Reading the obituary of zoologist Desmond Morris today in The New York Times, I recalled my father telling me what happened when he was the editor of Book World in 1968 and published (on Book World’s front page) a review of Morris’s The Naked Ape.
Peter Farb, the reviewer, wrote:
“Many a cocktail party this winter will be kept in motion by [Morris’s] provocative chitchat: man is the sexiest primate alive; the human male and not the gorilla possess the largest penis of all primates …”
On the date Farb’s review appeared in Book World (January 21, 1968), Henry Raymont wrote in the Times:
The controversy over the review [i.e. the use of the word "penis"] had caused some consternation at the editorial offices of Book World … Byron Dobell, who has been Book World’s editor since the supplement was founded last September, made a strong defense yesterday of Mr. Farb’s review and expressed dismay over the objections raised by [The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune, which published Book World jointly as their Sunday book supplement].
“Dr. Morris has written an important book and we deliberately assigned a professional biologist who in my opinion reviewed it with just the right note of sophistication and intelligence. As for the controversial section, well, it appeared almost literally the same way when Life magazine published excerpts of the book last month, and I thought this was enough evidence that it was fit for family reading.”
My father told me that prior to publication, he had written to Katharine Graham, publisher of the Post, that she could go ahead and fire him from his position as editor, but he would not remove the word “penis” from Farb’s review.
Graham didn’t fire him, but, as I learned today from the 1968 Times article, it seems that the Post did delete the “penis” reference from most copies. Fortunately, the original issue of Book World that I have (my father kept the bound volumes of the issues he edited from 1967 to 1969) still has the offending word on Page 1!
Here’s that front page:
Finally, as Douglas Martin writes in today’s obituary, Morris had the best response to his would-be censors:
Peter Farb, the reviewer, wrote:
“Many a cocktail party this winter will be kept in motion by [Morris’s] provocative chitchat: man is the sexiest primate alive; the human male and not the gorilla possess the largest penis of all primates …”
On the date Farb’s review appeared in Book World (January 21, 1968), Henry Raymont wrote in the Times:
The controversy over the review [i.e. the use of the word "penis"] had caused some consternation at the editorial offices of Book World … Byron Dobell, who has been Book World’s editor since the supplement was founded last September, made a strong defense yesterday of Mr. Farb’s review and expressed dismay over the objections raised by [The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune, which published Book World jointly as their Sunday book supplement].
“Dr. Morris has written an important book and we deliberately assigned a professional biologist who in my opinion reviewed it with just the right note of sophistication and intelligence. As for the controversial section, well, it appeared almost literally the same way when Life magazine published excerpts of the book last month, and I thought this was enough evidence that it was fit for family reading.”
My father told me that prior to publication, he had written to Katharine Graham, publisher of the Post, that she could go ahead and fire him from his position as editor, but he would not remove the word “penis” from Farb’s review.
Graham didn’t fire him, but, as I learned today from the 1968 Times article, it seems that the Post did delete the “penis” reference from most copies. Fortunately, the original issue of Book World that I have (my father kept the bound volumes of the issues he edited from 1967 to 1969) still has the offending word on Page 1!
Here’s that front page:
Finally, as Douglas Martin writes in today’s obituary, Morris had the best response to his would-be censors:
When book reviewers complained about how difficult [Morris] made it to write around the word “penis” in The Naked Ape, Dr. Morris replied to Newsweek: “Newspapers commonly use the word gun. They don’t mind printing a word describing something that shoots death, but if it shoots life, they won’t have it.”
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/science/desmond-morris-dead.html
https://www.nytimes.com/1968/01/21/archives/review-of-naked-ape-causes-2-papers-to-call-back-sections.html
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