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Mattie and the Censors
SENSLESS CENSORS.
By Mattie Lennon
Flann O Brien had a burning ambition to have at least one of his books banned. When he invented the character Fr Kurt Fahrt he said, “ The name will cause holy bloody ructions. It will lead to wirepulling behind the scenes here to have the book banned as obscene.” But the book wasn’t banned, which brings me to sensors.
It has been said that every editor should have a brother who is a pimp. To give him (the editor that is) somebody to look up to. Should every censor have a similar sibling?
There is a World Day Against Cyber censorship. It is celebrated every year on the twelfth of March. Should there be a world Day against the other sort of censors? My namesake, the critic Michael Lennon wrote that Ulysses was,” . Not so much pornographic as physically unclean……” I am not in a position to agree with or contradict him. Because despite numerous attempts over the years I have not yet got to Molly Bloom’s “Yes I said yes I will yes.” Of course contrary to popular belief Ulysses wasn’t ever officially banned in Ireland so ninety-seven years after its publication I can’t blame the censor for my lack of erudition in that area.
However, though I am reluctant to use the word “victim”, for more than three score years I have
been a soft touch for “censors” of various hues. Although in most cases I took Sam Goldwyn’s advice to, “Don’t even ignore them.”
As a bus inspector I once submitted a report on a complaint from an irate passenger. I had transcribed, verbatim, his objection which included many expletives, known in polite society as “the vernacular of the soldier.” My Divisional Manager asked me to change the wording, explaining, “I can’t ask the girls to type that. “
As fifteen year old, due to strict parental supervision, I was obliged to devour the exploits of The Ginger Man, Sebastian Balfe Dangerfield , and his fantasies about Miss Frost, in the semi-darkness of the cow-house in remote west Wicklow. While “the shelves of Patrick Kavanagh’s library” were the hedges of his small farm at Shankaduff my book collection was kept on the wall-plates of a thatched byre which lacked diurnal illumination By the time I got my hands on “Goodbye to the Hill” a neighbour had moved out, his cottage was empty and I could savour the carryings on of Paddy Maguire around Ranelagh and Rathmines in relative comfort.
A wise man once said that if you want something to last for ever you should either carve it in stone or write a song about it. Although I grew up within spitting distance of Ballyknockan granite quarries I am no stone-cutter. But I did on occasions make a feeble effort to record local happening in ill metred verse. Court cases were threatened more than once but , sadly, didn’t materialise . And before you ask . . . I haven’t ever been prosecuted under the Obscene Publications act.
My verbosity didn’t escape censure either. My olfactory organ, you will have noticed, has a Grecian bend. And what, you may well ask ,has that got to do with censors? I didn’t acquire my nasal fracture through walking into a wall, falling down, or being hit accidently. No. It happened in Blessington fifty-five years ago when a civic-minded man, head-butted me on the grounds that I had been using un- parliamentary language in the company of females. The ultimate in censorship I think you will agree.
When my one-act Play, “A Wolf by the Ears” was staged by an amateur drama group in Kildare the producer removed just one line. “In case there would be somebody sinsitive in the hall “, he said.
I have no way of knowing when I will be finished with censors but I know when it started.
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The Supreme Court sits in Dromin
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Remember this ?
I took this picture in 2007. No doubt this drinking trough had been there for hundreds of years, maybe even when it was a cows’ lawn. Health and safety concerns necessitated its removal.
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Believe it or Not
Switzerland only gave women the vote in 1971
(From: 1339 Facts to Make your Jaw Drop)
KEN DUCKETT
My gt gt grandfather was John Hanlon and he lived in a cottage in Ratoo next to Wilson Gunn a landlord in the area. The Hanlon family rented a great deal of the land in the area. I discovered that John Hanlon and Wilson Gunn grew up together near the Gunn’s previous property near Lisnaguenny, Kerry. Wilson Gunn was discovered to have been one of the better landlords in the area being benevolent to his tenants in the famine years.