February 19, 2025 • 39 mins
Happy 69th episode! To celebrate, we learn about author Henry Miller popularized the term "boobs" and also...how he got sued a lot for his disgusting books.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
School of Humans. Hello, friends and family of the Filth.
While I usually do not put any trigger warnings up top,
I want to tell you that this episode is particularly
sexually graphic. That's not my fault. It's the fault of
(00:32):
American author Henry Miller. Not to be confused with Arthur Miller,
who at first I did confuse him with. They're two
different people, okay, But first of all, it's a very
auspicious day for American filth, a day of celebration. In fact,
it is the sixty ninth original episode of the podcast
(00:54):
Nice and actually we can thank the French for the
term sixty nine. The position was in the Kammasutra, but
in four hundred ish they didn't immediately think, hmm, that
looks like a six oh a nine. No, it was
the French who came up with swassel nuff. But since
(01:17):
we're on the topic of fun vocabulary, you know stuff
that you could type on your Texas instrument calculator as
a youth and go lol lol boobs. You guys remember those?
Remember when you had a calculator and then you would
type eight zero zero eight five and it would be boobs.
Wasn't that hilarious. Wasn't that fun? Being a child was amazing?
(01:41):
And you might be asking, where did the word boobs
come from? I know you guys were really thinking about that.
You're like, that's a word that I say all the time.
What's the etymology of that? Well, one of the first
times it was ever mentioned in American literature was in
the book Tropic of Cancer, which was by that guy
(02:03):
Henry Miller, who I mentioned in the Trick Your Warning,
And not only did he say boobs in that book,
it also was so disgusting and it got banned in
the United States for almost three decades. Cue the theme song,
(02:25):
This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you a filthy story from American history, and
this week's episode Henry Miller's obscene boobs. Da Dad, D
(02:47):
do do do do? Shall we start with some etymology,
you know, let's learn a little bit about the history
of where boobs came from. Not the ones on your chest,
those came from DNA, I think. But well, there are
(03:07):
many theories. Some people think the term came from Spain,
specifically from the word bobo, a word that means stupid person.
Though I think we can all agree that there's nothing
as stupid about titties, but the origin could more mean
something like clumsy. And I mean, I get that sometimes
(03:29):
when you got Gymungo bazingas, they can be a little clumsy,
a little haphazard. They're kind of going all over the place.
Other people have traced boobs back to German, where they
had a word bubby, which that does mean tit. But
wherever it came from, bubby ended up in the English
(03:52):
language starting in the seventeenth century. That was the first
time it was written down. And this was a predecessor
to boobs, bubby, booby's boob. It makes sense bubby's bubby
made it over to the Americas, and I think it's
safe to say by the nineteen twenties boobies and boob
(04:16):
was being used to reference breasts. They were still using
boob also to reference a stupid person, but boo boobies
also the TV's that's a new one. I just came
up with TD's that's not even whatever. And technically Henry
(04:37):
Miller wasn't even the first man to put that term
for teets in a book. He was merely the one
who got the most attention for it. In fact, a
year before that book, Tropic of Cancer came out, the
author James T. Farrell wrote, studs didn't usually pay attention
to how girls looked, except to notice the shape of
their legs because if they had good legs, they were
(05:00):
supposed to be good for, you know, and if they didn't,
they weren't. And to note their boobs if they were
big enough to bounce. Wow, how lyrical this book. And
also when Henry Miller was writing it was the nineteen thirties,
it was the Great Depression. People were hungry, not just
(05:23):
for food but also for boobs. Henry Miller, if you've
never heard about him before, he's a pretty crazy guy,
maybe even disgusting, I might say. He roamed around and
wrote semi autobiographical books about his musings, his thoughts about
a lot of sex stuff too. Have you heard of
(05:45):
this sex stuff? Tropic of Cancer was about his time
in Paris in the early nineteen thirties. A lot of
it is him just ranting about the human condition and
being horny, which could describe a lot of books written
by men. At first he tried to make it fictional,
(06:06):
but then it basically became a loose diary about his
stories of his time there. He described it as this,
it's like a big public garbage can. Only the mangy
cats are missing, but I'll get them in yet, meaning
this was just his garbage can of thoughts about his
time there, which was a lot of It was quite
(06:27):
filthy stuff that was going on. He was quite active
despite having no money. And here's something that's very misleading
about this whole episode is that Henry Miller didn't actually
use the word boobs. Everyone on the internet says he did,
but he only said boobies and reference to the teats.
(06:49):
He did use the word boobs, but he used it
to call people stupid, Like how we were saying earlier,
you know, the origin of boobs is that's a silly,
dumb little person. Ergo. Boobies are a little uh stupid
as well, which can be a compliment nowadays you'll be like, wow,
(07:10):
that lady's got stupid as titties. That means nice. Rack
To kind of get a sense of how he writes,
as I've mentioned that he was a bit of a disgusting,
filthy fella, let's hear the excerpts where he does use
boob and boobies in the work. Okay, it's pretty intense.
(07:32):
So if you're listening with someone who's very impressionable, like
a Christian, if they hear this, they might have a
heart attack. So I always ask him to leave the room. Perhaps,
But here's the first time he uses boobs, this time
as a stupid person. Listen, he says, do you happen
to know a cunt by the name of Norma? She
(07:54):
hangs around the dome all day. I think she's queer.
I had her up here yesterday, tickling her ass. She
wouldn't let me do a thing. I had her on
the bed, I even had her their drawers off, and
then I got disgusted. Jesus, I can't bother struggling that
way anymore. It isn't worth it. Either they do or
(08:15):
they don't. It's foolish to waste time wrestling with them.
While you're struggling with a little bitch like that. There
are more than a dozen cunts on the terras just
dying to be laid. It's a fact. They all come
over here to get laid. They think it's sinful here.
The poor boobs. Some of these school teachers from out West,
(08:35):
they're honestly virgins. I mean it, what a fun characterization
of women who don't want to have sex. Yes, if
a woman doesn't consent to have sex with you, she
is quite a boob. Also, I will note that he
uses the word counts ninety two times in the book. Now,
(09:02):
let's hear the time when he says boobies to references. Wow,
this podcast is so important. At ten o'clock, she was
lying on the divan with her boobies in her hands. Wow,
it kind of rhymes. And then he described to me
what happened after that, how he bent down and kissed
(09:25):
her breast, and how after he kissed them fervidly, he
stuffed them back in her corsage or whatever it is
they call those things. Just stuffing some tits down in
a corset, isn't that fun? And then later on the
book he does use the term boob again to describe
(09:45):
someone stupid. He writes, why you, poor boob. If she
ever thought you had tried to run away from her,
she'd murder you. That's true about women, They do like
to murder their boyfriends. So yes, even though he didn't
technically use boob, you know, he said boobies that's close enough.
(10:08):
He did officially use boobs to mean tits in his
nineteen forty nine novel Sexist That's spelled sex Us and
that book. He said, I felt her sloshy boobs joggling me,
but I was too intent on pursuing the ramifications of
Coleridge's amazing mind to let her vegetable appendages disturb me. Wow,
(10:36):
he just wanted to talk to her. I hate when
the vegetable appendages get in the way. That's so inconvenient.
What kind of vegetables do your tits look like? Send
a message to American filth thought on Instagram to let
us know. Please don't send a picture. So yeah, I
(11:00):
think you've caught onto his style. It's a bit graphic and,
as many people would say, obscene. An obscenity would be
a problem for much of Miller's publishing career. When Henry
Miller was thirty eight, he moved to Paris. It was
nineteen thirty. He was at the time not successful at all.
(11:25):
He had been married twice, and his second wife had
temporarily abandoned him to be a lesbian, and then he
abandoned her and moved to Paris. Not as a lesbian,
just as a man who has sex and is attracted
to women. They divorced a few years into him being there,
and before he started writing, he'd worked as a manager
(11:48):
at Western Union, but he quit that job to devote
his time to writing and being extremely poor. Henry Miller
didn't particularly want to be poor, you know, or unsuccessful. Weirdly,
he was desperate to be accepted as a real writer.
In one letter, he wrote, I refuse to live this
(12:08):
way forever. There must be a way out. He also
wrote to a friend which I highly relate to why
does nobody want what I write? When he arrived in Paris,
he had two unpublished novels. One was called Crazy Cock,
and he was absolutely obsessed with it. He thought it
was his magnum opus. It was about his wife who
(12:31):
had temporarily become a lesbian. But nobody wanted it, so
he decided to start on a new project. He wrote
to a friend, I start tomorrow on the Paris book,
first person, uncensored, formless, fuck everything, And indeed the book
(12:56):
is unsensored. Do you guys like this sort of romantic
saxophone that we're hearing? Well to use the saxophone because
I'm going to read another passage from the book just
to sort of give you a bigger sense of how
uncensored this book is. It's kind of it's the whole
(13:18):
argument about it is is it obscene, is it pornographic?
Or is there literary merit to what he's writing? And
so this passage, this excerpt, it's actually in the first
few pages of the book. It reads, Oh, Tanya, where
now is that warm cunt of yours? Those fat, heavy garters,
(13:41):
those soft, bulging thighs. There is a bone in my
prick six inches long. I will rem out every wrinkle
in your count Tanya, big with seed. I will send
you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your
belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester, yes,
(14:03):
he knows how to build a fire, but I know
how to inflame a kunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tanya.
I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous.
Now he feels something, does he? He feels the remnants
of my big prick. I have set the shores a
(14:24):
little wider. I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me,
you can take on stallions bulls, rams, drakes, Saint Bernards.
You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You
can shit our peggios if you like our string of
zether across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so
(14:46):
that you'll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of
being fucked publicly, I will fuck you privately. I will
tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste
them on Boris's chin. I will bite it into your
glitterus and spit out two franc pieces. How's everyone doing.
(15:08):
I'm sorry if you just felt assaulted by that passage,
But again, it's not me, it's freakin' Henry Miller. He's
insane and fellas He's doing all of this with a
six inch pen. You know you don't need it to
be much bigger to inflame someone's cute. Also, this was
in the nineteen thirties, people on average were a little
(15:30):
bit shorter, so maybe actually six inches was bigger in
perspective back then. I don't know. So Henry Miller's in
Paris writing this book about being in Paris. How interesting.
No American author has ever done that before, And while
(15:51):
in America, he didn't get much success or attention for
his writings. In Paris, he met this woman named Annais
nine a NAIs Nina Okay swasslnef uugh Nin was a
famous writer at the time, and she also focused on
erotic literature. Henry Miller disgustoed an niece erotic, and she
(16:19):
was very open about sexuality, especially her own. Obviously, she
even published her diaries, which were very graphic about all
of her sexual relationships, including the one she had with
Henry Miller, and she was probably like, Wow, I love
some disgusting content Henry Miller. I just really like what
(16:41):
he's doing. She liked him so much that she started
paying for his expenses, like his food, his rent throughout
the nineteen thirties while he was living in Paris so
he could focus on his writing. A sugar mommy. She
was like, oh, yes, sir, go write about the kunts
(17:01):
and you do not have to worry about paying the
rent till gay o la la soubet sachreibleu. That's what
she said when she saw his six inch dick, perhaps
sachrei blu. In nineteen thirty four, the Tropic of Cancer
(17:26):
was finished, and even though nine was a filthy queen herself.
Miller was nervous to show her his manuscript. He was like,
even she's gonna think I'm a crude barbarian. But nine
helped him find various publishers to reach out to, and
he eventually went with Obelisk Press, which was known for
(17:47):
publishing a softcore porn But Miller was conflicted because he
didn't just want to publish Tropic of Cancer. He wanted
to publish that other novel he wrote, The Crazy Cock.
He was like, if you don't publish cock, you don't
get cancer. Miller was also desperate for American approval. Some
(18:12):
American publishers had reached out to him asking to publish
a short story of his that wasn't nearly as demented
and filthy, and he was really upset. He was like,
that's a weak story. You need to publish the Crazy Cock.
But nobody would do it, and Miller was getting a
little bitter. Bitter Miller. He was so pissed off that
(18:34):
they wanted to publish this short story. His biographer Jay
Martin wrote, he wanted it to be a big success
in the United States so that he could take down
his pants and show his ass to his countrymen and say,
I'm crapping on it, disowning it so much for you
America of the I sing, that's just the kind of
shit you've been eating for the last fifteen years. Yeah. Basically,
(18:56):
Henry Miller was like, Wow, they can't handle my other works.
They just want to do this crappy short story. What
fucking cowards, you stupid Americans. I hate you, but PA
love me. So nobody wanted his cock, so he went
along with Obelis Presque and published Tropic of Cancer. But
(19:19):
he didn't want to just be published by the French.
He wanted the Americans. He wanted the English, you know,
people who spoke English, And unfortunately for Miller, no English
speaking country was willing to put his nasty book on
their shelves. Be back after these soothing advertisements. We're living
(19:48):
through historic times in the United States, though technically you're
always living a historic time, like history is happening, you know,
all around us. But we're living through one of the
largest reversals of censorship in the literary world. Books about
gay families, Keynesaniera's Girls with Red Hair, all these are
(20:11):
being banned from public schools and it doesn't seem crazy
that this administration might try to censor things further pressure
publishers to stop publishing crazy stuff. You know, stuff written
by people of color and women. That stuff is crazy,
(20:31):
and also crazy stuff like Tropic of Cancer. So get
your copies while you can. The Tropic of Cancer was
immediately banned in the United States and Great Britain as
it was considered legally obscene, and the book itself came
in a package that said must not be taken into
(20:52):
Great Britain or the USA. This was a huge setback
from Miller because, as you know, the book was in English,
but it was being prohibited from being published in English
speaking countries, losing a lot of audience. Many American critics
and publishers were actually able to read it. They smuggled it.
(21:12):
They went over to Europe and they were very interested
in it. They thought it was amazing. They're like, it'd
be awesome if we could publish this in Americas. There
are a way we could edit it to make it
not obscene, but from what you've heard, that would be
quite difficult to take out all the cunts and all
the other graphic material. So Miller, while he was getting
(21:35):
all this critical acclaim for the book wasn't able to
make a lot of money off of it, so he
got a job boo. He was offered to edit this magazine,
but he hated the content so much that he ran
the magazine into the ground. The first issue included a
(21:57):
wacky column called four men Only, and then in the
next issue there was this story about a man being
swallowed by a vagina. The owner of the publication was like,
what are you doing, Like, just write some normal stories,
but Miller took this as like, wow, seems like people
(22:18):
hate vaginas. So in the next issue he added even
more stories about vaginas and the publication failed. He seems
like someone who's really easy to work with. And even
though the Tropic of Cancer was banned in the United States,
people started smuggling it in. Individuals would wrap it up
(22:40):
in clothes in their suitcase or hide it in the liner.
Some people imported so many that it led to lawsuits.
One publisher risked it all. He printed copies of the
book in nineteen forty. The last page of it said
it was printed in Mexico. To try to throw people off.
He was like, yeah, no, I'm not printing it. I
got these in Mexico. Unfortunately, that guy he went to
(23:03):
prison for three years. Miller at this point had moved
back to the United States after yield World War two started.
He was still looking for work and would take any
job that was given to him. He was approached to
write some pornography, but unfortunately he wasn't very good at it.
(23:25):
The porn was too poetic. Poor Henry Miller. You know,
he's too pornographic for literature, but too literary for porn.
What a challenge. But you know, Henry Miller, he's obviously
a book author. He wants his works to be published,
so he's still circulating his manuscripts. He finally got published
(23:49):
in the United States in nineteen thirty nine. The book
was called The Cosmological Eye, and it was a collection
of short prose and it was a collection basically of
his least obscene stuff that had been amalgamated from his
other works that been published in France. It's kind of
like a bastardization of his work in France. He ended
(24:13):
up publishing three other works in the thirties and forties,
but then his stuff just kept getting more and more obscene.
When he got to that book Sexis, you know, the
one where boobs were vegetable appendages. In nineteen forty eight,
when he was trying to publish that, even the publishers
in France were like, this is too crazy. We don't
(24:37):
want to distribute this filthy book, which for the French
that's pretty crazy, you know, the French. Even the French
are saying it's too obscene. When one of his friends
asked him what was the point of all these graphic scenes,
Miller wrote, I have no purpose. I am simply relating
my life story. In the United States, in nineteen teen fifty,
(25:06):
another dude imported copies of The Tropic of Cancer and
another one of Miller's books. This guy was the director
of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, and
importing these was a test to see what obscenity law
was doing in the United States. They're like, are they
actually going to enforce the rules? And unfortunately for him,
(25:29):
customs stopped the books from being delivered and he was
sued in court. He was like, but these are not obscene,
they have literary merit. Look, I have nineteen depositions from
serious literary people who are like, yes, these books are important,
their meditations on the human condition, kunts, boobies, it's all
(25:51):
about being human. Baby. But the judge he didn't give
a whot about these gosh dang literary reviews. When the
case went to trial in nineteen fifty one, he was like, no,
this is obscene, this is pornography. He said. The many long,
filthy descriptions of sexual experiences, practices, and organs are of
(26:13):
themselves admitted to be lewed. It is sufficient to say
that the many obscene passages in the book have such
an evil stench that to include them here in footnotes
would also make this opinion pornographic. There are several passages
where the female sexual organ and its function are described
and referred to in such detailed and vulgar language as
(26:33):
to create nausea in the reader. If this is literature,
then the dignity of the human person and the stability
of the family unit, which are the cornerstones of society,
are lost to us. So alas it was still banned,
but publishers refused to give up on this book. In
(26:56):
nineteen sixty one, Grove Press, which was known for printing
very avant garde European stuff and also most of the
American beat nicks was like, fuck it, let's publish this
motherfucking kunt boob. And that led to a shit storm
of lawsuits. And I'm sure you guys are like Gaby,
(27:18):
I would just love to know a little bit more
about obscenity law. Well, you're in luck. The United States
obscenity laws can be traced back to our good friend
Anthony Cummstock. Remember him. He was the pro censorship, anti obscenity,
anti woman, anti contraception, anti vice, pro Christian morality Postal
(27:42):
Service director who got the Comstock Act passed in eighteen
seventy three. This was a federal law that prohibited the
mailing of obscene or lewd material and also banned birth
control and abortion information. This law is still enacted today,
and over the years, the Supreme Court has established various
tests to determine whether or not something is obscene. The
(28:05):
Hicklin test was established after a famous British case that
also dealt with obscenity, and that defined obscene works and
materials as quote those that tended to deprave or corrupt
those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and
into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall. Yeah,
(28:27):
it's not very specific. This, though, was overruled in the
mid nineteen fifties and the Supreme Court established a new test.
This was the Wroth obscenity test, which defined obscenity as whether,
to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant
theme of the material taken as a whole, appeals to
(28:49):
the prurient interest, basically meaning this, reading or consuming this
material make someone want to have sex or not. Also
not specific. When the nineteen sixties ruled around, more and
more cases dealing with obscenity started popping up. This was
(29:09):
in tandem with the civil rights movement, feminism, the sex revolution,
et cetera, et cetera, And in nineteen sixty four the
Supreme Court was like, a work can only be obscene
if it was quote utterly without social importance. Again vague.
(29:29):
Even vaguer was when one of the Supreme Court justices
described what he thought obscenity was. He said, I know
it when I see it helpful. So amongst all this
hubbub grove press is like, let's publish the tropic of cancer.
(29:50):
Because this was in line with a bigger movement of
challenging the obscenity law status quo. They wanted freedom to
publish whatever they wanted. The only problem was approaching Henry Miller.
(30:10):
Miller was concerned about publishing in the United States because
he didn't want to lose all of his money fighting
in court, and he was like, I'm going to get
all these lawsuits. I don't want to go to prison.
I have children right now. I gotta raise them. Also,
he didn't really want to be famous. He thought it
would be kind of annoying if more people knew who
he was. He was also really concerned about the copyright
(30:33):
of the book, because since it was deemed obscene, it
wasn't protected by US copyright law. And he's like, well,
if I publish it, then other people are just going
to take the words, and then they're going to publish
their own and then they'll make money and I won't
make money. But then he's like, well, I guess people
have been smuggling this book in for years, so they
could have done that already. But Growth Press was like, hey,
(30:59):
we're also doing this with Lady Chatterley's Lover, another censored book.
We spent a lot of money on that to try
to make that get through the laws, and now we
want to do it with your book. Will exhaust all
of our resources because we just want more ability to
publish nasty stuff. I mean, they didn't say like that,
(31:20):
but you know, when they published the book, it became
very clear that Henry Miller his concerns were totally valid,
mostly about the fact of him becoming very famous. Because
when the book came out, The Tropic of Cancer came
(31:40):
out in nineteen sixty one, it became one of the
most popular books in the country, more than a million
copies sold in the first year. Whoopsies, isn't it so
annoying to be famous? And of course with all that attention,
the lawsuits came a coming. Several booksellers were immediately arrested
(32:05):
and lawsuits were brought against Grove Press and Miller. He
was like tata heimskedaddling to Europe. Since the book now
had wider release, it was not completely heralded by other
literary folks. Many people, many reviewers, thought the book was disgusting,
(32:32):
but at the same time there was one hundred and
ninety eight American writers who signed a statement defending the book.
Several states immediately banned it, and then there were lawsuits.
But then in Illinois there was a turning point here
the court said that the book was yes, lude, vile, vulgar,
and contain revolting language, but they said it wasn't obscene,
(32:55):
so they could sell it. It's fine. Then in March
nineteen sixty three, the Supreme Court was working on a
decision for the book, and at this point Henry Miller
was already the most litigated author in history. At his
publisher's request, he wrote an open letter to the Supreme
Court defending his work. And what happened, well, Grove Press
(33:23):
and Henry Miller, they won. The Supreme Court was like, yeah,
it's not obscene. It's like gross, but it's not obscene.
Hazaw victory or was it? Henry Miller didn't see it
as a full victory because he was broke yet again,
(33:44):
and with him being so famous now, he was very
controversial and a lot of people didn't like him. Like
one time he went to a bank to go cash
a check. He didn't know any of the employees at
that bank, but they refused to cash his check because
they knew he was the king of smut. They knew
he was a little disgusting, filthy man, like you cannot
(34:06):
be serviced at this here bank because now he was
uber famous and he hated it. He found it very inconvenient,
and then he also had to deal with a lot
of legal fees and meetings and stuff like that. Even
though Growth Press was like, we'll do everything, they didn't.
(34:27):
And even though Henry Miller was like, boo who, boo who,
this has actually been a very annoying process. He contributed
to changing obscenity forever. Isn't that nice? He was still
really nervous all the time. He got approached by this
rando who said he was going to publish his book Sexist.
(34:50):
Remember boobs as vegetable appendages, and Henry Miller was really nervous.
He was like, I don't want you guys to publish
that because that book is even more pornographic than The
Tropic of Cancer, so please don't public But this guy
was like, again, it's not copy writed here, so I
can do whatever I want. So then Growth Press was like, well,
(35:13):
you gotta get ahead of this, and they published Sexist,
along with its sequel and the sequel after that one.
It was a trilogy and Henry Miller was so nervous.
He's like, am I gonna have to go through this
whole process again? Am I gonna have to be sued again?
Because we're putting out these books. He was biting his
little fingernails. But the books were released and nothing happened.
(35:40):
The tide had fully shifted, it had broken on the shore.
There was nothing to fear, and society as a whole
was moving on. It was the nineteen sixties going into
the nineteen seventies. Everyone was fucking Everyone was saying, kunt.
(36:02):
There was a sexual revolution. Sex was truly like a
blase whatever topic. And the thing is Henry Miller kind
of hated the sexual revolution. He was like, I hate
it because it means sex isn't taboo anymore, So what's
the point of writing about it? So later in life
(36:24):
he started writing less porny books because he's like, being
obscene is no longer taboo. That's boring. I'm going to
do something really crazy and talk about love. Haven't we
come a long way? Harry Miller died in nineteen eighty
(36:46):
and throughout his life he wrote a lot, but he
still hadn't been able to publish that book. Crazy Cock,
you know, the one that he thought was the most
amazing book ever. But it finally was published in nineteen
ninety one, eleven years after his death and the year
I was born. Coincidence, I think not. And even though
(37:10):
he was kind of, you know, annoying throughout his life,
it seemed like I don't think I would want to
be in ah around him, you know, in the same
room as him. But you know, he made boobs accessible.
They're no longer obscene, actually, though I think he made
them more obscene by calling them vegetable appendages. And I
(37:34):
think he teaches us something, you know, because on every
episode of American Filth we do learn a lesson, and
I think the lesson we learn here is just get sued,
you know, change the world, be obstinate, be annoying, be
filthy for filth's sake. And then if someone tells you
(37:55):
to be less filthy, be more filthy, or if being
filthy is normal, then just don't be filthy anymore because
that's not cool. Right. We got the lesson, We understand it,
But thanks for listening. That's another episode of American Doll.
Cue the credits. American Filth is a production school of
(38:21):
Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was written, hosted, and
produced by me Gabby Watts. Our theme song is by
Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the show
on Instagram at American Filth Pod, and also make sure
to give the show a review, give it some stars,
share with your friends, promote the algorithm, Pray to whatever
(38:44):
gods you pray to to make the show more popular, because,
unlike Henry Miller, I'm in it for the fame, for
the glory, but like him, I'm also in it for
the filth. Talk at you guys next time. Mens
School of Humans. Hello, friends and family of the Filth.
While I usually do not put any trigger warnings up top,
I want to tell you that this episode is particularly
sexually graphic. That's not my fault. It's the fault of
(00:32):
American author Henry Miller. Not to be confused with Arthur Miller,
who at first I did confuse him with. They're two
different people, okay, But first of all, it's a very
auspicious day for American filth, a day of celebration. In fact,
it is the sixty ninth original episode of the podcast
(00:54):
Nice and actually we can thank the French for the
term sixty nine. The position was in the Kammasutra, but
in four hundred ish they didn't immediately think, hmm, that
looks like a six oh a nine. No, it was
the French who came up with swassel nuff. But since
(01:17):
we're on the topic of fun vocabulary, you know stuff
that you could type on your Texas instrument calculator as
a youth and go lol lol boobs. You guys remember those?
Remember when you had a calculator and then you would
type eight zero zero eight five and it would be boobs.
Wasn't that hilarious. Wasn't that fun? Being a child was amazing?
(01:41):
And you might be asking, where did the word boobs
come from? I know you guys were really thinking about that.
You're like, that's a word that I say all the time.
What's the etymology of that? Well, one of the first
times it was ever mentioned in American literature was in
the book Tropic of Cancer, which was by that guy
(02:03):
Henry Miller, who I mentioned in the Trick Your Warning,
And not only did he say boobs in that book,
it also was so disgusting and it got banned in
the United States for almost three decades. Cue the theme song,
(02:25):
This is American Filth and I'm Gabby Watts. Every week
I tell you a filthy story from American history, and
this week's episode Henry Miller's obscene boobs. Da Dad, D
(02:47):
do do do do? Shall we start with some etymology,
you know, let's learn a little bit about the history
of where boobs came from. Not the ones on your chest,
those came from DNA, I think. But well, there are
(03:07):
many theories. Some people think the term came from Spain,
specifically from the word bobo, a word that means stupid person.
Though I think we can all agree that there's nothing
as stupid about titties, but the origin could more mean
something like clumsy. And I mean, I get that sometimes
(03:29):
when you got Gymungo bazingas, they can be a little clumsy,
a little haphazard. They're kind of going all over the place.
Other people have traced boobs back to German, where they
had a word bubby, which that does mean tit. But
wherever it came from, bubby ended up in the English
(03:52):
language starting in the seventeenth century. That was the first
time it was written down. And this was a predecessor
to boobs, bubby, booby's boob. It makes sense bubby's bubby
made it over to the Americas, and I think it's
safe to say by the nineteen twenties boobies and boob
(04:16):
was being used to reference breasts. They were still using
boob also to reference a stupid person, but boo boobies
also the TV's that's a new one. I just came
up with TD's that's not even whatever. And technically Henry
(04:37):
Miller wasn't even the first man to put that term
for teets in a book. He was merely the one
who got the most attention for it. In fact, a
year before that book, Tropic of Cancer came out, the
author James T. Farrell wrote, studs didn't usually pay attention
to how girls looked, except to notice the shape of
their legs because if they had good legs, they were
(05:00):
supposed to be good for, you know, and if they didn't,
they weren't. And to note their boobs if they were
big enough to bounce. Wow, how lyrical this book. And
also when Henry Miller was writing it was the nineteen thirties,
it was the Great Depression. People were hungry, not just
(05:23):
for food but also for boobs. Henry Miller, if you've
never heard about him before, he's a pretty crazy guy,
maybe even disgusting, I might say. He roamed around and
wrote semi autobiographical books about his musings, his thoughts about
a lot of sex stuff too. Have you heard of
(05:45):
this sex stuff? Tropic of Cancer was about his time
in Paris in the early nineteen thirties. A lot of
it is him just ranting about the human condition and
being horny, which could describe a lot of books written
by men. At first he tried to make it fictional,
(06:06):
but then it basically became a loose diary about his
stories of his time there. He described it as this,
it's like a big public garbage can. Only the mangy
cats are missing, but I'll get them in yet, meaning
this was just his garbage can of thoughts about his
time there, which was a lot of It was quite
(06:27):
filthy stuff that was going on. He was quite active
despite having no money. And here's something that's very misleading
about this whole episode is that Henry Miller didn't actually
use the word boobs. Everyone on the internet says he did,
but he only said boobies and reference to the teats.
(06:49):
He did use the word boobs, but he used it
to call people stupid, Like how we were saying earlier,
you know, the origin of boobs is that's a silly,
dumb little person. Ergo. Boobies are a little uh stupid
as well, which can be a compliment nowadays you'll be like, wow,
(07:10):
that lady's got stupid as titties. That means nice. Rack
To kind of get a sense of how he writes,
as I've mentioned that he was a bit of a disgusting,
filthy fella, let's hear the excerpts where he does use
boob and boobies in the work. Okay, it's pretty intense.
(07:32):
So if you're listening with someone who's very impressionable, like
a Christian, if they hear this, they might have a
heart attack. So I always ask him to leave the room. Perhaps,
But here's the first time he uses boobs, this time
as a stupid person. Listen, he says, do you happen
to know a cunt by the name of Norma? She
(07:54):
hangs around the dome all day. I think she's queer.
I had her up here yesterday, tickling her ass. She
wouldn't let me do a thing. I had her on
the bed, I even had her their drawers off, and
then I got disgusted. Jesus, I can't bother struggling that
way anymore. It isn't worth it. Either they do or
(08:15):
they don't. It's foolish to waste time wrestling with them.
While you're struggling with a little bitch like that. There
are more than a dozen cunts on the terras just
dying to be laid. It's a fact. They all come
over here to get laid. They think it's sinful here.
The poor boobs. Some of these school teachers from out West,
(08:35):
they're honestly virgins. I mean it, what a fun characterization
of women who don't want to have sex. Yes, if
a woman doesn't consent to have sex with you, she
is quite a boob. Also, I will note that he
uses the word counts ninety two times in the book. Now,
(09:02):
let's hear the time when he says boobies to references. Wow,
this podcast is so important. At ten o'clock, she was
lying on the divan with her boobies in her hands. Wow,
it kind of rhymes. And then he described to me
what happened after that, how he bent down and kissed
(09:25):
her breast, and how after he kissed them fervidly, he
stuffed them back in her corsage or whatever it is
they call those things. Just stuffing some tits down in
a corset, isn't that fun? And then later on the
book he does use the term boob again to describe
(09:45):
someone stupid. He writes, why you, poor boob. If she
ever thought you had tried to run away from her,
she'd murder you. That's true about women, They do like
to murder their boyfriends. So yes, even though he didn't
technically use boob, you know, he said boobies that's close enough.
(10:08):
He did officially use boobs to mean tits in his
nineteen forty nine novel Sexist That's spelled sex Us and
that book. He said, I felt her sloshy boobs joggling me,
but I was too intent on pursuing the ramifications of
Coleridge's amazing mind to let her vegetable appendages disturb me. Wow,
(10:36):
he just wanted to talk to her. I hate when
the vegetable appendages get in the way. That's so inconvenient.
What kind of vegetables do your tits look like? Send
a message to American filth thought on Instagram to let
us know. Please don't send a picture. So yeah, I
(11:00):
think you've caught onto his style. It's a bit graphic and,
as many people would say, obscene. An obscenity would be
a problem for much of Miller's publishing career. When Henry
Miller was thirty eight, he moved to Paris. It was
nineteen thirty. He was at the time not successful at all.
(11:25):
He had been married twice, and his second wife had
temporarily abandoned him to be a lesbian, and then he
abandoned her and moved to Paris. Not as a lesbian,
just as a man who has sex and is attracted
to women. They divorced a few years into him being there,
and before he started writing, he'd worked as a manager
(11:48):
at Western Union, but he quit that job to devote
his time to writing and being extremely poor. Henry Miller
didn't particularly want to be poor, you know, or unsuccessful. Weirdly,
he was desperate to be accepted as a real writer.
In one letter, he wrote, I refuse to live this
(12:08):
way forever. There must be a way out. He also
wrote to a friend which I highly relate to why
does nobody want what I write? When he arrived in Paris,
he had two unpublished novels. One was called Crazy Cock,
and he was absolutely obsessed with it. He thought it
was his magnum opus. It was about his wife who
(12:31):
had temporarily become a lesbian. But nobody wanted it, so
he decided to start on a new project. He wrote
to a friend, I start tomorrow on the Paris book,
first person, uncensored, formless, fuck everything, And indeed the book
(12:56):
is unsensored. Do you guys like this sort of romantic
saxophone that we're hearing? Well to use the saxophone because
I'm going to read another passage from the book just
to sort of give you a bigger sense of how
uncensored this book is. It's kind of it's the whole
(13:18):
argument about it is is it obscene, is it pornographic?
Or is there literary merit to what he's writing? And
so this passage, this excerpt, it's actually in the first
few pages of the book. It reads, Oh, Tanya, where
now is that warm cunt of yours? Those fat, heavy garters,
(13:41):
those soft, bulging thighs. There is a bone in my
prick six inches long. I will rem out every wrinkle
in your count Tanya, big with seed. I will send
you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your
belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester, yes,
(14:03):
he knows how to build a fire, but I know
how to inflame a kunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tanya.
I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous.
Now he feels something, does he? He feels the remnants
of my big prick. I have set the shores a
(14:24):
little wider. I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me,
you can take on stallions bulls, rams, drakes, Saint Bernards.
You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You
can shit our peggios if you like our string of
zether across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so
(14:46):
that you'll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of
being fucked publicly, I will fuck you privately. I will
tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste
them on Boris's chin. I will bite it into your
glitterus and spit out two franc pieces. How's everyone doing.
(15:08):
I'm sorry if you just felt assaulted by that passage,
But again, it's not me, it's freakin' Henry Miller. He's
insane and fellas He's doing all of this with a
six inch pen. You know you don't need it to
be much bigger to inflame someone's cute. Also, this was
in the nineteen thirties, people on average were a little
(15:30):
bit shorter, so maybe actually six inches was bigger in
perspective back then. I don't know. So Henry Miller's in
Paris writing this book about being in Paris. How interesting.
No American author has ever done that before, And while
(15:51):
in America, he didn't get much success or attention for
his writings. In Paris, he met this woman named Annais
nine a NAIs Nina Okay swasslnef uugh Nin was a
famous writer at the time, and she also focused on
erotic literature. Henry Miller disgustoed an niece erotic, and she
(16:19):
was very open about sexuality, especially her own. Obviously, she
even published her diaries, which were very graphic about all
of her sexual relationships, including the one she had with
Henry Miller, and she was probably like, Wow, I love
some disgusting content Henry Miller. I just really like what
(16:41):
he's doing. She liked him so much that she started
paying for his expenses, like his food, his rent throughout
the nineteen thirties while he was living in Paris so
he could focus on his writing. A sugar mommy. She
was like, oh, yes, sir, go write about the kunts
(17:01):
and you do not have to worry about paying the
rent till gay o la la soubet sachreibleu. That's what
she said when she saw his six inch dick, perhaps
sachrei blu. In nineteen thirty four, the Tropic of Cancer
(17:26):
was finished, and even though nine was a filthy queen herself.
Miller was nervous to show her his manuscript. He was like,
even she's gonna think I'm a crude barbarian. But nine
helped him find various publishers to reach out to, and
he eventually went with Obelisk Press, which was known for
(17:47):
publishing a softcore porn But Miller was conflicted because he
didn't just want to publish Tropic of Cancer. He wanted
to publish that other novel he wrote, The Crazy Cock.
He was like, if you don't publish cock, you don't
get cancer. Miller was also desperate for American approval. Some
(18:12):
American publishers had reached out to him asking to publish
a short story of his that wasn't nearly as demented
and filthy, and he was really upset. He was like,
that's a weak story. You need to publish the Crazy Cock.
But nobody would do it, and Miller was getting a
little bitter. Bitter Miller. He was so pissed off that
(18:34):
they wanted to publish this short story. His biographer Jay
Martin wrote, he wanted it to be a big success
in the United States so that he could take down
his pants and show his ass to his countrymen and say,
I'm crapping on it, disowning it so much for you
America of the I sing, that's just the kind of
shit you've been eating for the last fifteen years. Yeah. Basically,
(18:56):
Henry Miller was like, Wow, they can't handle my other works.
They just want to do this crappy short story. What
fucking cowards, you stupid Americans. I hate you, but PA
love me. So nobody wanted his cock, so he went
along with Obelis Presque and published Tropic of Cancer. But
(19:19):
he didn't want to just be published by the French.
He wanted the Americans. He wanted the English, you know,
people who spoke English, And unfortunately for Miller, no English
speaking country was willing to put his nasty book on
their shelves. Be back after these soothing advertisements. We're living
(19:48):
through historic times in the United States, though technically you're
always living a historic time, like history is happening, you know,
all around us. But we're living through one of the
largest reversals of censorship in the literary world. Books about
gay families, Keynesaniera's Girls with Red Hair, all these are
(20:11):
being banned from public schools and it doesn't seem crazy
that this administration might try to censor things further pressure
publishers to stop publishing crazy stuff. You know, stuff written
by people of color and women. That stuff is crazy,
(20:31):
and also crazy stuff like Tropic of Cancer. So get
your copies while you can. The Tropic of Cancer was
immediately banned in the United States and Great Britain as
it was considered legally obscene, and the book itself came
in a package that said must not be taken into
(20:52):
Great Britain or the USA. This was a huge setback
from Miller because, as you know, the book was in English,
but it was being prohibited from being published in English
speaking countries, losing a lot of audience. Many American critics
and publishers were actually able to read it. They smuggled it.
(21:12):
They went over to Europe and they were very interested
in it. They thought it was amazing. They're like, it'd
be awesome if we could publish this in Americas. There
are a way we could edit it to make it
not obscene, but from what you've heard, that would be
quite difficult to take out all the cunts and all
the other graphic material. So Miller, while he was getting
(21:35):
all this critical acclaim for the book wasn't able to
make a lot of money off of it, so he
got a job boo. He was offered to edit this magazine,
but he hated the content so much that he ran
the magazine into the ground. The first issue included a
(21:57):
wacky column called four men Only, and then in the
next issue there was this story about a man being
swallowed by a vagina. The owner of the publication was like,
what are you doing, Like, just write some normal stories,
but Miller took this as like, wow, seems like people
(22:18):
hate vaginas. So in the next issue he added even
more stories about vaginas and the publication failed. He seems
like someone who's really easy to work with. And even
though the Tropic of Cancer was banned in the United States,
people started smuggling it in. Individuals would wrap it up
(22:40):
in clothes in their suitcase or hide it in the liner.
Some people imported so many that it led to lawsuits.
One publisher risked it all. He printed copies of the
book in nineteen forty. The last page of it said
it was printed in Mexico. To try to throw people off.
He was like, yeah, no, I'm not printing it. I
got these in Mexico. Unfortunately, that guy he went to
(23:03):
prison for three years. Miller at this point had moved
back to the United States after yield World War two started.
He was still looking for work and would take any
job that was given to him. He was approached to
write some pornography, but unfortunately he wasn't very good at it.
(23:25):
The porn was too poetic. Poor Henry Miller. You know,
he's too pornographic for literature, but too literary for porn.
What a challenge. But you know, Henry Miller, he's obviously
a book author. He wants his works to be published,
so he's still circulating his manuscripts. He finally got published
(23:49):
in the United States in nineteen thirty nine. The book
was called The Cosmological Eye, and it was a collection
of short prose and it was a collection basically of
his least obscene stuff that had been amalgamated from his
other works that been published in France. It's kind of
like a bastardization of his work in France. He ended
(24:13):
up publishing three other works in the thirties and forties,
but then his stuff just kept getting more and more obscene.
When he got to that book Sexis, you know, the
one where boobs were vegetable appendages. In nineteen forty eight,
when he was trying to publish that, even the publishers
in France were like, this is too crazy. We don't
(24:37):
want to distribute this filthy book, which for the French
that's pretty crazy, you know, the French. Even the French
are saying it's too obscene. When one of his friends
asked him what was the point of all these graphic scenes,
Miller wrote, I have no purpose. I am simply relating
my life story. In the United States, in nineteen teen fifty,
(25:06):
another dude imported copies of The Tropic of Cancer and
another one of Miller's books. This guy was the director
of the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, and
importing these was a test to see what obscenity law
was doing in the United States. They're like, are they
actually going to enforce the rules? And unfortunately for him,
(25:29):
customs stopped the books from being delivered and he was
sued in court. He was like, but these are not obscene,
they have literary merit. Look, I have nineteen depositions from
serious literary people who are like, yes, these books are important,
their meditations on the human condition, kunts, boobies, it's all
(25:51):
about being human. Baby. But the judge he didn't give
a whot about these gosh dang literary reviews. When the
case went to trial in nineteen fifty one, he was like, no,
this is obscene, this is pornography. He said. The many long,
filthy descriptions of sexual experiences, practices, and organs are of
(26:13):
themselves admitted to be lewed. It is sufficient to say
that the many obscene passages in the book have such
an evil stench that to include them here in footnotes
would also make this opinion pornographic. There are several passages
where the female sexual organ and its function are described
and referred to in such detailed and vulgar language as
(26:33):
to create nausea in the reader. If this is literature,
then the dignity of the human person and the stability
of the family unit, which are the cornerstones of society,
are lost to us. So alas it was still banned,
but publishers refused to give up on this book. In
(26:56):
nineteen sixty one, Grove Press, which was known for printing
very avant garde European stuff and also most of the
American beat nicks was like, fuck it, let's publish this
motherfucking kunt boob. And that led to a shit storm
of lawsuits. And I'm sure you guys are like Gaby,
(27:18):
I would just love to know a little bit more
about obscenity law. Well, you're in luck. The United States
obscenity laws can be traced back to our good friend
Anthony Cummstock. Remember him. He was the pro censorship, anti obscenity,
anti woman, anti contraception, anti vice, pro Christian morality Postal
(27:42):
Service director who got the Comstock Act passed in eighteen
seventy three. This was a federal law that prohibited the
mailing of obscene or lewd material and also banned birth
control and abortion information. This law is still enacted today,
and over the years, the Supreme Court has established various
tests to determine whether or not something is obscene. The
(28:05):
Hicklin test was established after a famous British case that
also dealt with obscenity, and that defined obscene works and
materials as quote those that tended to deprave or corrupt
those whose minds are open to such immoral influences, and
into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall. Yeah,
(28:27):
it's not very specific. This, though, was overruled in the
mid nineteen fifties and the Supreme Court established a new test.
This was the Wroth obscenity test, which defined obscenity as whether,
to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant
theme of the material taken as a whole, appeals to
(28:49):
the prurient interest, basically meaning this, reading or consuming this
material make someone want to have sex or not. Also
not specific. When the nineteen sixties ruled around, more and
more cases dealing with obscenity started popping up. This was
(29:09):
in tandem with the civil rights movement, feminism, the sex revolution,
et cetera, et cetera, And in nineteen sixty four the
Supreme Court was like, a work can only be obscene
if it was quote utterly without social importance. Again vague.
(29:29):
Even vaguer was when one of the Supreme Court justices
described what he thought obscenity was. He said, I know
it when I see it helpful. So amongst all this
hubbub grove press is like, let's publish the tropic of cancer.
(29:50):
Because this was in line with a bigger movement of
challenging the obscenity law status quo. They wanted freedom to
publish whatever they wanted. The only problem was approaching Henry Miller.
(30:10):
Miller was concerned about publishing in the United States because
he didn't want to lose all of his money fighting
in court, and he was like, I'm going to get
all these lawsuits. I don't want to go to prison.
I have children right now. I gotta raise them. Also,
he didn't really want to be famous. He thought it
would be kind of annoying if more people knew who
he was. He was also really concerned about the copyright
(30:33):
of the book, because since it was deemed obscene, it
wasn't protected by US copyright law. And he's like, well,
if I publish it, then other people are just going
to take the words, and then they're going to publish
their own and then they'll make money and I won't
make money. But then he's like, well, I guess people
have been smuggling this book in for years, so they
could have done that already. But Growth Press was like, hey,
(30:59):
we're also doing this with Lady Chatterley's Lover, another censored book.
We spent a lot of money on that to try
to make that get through the laws, and now we
want to do it with your book. Will exhaust all
of our resources because we just want more ability to
publish nasty stuff. I mean, they didn't say like that,
(31:20):
but you know, when they published the book, it became
very clear that Henry Miller his concerns were totally valid,
mostly about the fact of him becoming very famous. Because
when the book came out, The Tropic of Cancer came
(31:40):
out in nineteen sixty one, it became one of the
most popular books in the country, more than a million
copies sold in the first year. Whoopsies, isn't it so
annoying to be famous? And of course with all that attention,
the lawsuits came a coming. Several booksellers were immediately arrested
(32:05):
and lawsuits were brought against Grove Press and Miller. He
was like tata heimskedaddling to Europe. Since the book now
had wider release, it was not completely heralded by other
literary folks. Many people, many reviewers, thought the book was disgusting,
(32:32):
but at the same time there was one hundred and
ninety eight American writers who signed a statement defending the book.
Several states immediately banned it, and then there were lawsuits.
But then in Illinois there was a turning point here
the court said that the book was yes, lude, vile, vulgar,
and contain revolting language, but they said it wasn't obscene,
(32:55):
so they could sell it. It's fine. Then in March
nineteen sixty three, the Supreme Court was working on a
decision for the book, and at this point Henry Miller
was already the most litigated author in history. At his
publisher's request, he wrote an open letter to the Supreme
Court defending his work. And what happened, well, Grove Press
(33:23):
and Henry Miller, they won. The Supreme Court was like, yeah,
it's not obscene. It's like gross, but it's not obscene.
Hazaw victory or was it? Henry Miller didn't see it
as a full victory because he was broke yet again,
(33:44):
and with him being so famous now, he was very
controversial and a lot of people didn't like him. Like
one time he went to a bank to go cash
a check. He didn't know any of the employees at
that bank, but they refused to cash his check because
they knew he was the king of smut. They knew
he was a little disgusting, filthy man, like you cannot
(34:06):
be serviced at this here bank because now he was
uber famous and he hated it. He found it very inconvenient,
and then he also had to deal with a lot
of legal fees and meetings and stuff like that. Even
though Growth Press was like, we'll do everything, they didn't.
(34:27):
And even though Henry Miller was like, boo who, boo who,
this has actually been a very annoying process. He contributed
to changing obscenity forever. Isn't that nice? He was still
really nervous all the time. He got approached by this
rando who said he was going to publish his book Sexist.
(34:50):
Remember boobs as vegetable appendages, and Henry Miller was really nervous.
He was like, I don't want you guys to publish
that because that book is even more pornographic than The
Tropic of Cancer, so please don't public But this guy
was like, again, it's not copy writed here, so I
can do whatever I want. So then Growth Press was like, well,
(35:13):
you gotta get ahead of this, and they published Sexist,
along with its sequel and the sequel after that one.
It was a trilogy and Henry Miller was so nervous.
He's like, am I gonna have to go through this
whole process again? Am I gonna have to be sued again?
Because we're putting out these books. He was biting his
little fingernails. But the books were released and nothing happened.
(35:40):
The tide had fully shifted, it had broken on the shore.
There was nothing to fear, and society as a whole
was moving on. It was the nineteen sixties going into
the nineteen seventies. Everyone was fucking Everyone was saying, kunt.
(36:02):
There was a sexual revolution. Sex was truly like a
blase whatever topic. And the thing is Henry Miller kind
of hated the sexual revolution. He was like, I hate
it because it means sex isn't taboo anymore, So what's
the point of writing about it? So later in life
(36:24):
he started writing less porny books because he's like, being
obscene is no longer taboo. That's boring. I'm going to
do something really crazy and talk about love. Haven't we
come a long way? Harry Miller died in nineteen eighty
(36:46):
and throughout his life he wrote a lot, but he
still hadn't been able to publish that book. Crazy Cock,
you know, the one that he thought was the most
amazing book ever. But it finally was published in nineteen
ninety one, eleven years after his death and the year
I was born. Coincidence, I think not. And even though
(37:10):
he was kind of, you know, annoying throughout his life,
it seemed like I don't think I would want to
be in ah around him, you know, in the same
room as him. But you know, he made boobs accessible.
They're no longer obscene, actually, though I think he made
them more obscene by calling them vegetable appendages. And I
(37:34):
think he teaches us something, you know, because on every
episode of American Filth we do learn a lesson, and
I think the lesson we learn here is just get sued,
you know, change the world, be obstinate, be annoying, be
filthy for filth's sake. And then if someone tells you
(37:55):
to be less filthy, be more filthy, or if being
filthy is normal, then just don't be filthy anymore because
that's not cool. Right. We got the lesson, We understand it,
But thanks for listening. That's another episode of American Doll.
Cue the credits. American Filth is a production school of
(38:21):
Humans and iHeart Podcast. This episode was written, hosted, and
produced by me Gabby Watts. Our theme song is by
Jesse Niswanger. Our executive producers are Virginia Prescott, Elsie Crowley,
and Brandon Barr. You can follow along with the show
on Instagram at American Filth Pod, and also make sure
to give the show a review, give it some stars,
share with your friends, promote the algorithm, Pray to whatever
(38:44):
gods you pray to to make the show more popular, because,
unlike Henry Miller, I'm in it for the fame, for
the glory, but like him, I'm also in it for
the filth. Talk at you guys next time. Mens
Host
Gabbie Watts
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