{"id":1884,"date":"2011-10-03T12:03:46","date_gmt":"2011-10-03T19:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2011\/10\/a_book_clerk_who_was_more_than\/"},"modified":"2015-06-14T18:26:45","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T22:26:45","slug":"a_book_clerk_who_was_more_than","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2011\/10\/a_book_clerk_who_was_more_than.html","title":{"rendered":"A Book Clerk Who Was More Than a Clerk"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fifty-four years ago two undercover cops in San Francisco arrested a clerk at City Lights Bookstore for selling them an “obscene” book of poetry. The clerk was Shigeyoshi Murao. The book was Allen Ginsberg’s Howl<\/em>. Several months later, on October 3rd, a municipal court judge ruled that the book was protected by the First Amendment because it had “redeeming social importance.”<\/p>\n

If not for the bust and the trial, Howl<\/em> might never have become as important as it did, either culturally or literarily. More than a million copies are now in print. Further, the ruling made way for the publication in the U.S. of such forbidden books as D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover<\/em>, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer<\/em>, and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Shig Murao (right) and Lawrence Ferlinghetti at the Howl<\/em> trial.<\/small>
\n<\/a>The 54th anniversary of Judge Clayton W. Horn’s historic decision would not, ordinarily, be marked for celebration. But Richard Reynolds, the former communications director of Mother Jones,<\/em> has done it by taking the occasion to post an unusual Web site, Shigmurao.org<\/a>. The site pays tribute to a book clerk who was “much more than a clerk,” he notes, and “in danger of being written out of the history of City Lights and of the San Francisco Beat era.”<\/p>\n

As Reynold points out, “When Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman made their film<\/a> of the trial in 2010, for instance, Shig was nowhere to be seen. Yet at the trial itself, Shig and Lawrence Ferlinghetti [poet, publisher, and owner of City Lights] were codefendants and sat next to each other throughout the proceedings.” Furthermore it was Shig, he writes, who “managed the bookstore for its first twenty-two years and crafted the unique atmosphere that made San Francisco’s legendary bookstore into the storied institution it remains today.”<\/p>\n

It’s no surprise that Hollywood or, in this case, an indie flick with a maverick star (James Franco), will distort history because of a misguided need to simplify and streamline. What Reynolds doesn’t say is that the flick was a complete bore, let alone a distortion. So for a detailed taste of the authentic<\/a>, including primary materials<\/a>, have a look at the site that Reynolds has put together. It’s a many-layered labor of love and, unlike the flick, both entertaining and enlightening.<\/p>\n

(Full disclosure: Shig hired me as a book clerk at City Lights back in the ’60s.)<\/em>
\n(Crossposted at HuffPo)<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fifty-four years ago two undercover cops in San Francisco arrested a clerk at City Lights Bookstore for selling them an “obscene” book of poetry. The clerk was Shigeyoshi Murao. The book was Allen Ginsberg’s Howl. Several months later, on October 3rd, a municipal court judge ruled that the book was protected by the First Amendment […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-uo","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16397,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1884\/revisions\/16397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}