PLANTING MURDER IN THE MIND

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31333, 1 April 1967, Page 4

PLANTING MURDER IN THE MIND

(By

H. D. ZIMAN

( in the “Daily Telegraph,’ l London)

(Reprinted by arrangement)'

In April last year Pamela Hansford Johnson, the novelist, was invited to attend the trial of the “Moors” murder case on behalf of “The Sunday Telegraph.” Two murderers were given life sentences (if anyone has forgotten), a man of 27 called Brady and a young woman of 23 called Hindley. Together they had done to death a girl of io, a boy of 12 and a youth of 17—just for the pleasure of the crime.

Miss Hansford Johnson saw the trial through and wrote her immediate impressions. She has now set down her reflections and asked some pertinent questions which require courage from any liberal-minded writer of the present day. Even the title of her book—“On Iniquity”—is a challenge.

To speak of iniquity politically in relation to the Nazis or in relation to bombing is considered perfectly in order. But Miss Hansford Johnson actually applies it to the acts of Individual murderers.*. She even goes some way towards suggesting that iniquity is fostered by certain writers and publishers, and possibly by the general climate of opinion in this country—which includes you and me. The indignation of “progressives” may be slightly mitigated by the discovery that she stands by the abolition of the death penalty and is troubled by the possible future reactions of Brady and Hindley to their life sentences. Still, the main subject of her book cannot be dodged. It runs something like this:

The particularly revolting series of murders for pleasure perpetrated by Brady and Hindley were at least encouraged by the 50-odd books on sadism and perversion found in his possession; More generally, the present fashion for publishing pornography coupled with violence invites readers who will never themselves commit murder “for kicks” to enjoy brutality; The attitude of complete permissiveness common now among intellectuals (and unintellectuals) is socially damaging, morally irresponsible and individually insincere.

All these points (in which I have paraphrased Miss Hansford Johnson) will certainly be disputed and were indeed pushed aside months ago by the usual advocates of “literary freedom.” The archlibertarian is a Mr Girodias, who glories in his record as a publisher of pornographic books. Even he has admitted that the Marquis de Sade, whose exposition of rape and murder for pleasure so attracted Brady, was not in the forefront of literature. If one wishes to eliminate Sade and his modern colleagues from the “Moors” case, it is helpful to argue that Brady and Hindley just happened to be mad and would have done what they did even if they had been illiterate. However, counsel for the defence pointedly made no plea that they were insane. Miss Hansford Johnson, herself, hitherto happy in the belief that all murderers were at least temporarily insane, was convinced to the contrary by scrutiny of these particular murderers.

Brady and Hindley were certainly abnormal in the degree of their delight in cruelty. But a surprising number of people are attracted in

interest. The mind, the imagination, the emotions grow on what they feed on. Is it entirely wise to weaken our initial revulsions by engrossing ourselves in books and plays that deliberately gloat over rape and murder, the lash and the spur? As Miss Hansford Johnson points out, there are rival psychological theories. According to one view we are purging our less desirable social tendencies by seeing them represented in books or plays—-or, presumably, in real life.

How chillily chaste must be the readers of “Fanny Hill”! How humane the spectators at bullfights or public executions! And how odd that Brady and Hindley were not purged of cruelty by reading about it!

According to the other view, when our emotions are pleasurably aroused by reading about or witnessing some perverse act we increase our tendency In this direction and at least wish to Imitate it. If we are at first repelled, but persist in our interest, the repulsion becomes less. We MAY become addicts. There is a third view, held mainly by intellectuals, that we are all so sophisticated “in this day and age” that nothing we read ar witness affects our character or conduct. Only the immature, it is suggested, can be influenced one way or another. Well, there are a good many immature persons of all ages about Moreover, it is hard to grasp why the shockproof sophisticated should bother to read a novel, listen to a speech or attend a concert if this is a mere "happening” that leaves no after-trace. Granted, a season of “Romeo and Juliet” does not send up the suicide figures; but if you leave the theatre entirely un-

affected, why waste your time on Shakespeare?

It is not, of course by Shakespeare that the sophisticated boast that they remain unmoved, but by the “Theatre of Cruelty." They can apparently witness without compunction a jolly play about a baby being stoned to death. Things like that happen, one is told; it is life; one should not shut one’s eyes. One has the range of one’s consciousness extended—and one’s heart hardened.

Does it really require a series of murders to prove that emotional corruption is evil? I venture to suggest in agreement with Miss Hansford Johnson, that the pose of indifference to brutality is a thin disguise for the present vogue of insincere “permissiveness,” 1.e., moral irresponsibility. A false shame restrains people from admitting that conduct can be wrong, wicked or iniquitous—as distinct from anti-social. Once you admit of possibility of moral disgust, you have to acknowledge positive values. "As for virtue, righteousness ana love, wo do not mention them. They are words you do not expect to hear in a decent house. It is perhaps a daring speculation; but I should not be surprised it, tn a few years’ time, these became lilce the words which bad little boys and advanced novelists enjoy K r . lt L n A on <lark walls ■*><! in bright books. 'lsn’t she daring,’ they will whisper at literary parties in Bloomsbury. 'ln her last book she speaks of righteousness—no Initials or blanks or anything of the kind; just the word, plain and square.

This remarkable forecast of the book Miss Hansford Johnson has written appeared over 30 years ago. The writer was not some Puritan, Bawdier or Buchmanite, but Arthur Machen, the first man to make a full English translation, of Casanova’s erotic (but not sadistic) “Memoirs." Machen found the “cant of vice” as detestable as the cant of virtue. He condemned a work by a “very clever”

author which became famous some 20 years earlier and purported “to demonstrate that all morals are humbug, and all the ancient givers of the law horrible old hypocrites, who grudged the lively and gracious young, the simple pleasures, which they themselves were past enjoying," including that of murder. I had better not name tiie book presumably in Machen’s mind. If I do, either Mr X or Mr Y, those two keen publishers of “controversial” lit-

erature, will resurrect it. Mr X and Mr Y (unlike some of the paperback purveyors of sludge) are not, as Miss Hansford Johnson rather suggests, simply out to make money. But they are over-anxious to parade a bold modishness. All they lack is social imagination and literary taste. Are we to pursue them with prosecutions, often ineffective in the present state of public opinion? Are we to invoke some new censorship? Like Miss Hansford Johnson, I am not very happy with either alternative. If only Mr X and Mr Y would grow up and censor themselves! Meanwhile, I should like to stress a point which she pursues: the immature of all ages assume that works freely on sale enjoy general approval. As Brady said: “They cannot be called pornography; they can be bought at any bookstall.”

Perhaps It would help if all booksellers who sold such works confined themselves to the unsavoury, as many do, and public libraries that stocked them shelved them apart under a “D” (for disgusting) notice. One would then have disposed of the confusion in the minds of Mr X and Mi Y about their contribution tc society, and literary critic; would shed the belief (t( quote Machen again) that the beautiful is born of beast liness. "On Iniquity" ii publlahei by Macmillan

this direction. Sueh impulses are normally restrained by conventional inhibitions; this exceptional pair found support in the most “uninhibited” reading. Whether it was this that finally turned them towards acting out their fantasies cannot be proven. It is the general point arising which is of practical