'I AM A PORNOGRAPHER'
SIR,—Not being conversant with the editorial poli- cies of the Olympia Press, I cannot tell Mr. Donleavy why some of its publications carry lists of other titles and some don't. But I can tell him that the two- volume edition of Lolita which 1 have on my desk before me has at the end of the first volume a list of eighteen other titles in the Traveller's Companion Series—including The Ginger Man.
As for the question of expurgation, 1 do think the English edition of Mr. Donleavy's book is inferior to the French edition. The passages that have been excised are some of the best in the original novel and surely as essential to it as the controversial passages in Lady Chatterley's Lover. No doubt an author has the right to bowdlerise his own work (though the result should not masquerade as the full version), but I am sorry Mr. Donleavy did not feel about this as Lawrence did : 'I might as well try to clip my nose into shape with scissors, The book bleeds.' And I still hope that some English publisher will now have the courage to bring out the complete novel, which I believe to he one of the best written in. English at least since the war.—Yours faithfully, 43 Aberdare Gardens, NW6
NICOLAS WALTER
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