“I have not met, nor do I ever expect to meet, an informed, intelligent person who believes in censorship. They believe that objective evaluations of obscenity can be made. I do not. Your own point of view with regard to [poet Irving] Layton is a classic example. Are you in a position to deprive people of the right to read and enjoy Layton? I don’t ask you to read and enjoy Layton; I ask merely that you give others the right to do so. I don’t propose to argue the pros and cons of censorship here. I have neither the time nor the energy. The fact is that John Milton treated the subject exhaustively in the seventeenth century and no further argument should have been necessary. I urge you to consider his views.”
publisher Jack McClelland’s (of McClelland & Stewart) response to an irate reader who wrote him protesting the content and the language used by M&S poet Irving Layton.
From Imagining Canadian Literature: The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland (via courts)
From Imagining Canadian Literature: The Selected Letters of Jack McClelland (via courts)
Notes
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