Pelican Bay State Prison, where an inmate won back a werewolf erotica novel that prison guards had confiscated from him. (Robert Durell / Los Angeles Times / November 30, 1998)
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First they came for the Playboy magazines, and I said nothing, as I do not read Playboy magazine. Then they came for my werewolf erotica, and I could stay silent no longer. Can’t a locked-up interspecies romance fan read a little?
After two years of appeals, an inmate at Pelican Bay State Prison won back a werewolf erotica novel that prison guards had taken from him. The decision is a loss for prison censorship but a victory for all inmates with a soft spot for illicit love and interspecies intercourse.
When Andres Martinez ordered a copy of "The Silver Crown," a novel by Mathilde Madden about a werewolf hunter who falls in love with her prey, prison guards searched the book for sex scenes and, finding no shortage, confiscated it. Martinez is a convicted attempted murderer and an associate of the Mexican Mafia prison gang. Guards called the book obscene and likely to incite violence.
Now, in a 30-page decision alternately sterile and steamy, a San Francisco appeals court has ruled that Martinez has a right to the book. The court’s analysis is equal parts 1st Amendment commentary and dirty book report. (“The sex is sometimes rough but always consensual,” Justice James Richman wrote. “Women are portrayed as frequently aggressive, always willing, and seemingly insatiable. Men are portrayed as frequently demanding, always ready, and seemingly inexhaustible.”)
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