Early History and Beat Poetry Censorship Controversy
Before censorship by the university administration, the Chicago Review was an early and leading promoter of the Beat Movement in American literature. In the autumn of 1958, it published an excerpt from Burroughs' Naked Lunch, which was judged obscene by the Chicago Daily News and sparked public outcry; this episode led to the censorship of the following issue, to which the editors responded by resigning and starting a new magazine in which to freely publish Beat fiction.
The Chicago Review became the subject of considerable controversy in 1959, when the University of Chicago prohibited editor Irving Rosenthal from publishing a winter issue that was to include Jack Kerouac's Sebastian Midnite, a thirty-page excerpt from William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch and a thirty-page work by Edward Dahlberg. The concern of the university was that the work might be deemed obscene. All but one editor quit the paper. Rosenthal, Ginsberg and others responded by founding Big Table; its first issue included ten chapters of Naked Lunch.
In the context of the ongoing nation-wide conflict between traditional vs. Beat fiction, the impact of the creation of Big Table was such that, as Thomas Pynchon recalled, among the literature college students at Cornell University, "'What happened at Chicago' became shorthand for some unimaginable subversive threat."
The Chicago Review also played a significant role in introducing Zen to the American public.
Read more about this topic: Chicago Review
Famous quotes containing the words early, history, poetry, censorship and/or controversy:
“The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“This above all makes history useful and desirable: it unfolds before our eyes a glorious record of exemplary actions.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)
“Herein is the explanation of the analogies, which exist in all the arts. They are the re-appearance of one mind, working in many materials to many temporary ends. Raphael paints wisdom, Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakspeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it. Painting was called “silent poetry,” and poetry “speaking painting.” The laws of each art are convertible into the laws of every other.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“... censorship often boils down to some male judges getting to read a lot of dirty books—with one hand.”
—Robin Morgan (b. 1941)
“Ours was a highly activist administration, with a lot of controversy involved ... but I’m not sure that it would be inconsistent with my own political nature to do it differently if I had it to do all over again.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)