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Texas jail keeps out Arsenal Pulp book

Over at the Arsenal Pulp Press blog, publisher Brian Lam relates a funny-sad story. Seems a Texas prisoner ordered one of the firm’s titles, the Augustin Gomez-Arcos novel The Carnivorous Lamb, and prison authorities intercepted and destroyed the book, citing an incest scene between two brothers as “detrimental to offenders’ rehabilitation, because it would encourage deviant criminal sexual behavior.” As Lam writes:

What I found interesting was that the State of Texas appears to be paying prison authorities to read EVERY PAGE of every publication sent to prisoners (a good use of taxpayers’ money), and that, at least in Texas, the archaic idea that literature WILL (not “may”) encourage DEVIANT CRIMINAL SEXUAL BEHAVIOR is alive and well.

Readers may remember a similar story a year or so back involving Roberto Bolaño’s novel The Savage Detectives, and also involving the ever-diligent Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

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