15 JANUARY

THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE

Decision of the Indecent Publications Tribunal
No. 190

IN the matter of the Indecent Publications Act 1963, and in
the matter of an application to the Tribunal for a decision in
respect of the magazine Evergreen Review No. 66; published
by Evergreen Review Incorporated, New York.

DECISION OF THE TRIBUNAL

Evergreen Review No. 66 was submitted to the Tribunal by the
Comptroller of Customs. Written submissions were received
by the Tribunal from Mr Michael Haggitt, Counsel for the
University of Otago, with supporting letters to the Registrar of
the University of Otago from the librarians of Auckland and
Massey Universities and of Canterbury Public Library.

Evergreen is a monthly publication whose subscribers in this
country include four university and two public libraries. It is
clearly important to such institutions that files of any publication
to which they subscribe should be complete. The statute
does not permit us to do as Counsel requests; namely, "make
a judgment on the periodical as a whole". Our classification
must concern only what is before us, which is No. 66.

Counsel claims: "Evergreen has been recognised as a significant
expression of a school of avant-garde writing in America
which should be available to serious students of contemporary
American literature". The Tribunal agrees with this comment
and regards the issue as valuable also to students of sociology.
It includes, besides, articles of interest and merit in their own
right.

This number does, however, contain matter which is
indecent within the meaning of the Act and has no compensating literary or scientific importance. That the University of
Otago restricts access to this periodical would indicate their
recognition of this element. The Tribunal thinks the nature
of the objectionable material in Evergreen of May 1969 is
sufficient to warrant restriction to those persons and
institutions who have already fully established their bona fide
interests in this magazine.

We therefore classify this number as indecent except in the
hands of those persons who have current annual subscriptions
and those persons or classes of persons for whose use libraries
and other educational institutions now maintain current files.

L. G. H. SINCLAIR, Chairman.

16 December 1969.

Decision of the Indecent Publications Tribunal
No. 191-193

IN the matter of the Indecent Publications Act 1963, and in
the matter of an application to the Tribunal for decisions in
respect of the magazines-

Glamour Guide, No. 1;
Kamera, No. 87; and
Kamera, No. 89

published by Kamera Publications Ltd., London.

DECISION OF THE TRIBUNAL

THESE three magazines were submitted to the Tribunal by
leave of the Minister of Justice, obtained upon the application
of the publishers. They may conveniently be dealt with in one
decision. Each consists of a collection of nude or seminude
photographs of female figures. In the Waverley Publishing Co.
case (New Zealand Gazette, 25 July 1968, page 1251) we said
that nude photographs "which appear to be deliberately unnatural
or artificial, and occasionally ugly, grotesque, or
contrived" we believed to be indecent. These words, in our
view, aptly fit, in a greater or less degree, the photos, in many
instances heavily retouched, reproduced in these magazines.

We therefore declare them to be indecent.

L. G. H. SINCLAIR, Chairman.

16 December 1969.

Decision of the Indecent Publications Tribunal
No. 194

IN the matter of the Indecent Publications Act 1963, and in
the matter of an application by Murdoch Riley, of Wellington,
company director, as agent for the publishers, for a decision in
respect of the book The Desire to Dominate, by Victor
Rogano; published by Luxor Press Ltd., London.

DECISION OF THE TRIBUNAL

THIS book is a paper-back with a highly-dramatised cover: it
is similar in appearance to a number of other books emanating
from the same publishers. The tone of the contents is more
sober than the cover suggests, and consists of a popular
account, through the ages, of manifestations by members of
both sexes of the desire to dominate and the desire to be
dominated. Naturally, there is much emphasis on the sexual
impulses which generate these desires, and some of the case
histories, from various sources, are dramatic and explicit. Taken
altogether the book presents a not unhealthy account of a
phenomenon on which people are entitled to be informed;
although we do not think it is in the public interest that
adolescents should have available to them at too early an age
a book with such emphasis on abnormal practices. We accordingly deal with this book as we have dealt with most of the
others in this series that have come before us, and classify it
as indecent in the hands of persons of under the age of 18
years. This should effectively prevent its display.

L. G. H. SINCLAIR, Chairman.

16 December 1969.

Decision of the Indecent Publications Tribunal
No. 195

IN the matter of the Indecent Publications Act 1963, and in
the matter of an application to the Tribunal for a decision in
respect of the book The Farm, by Clarence Cooper; paper-back
edition, published by the New English Library Ltd., London.

DECISION OF THE TRIBUNAL

THIS book was submitted to the Tribunal by the Comptroller
of Customs. The Farm describes, as through a narcotic glaze,
the experiences of a 30-year-old Negro drug addict undergoing
treatment in a federal narcotics institution which is part
hospital, part prison. Superficially the book may seem to be no
more than a meretricious mixture of sex, drugs, and violence.
The language is excessively coarse and given a veneer of
modernity by eccentric chapter headings and typographical
tricks.

Such an impression would be wrong. This novel is not great,
but it is a moving report on painful experiences, and its shifting
form is a direct expression of its author-diariet's character.
Intelligent but educationally deprived, the prisoner-narrator
must forge his own literary form to articulate his experiences.
Colour consciousness, personal tragedy (a dead wife, a crippled
daughter), drug addiction, and a criminal record are in themselves heavy burdens, barely controlled by a desperately selfprotective-and ultimately self-destructive-pride. In the farm,
however, deprivation goes further. The institution houses both
men and women who are able to make only brief contact under
strict supervision, and communicate by passing secret letters.
The conditions imposed breed an atmosphere of obsessive
sexuality. Yet it is in these most unpropitious circumstances
that a genuine love develops as the only answer to despair and
the only hope for personal growth. As the two main characters
are redeemed, if only for a time, by their discovery of a
valuable human relationship in mutual need, so the one incident which might give offence to some readers is itself a warm
and moving transformation of physical desire into a powerfully
re-creative love.

Despite the crudity of its language, in the range of experiences
with which The Farm deals, the insight it gives into
prison conditions, the personalities of guards, officials,
psychiatrists, and nurses, and the compassionate understanding
it shows of human beings confined and deprived, this book
belies its surface appearance and commands respect. Its style
and construction are such as to require some persistence in the
serious reader and to inhibit the immature. The Tribunal
considers the book to be of some worth and, taken as a whole,
not indecent, and decides accordingly.

L. G. H. SINCLAIR, Chairman.

16 December 1969.

Amendment to Nelson Lakes National Park Bylaws

PURSUANT to the National Parks Act 1952, a resolution has
been passed by the Nelson Lakes National Park Board resolving
that bylaw No. 10A of the bylaws made in respect of the
Nelson Lakes National Park be revoked, and that a new bylaw
be made as set out in the Schedule hereto; and such resolution
has been approved by the National Parks Authority.

It is therefore declared that the said bylaws have been
amended accordingly.