 First edition | |
| Author | Irving Wallace |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Pornography Political science |
| Genre | Legal thriller |
| Publisher | Simon & Schuster |
Published in English | September 29, 1969 |
| Pages | 607 |
| ISBN | 0-671-20359-2 |
The Seven Minutes is a novel by Irving Wallace published in 1969 and released by Simon & Schuster. The book is a fictional account of the effects of pornography and the related arguments about freedom of speech.
A novel titled The Seven Minutes, purporting to be the thoughts in a woman's mind during seven minutes of sexual intercourse, is reputed to be the most obscene piece of pornography ever written, with massive public debate as to whether or not the book should be banned. A bookseller named Ben Fremont sells The Seven Minutes to Jeffrey Griffith, a college student with no history of violence. The book is found in Jeffrey's possession after his arrest for committing a brutal rape and murder.
District Attorney Elmo Duncan takes advantage of the public interest in the case and conspires to publicly link The Seven Minutes with the Jeffrey Griffith trial. His plan is to not only ban the book, but to make possessing it illegal on the grounds of public morality and safety. Ultimately he wishes to use this platform of moral decency to unseat the current senator, Thomas Bainbridge, in an upcoming election. Luther Yerkes, a wealthy businessman who has clashed with the incumbent senator, secretly funds Duncan's censorship campaign. This leads to the arrest of Ben Fremont for providing the book to Griffith, as well as legal action leveled at the book's publisher Phillip Sanford as he refuses to cooperate in an attempt to locate its pseudonymous author J.J. Jadway. Sanford claims that Jadway committed suicide in Europe years before due to despondency over the book's reception.
Sanford, believing the book is an artistic masterpiece and that legal action represents a dangerous precedent, calls upon his old friend, attorney Michael Barrett, to defend Fremont. This results in a landmark obscenity trial in which numerous witnesses are called to speak on the difference between artistic expression and obscenity and the public good versus freedom of choice.
Unexpectedly, Senator Bainbridge takes the stand in the book's defense. Bainbridge reveals that he wrote The Seven Minutes based on a powerful sexual experience that changed his life. At the time he wrote the book, it would have been damaging for him to reveal himself as its author, therefore he invented the name J.J. Jadway and had his publisher Phillip Sanford spread rumors of Jadway's death to protect his identity. In fact, much of his testimony is motivated by a desire to separate sexual openness and honesty, which he believes is a public good, from harmful exploitation.
After Bainbridge's testimony, the jury finds the book not obscene. The prosecutor vows to try the case again in a different part of the state, but defense attorney Barrett states that it is ridiculous to restrict what people are allowed to read in the privacy of their own homes or to use art as a scapegoat for much deeper societal issues.
The Seven Minutes likely is based on the prosecution of New York City bookstore owner Irwin Weisfeld in the early 1960s. Weisfeld's case (New York v. Bookcase, Inc.) was well publicized in its time and played a key role in a series of crucial rulings regarding 1st amendment protection of literary works. [1]
The book was made into the film The Seven Minutes , directed by Russ Meyer in 1971, with Philip Carey, John Carradine, Wayne Maunder, Tom Selleck, and Yvonne De Carlo.
The Olympia Press of Maurice Girodias, who was interviewed by Wallace during research for his book,[ citation needed ] published the novel The Original Seven Minutes, and its author on the title page was J.J. Jadway; its content followed the indications in Wallace's novel. In other words, if Wallace's novel dealt with an allegedly obscene, fictional book, Olympia Press claimed to be the publishers. Following legal action by Wallace, the book was withdrawn, and later republished as The Seven Erotic Minutes with the purported author's name and all references to Wallace removed. [2]
In the epilogue to the novel Eleven Minutes , Paulo Coelho cites Irving Wallace's book as a source of inspiration.
The Millertest, also called the three-prong obscenity test, is the United States Supreme Court's test for determining whether speech or expression can be labeled obscene, in which case it is not protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and can be prohibited.
Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), was a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court clarifying the legal definition of obscenity as material that lacks "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value". The ruling was the origin of the three-part judicial test for determining obscene media content that can be banned by government authorities, which is now known as the Miller test.
Lady Chatterley's Lover is the last novel by English author D. H. Lawrence, which was first published privately in 1928, in Italy, and in 1929, in France. An unexpurgated edition was not published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960, when it was the subject of a watershed obscenity trial against the publisher Penguin Books, which won the case and quickly sold three million copies. The book was also banned for obscenity in the United States, Canada, Australia, India and Japan. The book soon became notorious for its story of the physical relationship between a working-class man and an upper-class woman, its explicit descriptions of sex and its use of then-unprintable profane words. It entered the public domain in the United States in 2024.
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure—popularly known as Fanny Hill—is an erotic novel by the English novelist John Cleland first published in London in 1748. Written while the author was in debtors' prison in London, it is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel". It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.
Erotic literature comprises fictional and factual stories and accounts of eros intended to arouse similar feelings in readers. This contrasts erotica, which focuses more specifically on sexual feelings. Other common elements are satire and social criticism. Much erotic literature features erotic art, illustrating the text.
The PROTECT Act of 2003 is a United States law with the stated intent of preventing child abuse as well as investigating and prosecuting violent crimes against children. "PROTECT" is a backronym which stands for "Prosecutorial Remedies and Other Tools to End the Exploitation of Children Today".
Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557 (1969), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States that helped to establish an implied "right to privacy" in U.S. law in the form of mere possession of obscene materials.
Maurice Girodias was a French publisher who founded the Olympia Press, specialising in risqué books, censored in Britain and America, that were permitted in France in English-language versions only. It evolved from his father’s Obelisk Press, famous for publishing Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Girodias published Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, J. P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man, and works by Samuel Beckett, William S. Burroughs, John Glassco and Christopher Logue.
In 1969, the United States Supreme Court ruled in Stanley v. Georgia that people could view whatever they wished in the privacy of their own homes. In response, the United States Congress funded the President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, set up by President Lyndon B. Johnson to study pornography.
United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, 5 F. Supp. 182, is a landmark decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a case dealing with freedom of expression. At issue was whether James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses was obscene. In deciding it was not, Judge John M. Woolsey opened the door to importation and publication of serious works of literature that used coarse language or involved sexual subjects.
The Seven Minutes is a 1971 American drama movie directed and produced by Russ Meyer. The movie was based on the 1969 novel of the same name by Irving Wallace.
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus, obscaenus, "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage in expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to descriptions and depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity.
In the United States, distribution of "obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy" materials is a federal crime. The determination of what is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy" is up to a jury in a trial, which must apply the Miller test; however, due to the prominence of pornography in most communities most pornographic materials are not considered "patently offensive" in the Miller test.
The Meese Report, officially the Final Report of the Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, is the result of an investigation into pornography ordered by U.S. President Ronald Reagan. It was published in July 1986 and contains 1,960 pages.
United States v. 12 200-ft. Reels of Film, 413 U.S. 123 (1973), was an in rem case decided by the United States Supreme Court that considered the question of whether the First Amendment required that citizens be allowed to import obscene material for their personal and private use at home, which was already held to be protected several years earlier. By a 5–4 margin, the Court held that it did not.
Quantity of Books v. Kansas, 378 U.S. 205 (1964), is an in rem United States Supreme Court decision on First Amendment questions relating to the forfeiture of obscene material. By a 7–2 margin, the Court held that a seizure of the books was unconstitutional, since no hearing had been held on whether the books were obscene, and it reversed a Kansas Supreme Court decision that upheld the seizure.
Ashlilatar Daye is a Bengali drama film released in 1983. The film is based on a thriller cum courtroom drama novel by the Narayan Sanyal with the same title, which was published in 1975. Sanyal took this novel theme from Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace. This film directed by Uma Nath Bhattacharya. Arundhati Holme Chowdhury and Haimanti Sukla sang in this film.
United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech or expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene, as well as to issues of freedom of speech and of the press, otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Issues of obscenity arise at federal and state levels. State laws operate only within the jurisdiction of each state, and there are differences among such laws. Federal statutes ban obscenity and child pornography produced with real children. Federal law also bans broadcasting of "indecent" material during specified hours.
R v Penguin Books Ltd, was the public prosecution in the United Kingdom of Penguin Books under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for the publication of D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. The trial took place over six days, in No 1 court of the Old Bailey, between 20 October and 2 November 1960 with Mervyn Griffith-Jones prosecuting, Gerald Gardiner counsel for the defence and Laurence Byrne presiding. The trial was a test case of the defence of public good provision under section 4 of the Act which was defined as a work "in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern".
Irwin Weisfeld (1932–1968) was an American writer and bookseller who was jailed in 1963 under obscenity laws for selling the 18th century erotic novel Fanny Hill. The case became a finale in a series of First Amendment battles which made an impact throughout American media and culture.