Censor Was Unhappy About This Thai Twer

This Month's New Reading

Conducted by J.T.

WHEN we received A Sort of Beauty (Jack Reynolds), a little note was tucked into it.

It said: “This book was banned in Australia when it was published last year and it has just been released.”

However, in Australia this in it self should not be taken as giving the book that certain cachet. Accord ing to the local intelligentsia, a book called Raising Demons was also banned in Australia because the small group which has this task thought it was a book about witch craft (it was a domestic story of

bringing up a couple of f.a.q. brats).

Book censorship here is entrusted primarily to Customs Officers, with someone in Canberra having the final say in the matter. No one knows the rules that are followed, but one theory is that books are judged by the pictures on the cover—certainly food for thought, in themselves, these days.

Censorship, of course, has another angle—the merest hint of it brings up the hackles of those in our midst who are concerned with our “cultural freedom” —something of considerable importance to all except low-brows like yours truly.

Many scalding tears have been shed about the fate of Lady Chatterley’s Lover —for instance. A few years ago I came cross this masterpiece—in Germany; and swooped on it to pass a tedious rail way journey. Alas, Lady Chatterley and her sweating woodsman seemed like pure corn, proving only that it is a mistake for one generation to read the banned books of another.

In the 20’s, Australians may have got a boost to their cultural freedom from Lady Chatterley; Australians of 1957 haven’t a darned thing to learn from it.

But A Sort Of Beauty is a good example of the hit and miss technique of Australian Customs officials in the censorship depart ment. Not that it is not full of “sin” —of a not particularly original nature, either —as it deals almost exclusively with the dancing-girls of Bangkok and the brothels of Thai land: and contains most of the dirty words Australasian kids learn in their first year at the local public school.

On the other hand, it is unlikely that our culture would have been much damaged if Customs had not relented. It is a book that could easily have been sordid; that it is

not is due to the light touch of the: author, and his determination that: it should be amusing.

Reggie Joyce is the son of an English clergyman, and emotionally what the Americans would call a “poor mixed-up kid.” He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke and he cer tainly did not go out with bad women; with the result that his elder brother married his girl and Reggie had a reputation of being something of a failure.

As the story opens he has got a job with an English firm in Bangkok Reggie’s transition from shocked re coil at the antics of his colleagues in Bangkok, to the complete shed ding of his inhibitions on his first trip up country, is an excellent piece of writng craftsmanship and from there the story gets well into its stride with his meeting with Vilaii More usually known as the White Leopard, she is a dancing girl at the Bolero, and according to herself the best bad girl in Bangkok. She is also about the most mercenary character who ever appeared in b book.

Although the story is wover around the theme that he who rides a tiger cannot dismount, the dis mounting is accomplished in un expected and characteristic mannei in the end.

If you require morals or morai uplift in a book you would do welJ to steer clear of this one. But r. was scarcely worthy of the censor’! 1 solicitude, either. It is quit* blatantly about sex—but sex of tin variety that most adults will be abl* to take in their stride; find tediouu in spots; and have no desire t« emulate.

This is a first novel by Reynolds an Englishman now living in Than land with his wife and children. (Just for the record, the book, whei published in the US last year—aj A Woman Of Bangkok —got ver? favourable reviews, and Reynold! was regarded as a “find”).

For our money, he is distinctly ! guy worth watching, with or withi out the future attentions of tin Australian Customs Department. (Published by Seeker and Warburg, Lto Australian price, 20/-.)