Randy: When Did the Sanitizing of Literature Begin?

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by Thomas Cahill

A series of books my wife recently gave me was Thomas Cahill’s THE HINGES OF HISTORY: HOW THE IRISH SAVED CIVILIZATION, THE GIFTS OF THE JEWS, and SAILING THE WINE-DARK SEA Why the GREEKS MATTER. They were an eye-opener for me, having I thought before reading the books a pretty good grasp of Greek Civilization (specifically Greek Drama) and the Old Testament (I even wrote an opera called Testament in which I mixed modern-day references with the old. To some degree Cahill does the same thing.)

Gee, people back then celebrated their sexuality; and it was done in the open, as part of their drama and religion. The male performers were naked and some accentuated their erections; before they paraded into amphitheaters they displayed their penises on the streets in a way that some of us would classify as pornographic. (I take responsibility for this interpretation of Cahill for I am now going on memory.) References like this, about genitals and about displaying them and using them, can be found throughout the books. (The bluntness of this caught my attention in much the same way as when a fellow writer recently reduced living to “eating, sleeping, and fucking.” Throughout the ages, the vulva wasn’t left out.) This openness was one of the things that surprised me in all three books. I’m afraid this says more about me than Mr. Cahill or the Greeks or the Sumerians or even the Hebrews.

The question for me is when did the sanitizing begin. Is it just me? I seem to be drawn to those places in the books in much the same way as I once looked for and underlined the “good” passages in PEYTON PLACE or first looked for the words “fuck you” near the end of THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.

Everything in THE HINGES OF HISTORY series doesn’t revolve around sexuality. And though classical bluntness may to the modern ear seem crude, there was much more in the series that I had missed in my education. Mr. Cahill, I thank you. I look forward to reading more of your works.

I welcome all comments.

Randy

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Tags: Cahill, censorship, writing