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‘Censorship’ has become an ugly word, the first step on the slippery downhill path towards tyranny. Once freedom of speech is lost, it is said, then bad times will inevitably follow. But when Dr Johnson created his Dictionary of the English Language in the 1750s, he thought of the ‘censor’ as ‘An officer of Rome, who had the power of correcting manners’. Or as ‘One who is given to censure and exprobation’. There was then some implied virtue in curbing the natural instincts of humankind. Freedom of speech implied certain responsibilities.
Kureishi and co. seem to have missed the point. There’s no denying that his story is engaged with serious issues and has a powerful impact — ‘I know you don’t want too much detail, but it’s serious work taking off someone’s head if you’re not a butcher; and these guys aren’t qualified, they’re just enthusiastic — it’s what they like to do.’ But does it bear any truth or tell us anything we don’t already know or can’t see on TV or read about every day in the newspapers?
Writers, of course, must probe, must shock, must make us feel uncomfortable. We will not always like what they write, or wish to read what they have to say. But there can also be something petulant and childish about challenging, shocking, unsettling your readers. And I just wish Mark Damazer had asserted his right to state that Kureishi’s story is brutal, insensitive and not illuminating. That’s why it did not fit into the Radio Four schedule.
The winner of the competition, Julian Gough, was announced on the Today programme on Monday morning, and interviewed by Nicola Stanbridge. Gough’s story, ‘The Orphan and the Mob’, tells of Jude, an 18-year-old raised in an Irish orphanage, who suffers from an irresistible urge to urinate on a perfect summer’s day in Tipperary. Yes, it’s a story about passing water in the full gaze of a mobload of Irish cattlemen, assembled in an Irish bog for a Fianna Fáil meeting.
Gough told Nicola at half-past eight just as I was spreading the thin-cut marmalade on my breakfast toast that he had enjoyed hearing his story being read aloud last week, but that some of it had been cut — ‘I missed the occasional urethral sphincter.’ Apparently, we had been saved some of the lavatorial details. An excerpt was read on air. It began, ‘Neglecting to empty my bladder after breakfast…’
‘I do like to challenge everything on principle,’ smirked Gough (who has been compared to James Joyce and Thomas Hardy), ‘whether I should or not.’ I suppose it depends what you mean by ‘challenge’.
The runner-up was David Almond (author of the prizewinning children’s novel Skellig), whose story ‘Slog’s Dad’ describes the miraculous reappearance of Slog’s dead father, a Geordie binman, on a park bench one lunchtime. It’s magical, haunting and purposeful. Challenging, too, in that it deals with the difficult subjects of childhood grief and the reality of death. It also has its own kind of humour — touching and real. If you’re quick, you’ll catch it on Listen Again. Or you can read it in the current issue of Prospect.
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