In a long, textbook-like treatment of the history of art/ pornography and censorship/ freedom of expression, First Amendment lawyer Edward de Grazia uses a unique writing style:
He quotes people.
First he quotes from the artist. Then he quotes whoever got arrested for publishing the work. Then he quotes from the trial itself. The entire 800-page book looks something like this:
JAMES JOYCE (Ulysses): She leaned back far to look up where the fireworks were and she caught her knee in her hands so as not to fall back looking up and there was no one to see only him and her when she revealed all her graceful beautifully shaped legs like that, supply soft and delicately rounded, and she seemed to hear the panting of his heart his hoarse breathing. . . .
JANE HEAP (publisher of The Little Review, first U.S. magazine to serialize Ulysses): Mr. Joyce was not teaching early Egyptian perversions nor inventing new ones. Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere - seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom - and no one is corrupted. . .
JUDGE: It sounds to me like the ravings of a disordered mind. I can't see why anyone would want to publish it.
Intermingled with the excerpts from controversial books and testimony from trials are de Grazia's interpretations of the legal issues and of U.S. history. He finds his title in Jane Heap's poetic defense of Joyce.
For the first part of his book, the style works well. De Grazia creates a lovely collage of literature and law. He doesn't need to explain to the reader the importance of such authors as Joyce and D.H. Lawrence.
But as de Grazia moves from the early 1900s to modern times, the picture becomes less lovely. De Grazia needs to become an interpreter of history at this point. But he doesn't.
What we get in the second half of the book are chapters on the history of Playboy and Penthouse, Lenny Bruce and Robert Maplethorpe. De Grazia defends them all equally. The reader longs for more insight as to their relative merits. Are assaults on Penthouse really assaults on genius - as the subtitle of the book implies?
The reader doesn't expect any sensible quotes from decency committees - that's not his purpose. However, de Grazia also slights the growing number of liberals who see pornography as a violation of women's civil rights. Their views - important to future trials - seem unimportant to him. On the other hand, the chapter on the National Endowment of the Arts is quite thought-provoking.
Thus, though its success is uneven, "Girls Lean Back Everywhere" does fulfill its overall mission of chronicling one aspect of First Amendment history. And the structure of the book is interesting.