So I was just re-reading Peyton Place and I thought a list/discussion of books that generated a scandal might be interesting. Off the top of my head, besides PP, there’s:
Valley of the Dolls, Jackie Susann’s magnum opus;
Joyce’s Ulysses, subject of a famous obscenity trial; The Well of Lonliness, by Radclyffe Hall;
Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, more for the fatwa declared against him than the book itself; American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis;
Kitty Kelley’s biographies of Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan; Fortunate Son by J.H. Hatfield, an early GWB biography that was suppressed for a while. The author later turned up dead in a motel room.
Great memory, Otto. Didn’t Monica give this book to Bill? I think it was upsetting to the prigs anyway because it is entirely a series of phone sex conversations.
Forever Amber by Katherine Winsor. This was a scanalous book back in the 40’s. It is somewhat tame compared to modern day bodice rippers. He kisses her, she relaxes, chapter ends. Next chapter she is pregnant. Moral of the story is never relax! Quite an enjoable read.
I’m glad someone mentioned this one. Jurgen led to a huge show trial in New York on “obscenity charges” (i.e. promoting atheism). It made Cabell hugely famous in his day, yet for some reason he sank into obscurity shortly after he died. Even literary types don’t seem to know who he is these days. But Cabell really is one of the great American authors. Witty, succinct and he hits you with real messages when you least expect it.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly.
Quite a few of Dickens’ works, like Hard Times, caused something of a ruckus, especially among those he was lampooning.
Gore Vidal’s City and the Pillar.
There was a book released in Australia some years back called The Hand That Signed the Paper, by Helen Demidenko. It told the story of a Ukrainian family who battled Stalinism and became Nazis, then moved to Australia. It was sold as a story about Ukrainians, by a member of a Ukrainian imigrant family. The book won a couple prestigious Australian literary award, including the Miles Franklin Award, the biggest thing in Aussie literature.
The book itself caused something of a minor scandal, raising accusations of anti-semitism. But then the big scandal hit, when it was reveald that Helen Demidenko of Ukrainian descent was actually Helen Darville of English background, and that she had misrepresented her past in order to make her novel seem more authentic. The whole thing set off a big debate over the ethics of Darville’s con, and whether a work of fiction should be judged independently of its author’s origins.
What about Catcher in the Rye? I always had the feeling that it created a stir when it was released. When I asked a teacher I was told it was because it had the F-word in it.
Do post-publication scandals count? If so, I’d vote for Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden. Our local Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation chapter gave this book to a bunch of area schools (along with another, poorly-written one titled, I think, “All-American Boys”); the surrounding brouhaha over a book written in '82 yet only challenged in our area some ten to twelve years later was ridiculous at best–especially since a number of school libraries had had it on their shelves for years with nary a peep from our knee-jerkish, conservative parent population.
Jenny Lives with Eric and Martin (or something on those lines) caused a homophobic furore in the UK in the 1980s because it was being read to children in schools.
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume The Collector by John Fowles The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain The Turner Diaries by Andrew Macdonald
