Word: reader
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Shock or disgust, however, is not the issue. Any legal test for obscenity hinges on whether the matter appeals to prurient interest--whether the total effect of the book would be to arouse sexual desire in the average reader (In the Roth decision, Justice Brennan explicitly stated that "the portrayal of sex ... is not itself sufficient reason" to declare a book obscene...
...Angels (Orville Prescott in the New York Times, 1955: "thoughtful reflections upon moral issues and psychological factors"). Amantha, the beautiful ante-bellum heroine, is setting divinity students aquiver at Oberlin College when she hears that her plantation owner father has died. Back in Kentucky, to her horror and the reader's titillation, she learns not only that she is the daughter of a slave woman, but that the plantation and she herself with it are being sold for taxes. Soon Amantha (Yvonne De Carlo in the movie) is trembling on the block at a slave auction. A lounging lecher...
Lingering Seduction. Perhaps the most exasperating of Warren's novels was The Cave (Arthur Mizener in the New York Times, 1959: "Warren at his best . . . beautifully intricate"). The author continued to spoon out enough sex to keep matronly readers titillated. More offensive was the novel's fakery in character development. Warren staged a situation of violence (a youth trapped in a cave), exposed a dozen people to it, and then, without explanation, asked the reader to believe that each of them experienced a profound change of personality. This sort of dodge is a black box, in engineering jargon...
Underneath the active literary world is another busy world of which the average reader seldom hears: that of the "little" magazine. Traditionally the little magazine serves two purposes: it offers a haven to the experimental, and it also gives early publication to new talent (which is not always the same thing). To keep an eye on the little magazine is to keep an eye on both the future and the futureless...
...reader who wants to spot the comers can plunge into these pages and make his bets. But he will have to pick his way past a host of the noncomers, who can be divided roughly into two types: beatnik flashes-in-the-pad and talented people who, because they prefer assault on convention to communication, will spend their lives out of earshot...