In 1938 a housewife checked out a Detroit Public Library book—Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not. Disgusted by the book’s content, she contacted her fellow Catholics who, in turn, brought it to the attention of the Wayne County prosecutor, who banned the book. Opposed to the ban, two Detroit booksellers defended their right to sell To Have and Have Not and filed a case in Detroit Circuit Court against the prosecutor and the Detroit Police Department.
Cohassey’s Banned in Detroit: The Suppression of Hemingway’s To Have and Have Not,” is the first study of this legal battle. Occurring at a turbulent time in Detroit and the nation’s history, Hemingway’s book caused controversy in the only city, apart from the Borough of Queens, to ban the book. The fight for and against the suppression reveals Depression-era Detroit’s reaction to Hemingway’s art and political stance supporting Republican Spain against the forces of fascism.
Length: 32 pages.
REVIEWS
“Banned in Detroit . . . I found fascinating and valuable. I knew there had been turmoil over Hemingway’s novel To Have and Have Not, but I was unaware of the battle over whether the book would be banned in Detroit. I was fascinated by [Wayne County Persecutor [Duncan McCrea’s long, bitter effort to keep the book out of libraries and bookstores. (I found the effort against the bookstores especially amazing). It was clear that you did a great deal of research, and ten did a fine job of showing that Hemingway’s involvement in the film The Spanish Earth may have been the reason for McCrea’s crusade to have the novel banned. He did everything he could think of to frighten librarians and booksellers (Alvin Hamer especially), and even brought in a judge (Chenot) he though he thought could get the book banned. But what and ending. McCrea was shown to be a greedy criminal instead of a supposedly religious, honest citizen who wanted to keep supposedly “obscene” books out of libraries, schools and bookstores. What a hypocrite. The ending apparently did not help Hemingway a great deal, but it at least stifled McCrea’s efforts and enabled the public to read books and make their own judgment on what they have read.”
---Ken Marek Founding member of the Michigan Hemingway Society and former instructor of writing and literature at Northwestern Michigan College.