A Lit-Art Mag with Porn References
The launch party for the second issue of the hefty literary-art annual magazine Sienese Shredder was last night. It was more of a drinking affair; the "intellectual launch" was last month, one gentleman told me. What happens at an intellectual launch? "People read things." Oh! The magazine features unpublished work from artist Jasper Johns and director Guy Maddin, among others. Excerpted is the delightful article, "Pornotopias and Pornocopias" on how libraries organize their porn collections.
The British Library's collections are graced— or littered, depending on your point of view—with a stupendous quantity of erotica among their thirteen million catalogued items. Such is the quantity and quality that the choicest items have a division of their own, the Private Case, a collection of high-end erotica and plain smut that would gratify the most discerning pornophile.
...The British Library is not the sole library with a distinct pornography collection, although it may be the finest. The international porno-pantheon includes the New YOrk Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library, which might now contain more pornography than the newly wholesome Times Square area to which it is adjacent... not only is the material free, browsing is positively encouraged. While not forming a distinct collection, restricted materials "for supervised use" are largely classified under the shelf mark ***."
