Disgusting book
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I am writing to you about a disgusting book, ‘The Pornographer of Vienna’ by Lewis Crofts. Last weekend I was browsing in my local bookshop (Waterstones in Tunbridge Wells) and without warning in the fiction section came across said book, and was utterly shocked because it had a picture of a lady’s private parts blatantly emblazoned on the spine. There was not even a sticker of warning or anything, and young children could easily have seen it. I do not think it is right that a book like that is freely displayed.
I know that people have a right to publish books about what they like, and if that’s erotica then so be it, but obscene pictures where anyone can see them is just too much. I want to start a campaign to get this book taken off the shelves, and to discourage publishers from thinking they can sell anything just as long as it has naked people on the cover. If you could spread the word, I would be very grateful.
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May 31st, 2007 at 4:35 am
You have got to be kidding. The fact that that cover offends you is totally unbelievable.
You belong in a country that caters to communism. A government that protects you from thinking.
I shouldn’t be suprised I suppose, People like this just drive me crazy when they prosper and live in America. I’d rather ban them.
Check it out for yourself http://www.lewiscrofts.com/
May 31st, 2007 at 4:59 am
I agree with Greg E. While the area in question is indeed on the spine of the book it is unrecognisable until you turn the book over serveral times in yours hands and work out what it is. maitlandp must have an amazing imagination to see that while walking through a shop. And why does he think (since I presume it is a ‘he’) that this is in some way offensive…? The cover is of a painting - probably a hundred years old - and the area concerned is covered with clothes (at least on my copy). Does maitlandp expect some kind of witchhunt to stop literature and literary design from being exciting? Give me a break and go back to your John Grisham.
June 2nd, 2007 at 3:29 am
I went into my local bookshop this morning after reading this rant and I have to confess this is unacceptable. Placing a vagina on the spine of a book in some crass marketing move should be banned. Admittedly, the genitals are clothed but this should not be allowed - even in an era of relaxed sexual morals.
I think publishers have a duty to our readers and libraries and not just to their bottom lines and marketing types. This shocks me, firstly as a sexual abhorrence and secondly as a sign of the decline of modern publishing.
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:30 am
this vagina place here in crass marketing, it’s no more than a representation of a painting by Egon Schiele… (one of the best austrian painters… yes,from… vienna… what a coinsidence!)
June 3rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm
If people are offended, by a couple of lines in a painting by Egon Schiele (which could be clothing or a vagina - your mind works it out) which has been shown in galleries around the world then mention it to the store manager and they may choose to relocate the book for you. I don’t think things should be banned because some people find them offensive, I find some of David Allen Coe’s (American country legend) songs quite offensive, but I will defend his right to produce these songs. The offending “vagina” in this case is only prominent when the book is fully opened, from the side it is a few lines.
Personally the fictional violence on tv is more offensive to me than a painting from the early 1900s and considering some of Schiele’s works, which at the time were considered by some as pornography, all those offended by Lewis Crofts’ choice of cover should be thankful as it could have been a lot more explicit.
June 11th, 2007 at 12:48 am
Good work Lewis - will be looking for you book this weekend. Sounds great.
James
June 13th, 2007 at 5:34 am
http://tinyurl.com/yvc6ze
Good to see the sensible people of the Daily Telegraph taking this with pinch of salt.
July 12th, 2008 at 6:54 am
I think the publisher understood that in the unlikely event that this book became a best seller, the odds of a child noticing the spine of the book in a sea of colorful other titles would be very unlikely. add in the fact that not many children would know what they were looking at even if they did notice, and if they did know what it was, why should we be conditioning them to believe there is something wrong with the human form? there is nothing dirty about the female body. for hundreds of years people have believed that there was nothing more beautiful that a woman’s body. how did it become so wrong to think so in the last 100 years? maybe if we stopped acting like the female form was a bad thing unless it was airbrushed to perfection and hidden under yards of clothing, the young women of today would stop comparing themselves to the unattainable.