Nonsenseorship — Themes and Context

Traitors in the Ranks: Broun’s Pro-Prohibition Plea

Heywood Broun, ostensibly a “stalwart foe of inhibitions,” immediately subverts expectations by advocating for prohibition—but only for those over thirty. He declares that “rum was designed for youthful days and is the animating influence which made oats wild.” After thirty, he suggests, Quaker Oats. This ironic twist sets the tone for a volume where no position is safe from mockery. The editor notes that Broun is “masquerading” as a foe of inhibitions, highlighting the performative nature of the essays. The reader is warned early that consistency is not the goal; rather, the pleasure lies in watching each writer dismantle their own and others’ sacred cows.

The Censor’s Menagerie: A Catalog of Absurdities

One contributor offers a rollicking inventory of censorship’s petty tyrants: the “Suppressors of Vice” who find dirt in What Katy Did at School or a snapshot of Aunt Bessie in bathing; the Movie Censors who keep the motion picture “in its infancy” by cutting ginger-ale toasts and making Sherlock Holmes say “Quick, Watson, the crochet needle!”; and the “All-American Crabs” who oppose everything from modern dances to cigarette-smoking. The tone is gleefully hyperbolic, but the targets are specific: the Comstockian legacy, the Hays Code’s forerunners, and the reflexive moral panic of reformers. The writer’s refrain—“I hate Reformers; They raise my blood pressure”—caps the section with personal venom.

Transatlantic Misunderstandings: Swinnerton’s London Shock

Frank Swinnerton recounts an American woman’s astonishment that a London taxi driver could ignore a policeman’s hand and receive only a mild rebuke. In New York, she insists, “he’d have been in prison inside of five minutes!” Swinnerton uses this anecdote to probe the gap between American and British attitudes toward authority and law. The essay suggests that prohibition and censorship are not merely legal matters but expressions of a national character that demands rigid enforcement. The contrast between the “terrible disillusion” of the visitor and the amused tolerance of the Londoner underscores the volume’s central argument: that the impulse to control others’ behavior is often more ridiculous than the behavior itself.

Readers should approach Nonsenseorship as a period piece of sophisticated mockery, not a systematic argument. The contributors write from a specific cultural moment—post-World War I, Prohibition-era America—and their targets are often local and dated. Yet the underlying tension between liberty and control remains recognizable. The book rewards those who enjoy watching clever writers sharpen their wit on the grindstone of hypocrisy.