Ban This Book (If You Can)

For many of the greats of literary Modernism, including James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Djuna Barnes, e.e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, the ultimate cat and mouse game with the censors was played on a global scale. More than a decade before the Nazi book burnings turned public opinion against the obscenity laws, writers and their publishers defied the law, and we will examine the extraordinary symbolic richness of the writing that fooled the censors (Solzhenitsyn, Du Fu) as well as the ways that some writers and editors caved in to the authorities (Dos Passos).

Charles Riley, who taught and wrote under extreme government censorship in China while helping dissidents, tracks the network of censorship that targeted Joyce’s Ulysses and other “obscene” books.

Teacher: Charles Riley

Charles Riley II, PhD, is an arts journalist, curator and professor at Clarkson University. He is the author of thirty-two books on art, architecture and public policy. Upcoming books include Free as Gods (University Press of New England) and Rodin and his Circle (Chimei Museum, Taiwan).











When: Fri., Sep. 29, 2017 at 7:00 pm
Where: The Strand
828 Broadway
212-473-1452
Price: $20, includes complimentary beer and wine
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For many of the greats of literary Modernism, including James Joyce, D. H. Lawrence, Djuna Barnes, e.e. cummings, Ernest Hemingway and John Dos Passos, the ultimate cat and mouse game with the censors was played on a global scale. More than a decade before the Nazi book burnings turned public opinion against the obscenity laws, writers and their publishers defied the law, and we will examine the extraordinary symbolic richness of the writing that fooled the censors (Solzhenitsyn, Du Fu) as well as the ways that some writers and editors caved in to the authorities (Dos Passos).

Charles Riley, who taught and wrote under extreme government censorship in China while helping dissidents, tracks the network of censorship that targeted Joyce’s Ulysses and other “obscene” books.

Teacher: Charles Riley

Charles Riley II, PhD, is an arts journalist, curator and professor at Clarkson University. He is the author of thirty-two books on art, architecture and public policy. Upcoming books include Free as Gods (University Press of New England) and Rodin and his Circle (Chimei Museum, Taiwan).

Buy tickets/get more info now