Dispute in Dubuque

All Dubuque was taking sides last week, either with the good ladies in church clubs or the lusty wenches of fiction.

It all began when the chief of police scooped up a lot of 25-c- reprints off newsstands, surveyed a collection of busty, flamboyant dames on the book jackets, and accused a distributor of peddling obscene literature. Then County Attorney John Duffy, a Notre Dame graduate who takes his knowledge of literature seriously looked over the evidence. The obscene books turned out to include bestsellers by Somerset Maugham, MacKinlay Kantor and John Steinbeck, and a collection of art masterpieces which had in it nudes by Velasquez and Titian. He dismissed the charge and for doing so forthwith got the clubwomen on his neck. They thought that such books should be barred from the newsstands and put out of reach of children. Duffy invited them to appear before the Dubuque grand jury and state their case, countered by sending two officers to the public library with a warrant for the seizure of copies of Boccaccio's Decameron, Fielding's Tom Jones and some of Rabelais' works.

Both sides decided to state their positions clearly. Duffy explained his library raid: "The action was taken so we will have something for the grand jury to use in making comparison. I'm no expert on obscene literature and I don't believe the grand jury is either."

Mrs. Anthony Eberhardt, a mother of school-age children, was spokesman for the women's group which included the Catholic Mothers' Study Clubs, the Council of Protestant Churches and the Dubuque Parent-Teachers Association. Said she: "We are not trying to influence adult reading or adult thinking. We are merely trying to remove what is objectionable to children. Of course, if this restriction is incompatible with freedom, then we agree that freedom is more important."

Duffy subpoenaed a couple of English professors from the State University of Iowa to tell the jury the difference between a classic and a dirty book. After his session with the grand jury, Professor Paul Engle summed up his observations. "I didn't see a book there that I thought was really obscene. I think a lot of these novels are cheap, badly written books, and are a lot more likely to corrupt a child's prose style than his morals." Then Professor Engle got down to a point that really troubled the clubwomen of Dubuque: "I think if these books had come out in quiet jackets the whole controversy might not have started."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.