This post is about two things: sneaking something forbidden through the U.S. Customs, and getting rid of things. Such is life: we accumulate things we want and get rid of things we don't want. Which isn't always easy. As we shall see, both endeavors involve a grinder.
Sneaking through Customs
Sneaking through Customs
Sneaking something through customs has always been a bit of an
adventure and a trial for international travelers, and New York, a frequent
destination, is the site of many such incidents. When I went to Europe in the early 1950s,
bringing back a forbidden volume of Henry Miller, whose works were available in
Paris, was a common undertaking. Hearing
of my planned trip, a college friend asked me to bring him a copy of Tropic of Cancer, which of course I
did. Arriving by ship, I disembarked properly
dressed in a (seedy) jacket and tie, and had no trouble sneaking my illicit
item through customs. (Later I got my
own copy of Tropic of Cancer, read
it, and found it hilarious. That’s
right: not pornographic, just flat-out hilarious, as Miller recounts his sexual
escapades in Paris over a period of years.)
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| Today, people too are scanned. Look at that woman's piercing gaze. |
In 1963 I went again to Europe and returned with no illicit
import concealed. Once again, dressed
properly in a jacket and tie, I had no trouble with customs. But the inspector who whizzed me through
gestured toward a young man nearby, showed me a closed switchblade knife, and
said, “Those two Columbia College kids got caught. Dirty books and a switchblade knife! I get nervous even looking at a
switchblade.” I had to agree about the
switchblade: it wasn’t a necessity for a college education. As for the “dirty books,” he was probably
referring to Miller’s output, which was still taboo, and in that regard I was
in silent disagreement. One of the kids
was sitting nearby, his back against a wall, while his buddy was being
lectured inside by the inspector’s superior.
The one I saw, who looked sheepishly chagrinned and annoyed, was in
shirt sleeves and jeans with a ragged jacket – just the kind of kid that I would search,
were I an American customs inspector. I
almost went over to say to him, “For God’s sake, if you’re going to sneak in
some Henry Miller, as I did once, don’t dress casual like a college kid. Dress like I did: jacket and tie, neat, tidy,
and bourgeois as they come.”
The U.S. Customs in those days seemed to be a stronghold of
puritanism, viewing imports from a moral point of view in accordance with the
laws of the time, even after much of the nation had relaxed into easygoing tolerance. Three works that originally could not get
legally past U.S. Customs had acquired legendary fame and were passionately
desired by all rebels of a literary bent: Joyce’s Ulysses (quite legal by my time), Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. How
book-mad Americans had lusted for this forbidden triad!
Joyce’s Ulysses had
seemingly blazed the way toward acceptance.
Published in Paris in 1922, it was banned as obscene until Random House,
possessing the rights to publish it in the U.S., decided in 1933 to bring a
test case challenging the law and informed the Customs Service in advance. When the anticipated copy arrived at the port
of New York, the local official in charge at first declined to seize it, saying
that “everybody brings that in.” He and
his superior were finally persuaded to seize it, so the case could go to
court. An assistant district attorney
assigned to the case pronounced it a “literary masterpiece” but, under the law,
obscene.
The U.S. District Court in New York then brought suit
against the book, rather than the author, declaring it obscene and therefore
subject to seizure and destruction, while Random House argued that it was not
obscene but protected under the First Amendment. The U.S. argued specifically that the work
contained sexual titillation, especially Molly Bloom’s soliloquy, and
“unparlorlike” language; that it was blasphemous, especially regarding the
Catholic Church; and that it expressed coarse thoughts and desires that were
usually repressed. Random House’s
attorney stressed the work’s artistic integrity and moral seriousness, and
called it a classic work of literature. In
his historic ruling Judge John M.
Woolsey decided that Ulysses was not
pornographic, and added that if sex was on the mind of many characters in the book,
the locale was Celtic and the season, spring.
As a result, Random House immediately began publishing the book, which
at last was legally available in the U.S.
It remained banned in Great
Britain until 1936, and if Ireland never officially banned it, it was never
available there for decades.
By the time I reached college, Ulysses was an accepted but challenging classic; no need to sneak
it past customs. But Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, likewise first
published in France (ah, those naughty Gauls!), had a much longer wait for
legality – from 1934 until 1964. A
clandestine publication of the book in New York in 1940 cost the publisher
three years in prison. When Grove Press
got the rights from Miller and published it here in 1961, it provoked over 60 obscenity
lawsuits in more than 21 states. The
resulting court opinions varied; a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice
pronounced it “a cesspool, an open
sewer, a pit of putrefaction, a slimy gathering of all that is rotten in
the debris of human depravity” – an opinion that must have inspired many an
adventurous reader to seek the book out.
Finally, in 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court overruled state court rulings
that found the work obscene.
And that third in the triad of forbidden books, D.H.
Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover? Published privately in Italy in 1928, and
then in France and Australia in 1929, it was taboo here until 1959, when Grove
Press (yes, them again) published it, and a U.S. Court of Appeals judge famously
established the principle of “redeeming social or literary value” as a defense
against the charge of obscenity.
Today it isn’t literary masterpieces that the U.S. Customs
confiscates, but food, narcotics, weapons, and anything deemed hazardous. Food?
If, arriving on an international flight, you try to bring fruit or
vegetables into the U.S., customs will seize them. Why?
Because they may contain insects, viruses, or disease. What then happens to the confiscated items? The food is taken to a grinding room in the
terminal and eliminated. And if, being
fibrous, an item resists the grinders, it is delivered to an incinerator. Also into the incinerator go narcotics and
counterfeit foods like fake Viagra. There will always be customs officers, vigilantly guarding our health and morals, and there will always be those who try to sneak stuff in.
Good Riddance Day
I had never heard of it till recently. It seems that between 12:00 noon and 1:00
p.m. on Wednesday, December 27, some hundred people flocked to Times Square to
“shred it and forget it” – to destroy unwanted objects associated with
embarrassing and painful memories from 2016, so as to clear the way for a happier
and more prosperous 2017. This new event
was inspired by a Latin American tradition in which New Year’s revelers stuff
dolls with objects representing bad memories and then set the dolls on fire.
On this occasion a year ago, people deposited scraps of
paper associated with bad memories in a shredder bin for subsequent
shredding. Another participant shed
empty containers of prescription pills that harbored bad memories of sickness
and misery, and a man brought a laptop whose slow load times had frustrated him
for years. Since the laptop was too
thick to go safely into a paper shredder, he pounded it with a mallet, and when
the host of the event decided that he hadn’t done enough, she took the mallet
and smashed the laptop to smithereens. Other
items deposited included a woman’s memories of an ex-girlfriend, and someone
else’s photo of Donald Trump. All this
before a camera-wielding crowd of onlookers.
And this year? “He
did me dirty,” said a mother of six from the Bronx, who with her four adult
daughters as witnesses, scrawled her spouse’s name on a piece of paper and
tossed it into the shredder, while onlookers cheered. Many others did the same, ridding themselves
of an ex. A woman from Harlem brought a
push-cart full of old personal records to shred, explaining, “I’m here to shred
my whole life. I need a fresh start for
2017.” Anti-Trump shredders were
numerous, though a tourist from Liverpool shredded “American negativity,”
saying, “You guys need to give him a fair chance.” Another participant deposited computer parts
on the ground and smashed them with a hammer, computers seeming to rival the
president-elect as candidates for riddance. A woman wrote “stress” on a scrap of paper and
stuck it in the shredder. A bankruptcy
survivor contributed a shoulder bag full of medical bills and bank
statements. And a woman who had flown
all the way from San Francisco shredded the hairpiece she had worn after
undergoing chemotherapy. After the
hour-long event all participants departed feeling lighter, relieved, ready for
a new start.
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My poems: For my short poem “I Crackle” and a stunning photo of me, go here. For five acceptable poems, click here and scroll down. To avoid five terrible poems, don't click here. For my poem "The Other," inspired by the Orlando massacre, click here.
My books: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
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The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), my historical novel about a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client, is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon:
Maybe something more on diversity in the city.
© 2016 Clifford Browder
