yoke" somehow escapes. "Hagar Revelly" is made the subject of a
double prosecution in the State and Federal courts, and "Love's
Pilgrimage" and "One Man" go unmolested. The publisher of
Przybyszewski's "Homo Sapiens" is forced to withdraw it; the publisher
of Artzibashef's "Sanine" follows it with "The Breaking Point." The
serious work of a Forel is brought into court as pornography, and the
books of Havelock Ellis are barred from the mails; the innumerable
volumes on "sex hygiene" by tawdry clergymen and smutty old maids are
circulated by the million and without challenge.
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