AustLit
Latest Issues
AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'For more than seventy years, a succession of politicians, judges, and government officials in Australia worked in the shadows to enforce one of the most pervasive and conservative regimes of censorship in the world. The goal was simple: to keep Australia free of the moral contamination of impure literature. Under the censorship regime, books that might damage the morals of the Australian public were banned, seized, and burned; bookstores were raided; publishers were fined; and writers were charged and even jailed. But in the 1970s, that all changed.
'In 1970, in great secrecy and at considerable risk, Penguin Books Australia resolved to publish Portnoy’s Complaint — Philip Roth’s frank, funny, and profane bestseller about a man hung up about his mother and his penis. In doing so, Penguin spurred a direct confrontation with the censorship authorities, which culminated in criminal charges, police raids, and an unprecedented series of court trials across the country.
'Sweeping from the cabinet room to the courtroom, The Trials of Portnoy draws on archival records and new interviews to show how Penguin and a band of writers, booksellers, academics, and lawyers determinedly sought for Australians the freedom to read what they wished — and how, in defeating the forces arrayed before them, they reshaped Australian literature and culture forever.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
[Review] The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought Down Australia’s Censorship System
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 52 no. 1 2021; (p. 137-138)
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism 'The Trials of Portnoy is a detailed account of the decision by the Penguin publishing company in 1970 to publish Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in Australia, even though this novel had been prohibited here. In this, his second book, Patrick Mullins relates who the key players behind this decision to publish were, why they set out to do what they did, the clever steps they took to realise their goals, who helped them along the way, who opposed them, on what basis, what eventually resulted, legally and socially, from this episode, and the enduring significance of these results. The Portnoy case was more significant in Australia’s reform of its censorship program than has been realised previously.' (Introduction) -
The Defeat of Literary Censorship
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: Quadrant , June vol. 64 no. 6 2020; (p. 85-87)
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism 'It took a book about masturbation to bring down Australia’s repressive regime of literary censorship. Philip Roth’s hugely controversial, highly sexualised novel Portnoy’s Complaint is a book about the habit that in the 1960s scarcely dared speak its name.' (Introduction) -
Blankety-Blank : The Art of the Euphemism
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 427 2020; 'Disguising the words we dare not print has a long and fascinating history. From the late eighteenth century in particular, it became common in printed works to disguise words such as profanities and curses – from the use of typographical substitutes such as asterisks to the replacement of a swear word with a euphemism. When I was researching my recent book, Rooted, on the history of bad language in Australia, I was struck by the creative ways in which writers, editors, and typesetters, especially through the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, sought to evade censors and allude to profanity.' (Introduction) -
‘Outrageous’ Portnoy Defies Prudes’ Complaint
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13 June 2020; (p. 20)
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism -
Patrick Mullins, The Trials of Portnoy
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 20-26 June 2020;
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism'It’s instructive to remember what a relatively illiberal society Australia was only a few decades ago and this account of the obscenity court cases about Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in the early 1970s – written by a young author who wrote a much-praised biography of Billy McMahon – is a good reminder of this. When Gough Whitlam came in, everything changed so that Australians saw a fuller version, say, of Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris than the British, but the period was a crossroads.' (Introduction)
-
[Review] The Trials of Portnoy
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Monthly , June no. 167 2020; (p. 56)
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism -
y
Unsolicited Smut : A Nation of Prudes and Wowsers
James Ley Reviews 'The Trials of Portnoy' by Patrick Mullins
Southbank
:
Australian Book Review, Inc.
,
2020
19498503
2020
single work
review
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism 'Okay, I’ll tell you what’s wrong with this country. For a start, we have this profoundly stupid and deeply irritating myth that we’re all irreverent freedom-loving larrikins and easygoing egalitarians, when it is painfully obvious that we have long been a nation of prudes and wowsers, that our collective psyche has been warped by what Patrick Mullins describes, with his characteristic lucidity, as ‘a fear of contaminating international influences’, and that we are not just an insular, conservative, and deeply conformist society, but for some unaccountable reason we take pride in our ignorance and parochialism. And let’s not neglect the fact that we are cringingly deferential and enamoured of hierarchy...' (Introduction) -
Patrick Mullins, The Trials of Portnoy
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 20-26 June 2020;
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism'It’s instructive to remember what a relatively illiberal society Australia was only a few decades ago and this account of the obscenity court cases about Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in the early 1970s – written by a young author who wrote a much-praised biography of Billy McMahon – is a good reminder of this. When Gough Whitlam came in, everything changed so that Australians saw a fuller version, say, of Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris than the British, but the period was a crossroads.' (Introduction)
-
‘Outrageous’ Portnoy Defies Prudes’ Complaint
2020
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 13 June 2020; (p. 20)
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism -
[Review] The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought Down Australia’s Censorship System
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Historical Studies , vol. 52 no. 1 2021; (p. 137-138)
— Review of The Trials of Portnoy : How Penguin Brought down Australia's Censorship System 2020 single work criticism 'The Trials of Portnoy is a detailed account of the decision by the Penguin publishing company in 1970 to publish Philip Roth’s Portnoy’s Complaint in Australia, even though this novel had been prohibited here. In this, his second book, Patrick Mullins relates who the key players behind this decision to publish were, why they set out to do what they did, the clever steps they took to realise their goals, who helped them along the way, who opposed them, on what basis, what eventually resulted, legally and socially, from this episode, and the enduring significance of these results. The Portnoy case was more significant in Australia’s reform of its censorship program than has been realised previously.' (Introduction) -
Blankety-Blank : The Art of the Euphemism
2020
single work
column
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , December no. 427 2020; 'Disguising the words we dare not print has a long and fascinating history. From the late eighteenth century in particular, it became common in printed works to disguise words such as profanities and curses – from the use of typographical substitutes such as asterisks to the replacement of a swear word with a euphemism. When I was researching my recent book, Rooted, on the history of bad language in Australia, I was struck by the creative ways in which writers, editors, and typesetters, especially through the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, sought to evade censors and allude to profanity.' (Introduction)
