THE END OF OBSCENITY

Charles Rembar is an attorney who has studied and condensed a handful of the Supreme Court bench-mark decisions on books and obscenity since the 1940's--Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, the strangely neglected Mishkin case, the Ginzburg decision, and a prosecution of Fanny Hill in which he was one of the defending lawyers. His thesis is--and he's most persuasive--that anti-obscenity drives. Comstockian standards for art, and bands of censors have created a nation of voyeurs and actually enhanced the market for the forms of pornography they attempt to stamp out. Further, and again most persuasively, he suggests that the relaxation of the laws will free artists to confront other issues, decrease the market value of smut for publicity's sake, and help create the conditions for a healthier adult intellectual climate. Librarians, always the best audience for books dealing with book censorship cases, will be especially interested in Mr. Rembar's discussion of trying to establish the traceable effects of sexually stimulating material on the adolescent or child.