TY - BOOK AU - Carroll,Jordan S. TI - Reading the obscene: transgressive editors and the class politics of U.S. literature T2 - Post*45 SN - 9781503629493 AV - Z658 .R433 2021 KW - Censorship KW - United States KW - History KW - 20th century KW - Obscenity (Law) KW - Anticensorship activists KW - Editors KW - Political activity KW - Erotic literature KW - Publishing KW - Pornography KW - Social aspects KW - Middle class men KW - Books and reading KW - US literature KW - censorship KW - class KW - editors KW - gender KW - obscenity KW - professional-managerial class KW - publishing KW - sexuality KW - Electronic Books N1 - 2; Introduction : the naked editor --; Shocking the middle class --; An aristocracy of smut --; Decrypting EC Comics --; Reading Playboy for the science fiction --; Mad ones, Mad men --; White-collar masochism --; Afterword : transgression in the post-pornographic era; 2; b N2 - "With Reading the Obscene, Jordan Carroll reveals new insights about the editors who fought the most famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century. While many critics have interpreted obscenity as a form of populist protest, Reading the Obscene shows that the editors who worked to dismantle censorship often catered to elite audiences comprised primarily of white men in the professional-managerial class. As Carroll argues, transgressive editors, such as H.L. Mencken at The Smart Set and American Mercury, William Gaines and Al Feldstein at EC Comics, Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, and Barney Rosset at Grove Press, taught their readers to approach even the most scandalizing texts with the same cold calculation and professional reserve they employed in their occupations. Along the way, these editors kicked off a middle-class sexual revolution in which white-collar professionals imagined they could control sexuality through management science. Obscenity is often presented as self-shattering and subversive, but with this provocative work Carroll calls into question some of the most sensational claims about obscenity, suggesting that when transgression becomes a sign of class distinction, we must abandon the idea that obscenity always overturns hierarchies and disrupts social order"-- UR - https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&scope=site&db=nlebk&db=nlabk&AN=3038137&site=eds-live&custid=s3260518 ER -