Censors at Work: How States Shaped Literature Reprint Edition

This book provides a fascinating look at how three different governments have used censorship to influence literary expression. The author focuses on censorship in France before the French Revolution, in India during British colonial rule, and in East Germany under Communist rule. Besides focusing on the particulars of censorship in each of the three case studies, the author notes some similarities and differences between the forms and methods of censorship under the three regimes, and offers some opinions about censorship in general. The author makes interesting observations, offers thoughtful insights, and presents serious arguments and contentions about the nature, methods and consequences (intended and unintended) of censorship. The author’s interesting arguments and contentions about censorship should be taken with some caution because of the small number of case studies he relies on.This book is a serious, scholarly look at censorship and, as such, it is not likely to appeal to readers with only a casual interest in the subject. The book would be of interest to readers with a scholarly or professional interest in censorship, the history of censorship, and political efforts to control and manipulate writers. Historians, lawyers, publishing professionals, writers, librarians, teachers, and civic-minded citizens could find this book interesting and informative.Readers interested in this book should consider also taking a look at Leonard W. Levy,  Emergence of a Free Press  ; and Robin Myers and Michael Harris (editors),  Censorship and the Control of Print in England and France 1600 1910: In England and France 1600-1910 (Publishing Pathways)  . Various references to government licensing and censorship of book publishing and journalism also can be found in S.H. Steinberg,  Five Hundred Years of Printing by Sigfrid H. Steinberg (December 3, 2001) Paperback 4th Rev  .

Censorship has long been used by governments to control what its citizens read. This book provides examples. It is important today as what is considered news is filtered by political agenda and not the presentation of facts. Private companies are doing this as well. Each citizen should be aware and cautious.

The information on the multifaceted nature of French censorship was new to me and well done.

Robert Darnton's works should be on every scholars shelf and cited often.

Great book.

Darnton opens his study by showing how censors in pre-revolutionary France were responsible more for endorsing a text submitted for their approval than for purging or forbidding it, as one might imagine. He even claims that the reports they submitted were so detailed and well-written that they form their own genre of literature. Having little expertise, however, when it comes to censorship in the Bourbon monarchy (and even less regarding the British in India), I will confine myself in this review to the third part of Darnton’s book, the section that focuses on the German Democratic Republic.Instead of describing how censorship was structured in East Germany from the top down, Darnton takes the sensible alternative of recounting his path of discovery about how it really worked. Thus the opening parts have some of the excitement of a story in the literary-detective-in-the-library genre, as we see him set forth with high expectations, grow frustrated at being trapped in an information maze, until finally he is shown the way forward by a sympathetic insider.Darnton soon found that without a guide, an archive can turn into a labyrinth. “After several days of combing through bureaucratic flotsam and jetsam, I began to despair of finding anything important.“ Then, just as he was beginning to despair, he found a helpful guide, an archivist who assisted him in navigation. Having found the thread, he moves on to a series of case studies, focusing on selected texts from authors including Wolfgang Hilbig, Erich Loest, and Volker Braun, among others.Darnton discovered that, as in France before the Revolution, the process of censorship in the GDR was not a simple one of an author writing a book and getting it accepted or rejected. Instead, the whole procedure could go through elaborate stages, with some authors submitting their work in bits and pieces, and receiving feedback from their editors while the work was still in progress. Moreover, even when the work was finally accepted for publication and had already appeared in print, that by no means meant the censors laid down their red pens. “The process of censoring could continue even after the book had been published, because if it provoked a scandal, it could be withdrawn from bookshops and pulped. Certain passages might be excised from later editions, but they also might be added,” for example in a version published in West Germany. One could say that in a very literal sense, texts published in the GDR were unstable.When it comes to Darnton's translations from German, I noticed numerous small mistakes. More serious is his rendering of the phrase “real existierender Sozialismus,” which causes him some rather needless difficulty. “Real existing socialism” is obviously the closest equivalent, but is too inelegant to be considered. “Socialism as it really exists” strikes me as a satisfactory circumlocution, but Darnton opts for a variety of alternatives, often “real socialism” with explanatory phrases tacked on. For example, “real socialism – the actual existing order of the GDR” (pg. 181)The problem comes when he says that East German writers “accepted the reality of what they knew as ‘real socialism’ – a term they often used to describe the imperfect but superior character of East German society – and as far as one can tell, they retained their belief in its fundamental legitimacy.” And as an example he cites Christa Wolf, who “never deviated from her commitment to the socialist ideals of the GDR.” (pg. 199) Here Darnton essentially conflates acceptance of “real socialism” with support for socialist ideals, two very different things indeed. “Socialism as it really exists” was a slogan used mainly by the regime and its apologists, which did not reliably include Christa Wolf by any stretch of the imagination. Her acceptance of it was at best grudging, while her vocal support of socialist ideals was meant as a criticism of Honecker’s “real socialism.” When Darnton later terms “real socialism,” which of course was not a literary term at all, “a progressive kind of literature,” the confusion is complete. (pg. 210)All in all, though, the chapter “Communist East Germany: Planning and Persecution” is the result of remarkably thorough archival research.