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How to Be Obscene (1927)
The writer’s 1927 short story imagines that, for authors, all press is good press—especially if the Boston police declare one’s book obscene.
Instantly the press agencies flash the name of your book to every town and village in the United States, and your publishers get orders by telegraph from Podunk and Kalamazoo. They gave me a very nice luncheon of cold meats and potato salad and ice cream and cake, and we saluted the flag, and sang songs about it, and then I told them about this wonderful situation—using the Kiwanis dialect, which, as you may know, is closely related to the Rotary and Lions’ languages. Nobody has to read the whole book save a Boston police clerk; he picks out the passages which tend to corrupt his sensitive religious nature, and marks them.
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