Publishing, the Rules of the Trade

Sexe & Graffiti

Ernest Ernest, Alain Moreau, original edition, 1979, Coll. Bfm - Limoges

According to its promotional copy, this book combines ‘the raw phantasms of a whole society and teeming life, bestial and angelic…’ Published by A. Moreau in 1978, it was written under a pseudonym by a researcher with CNRS, who had been visiting towns and their toilets all over France and Europe for 10 years, collecting hundreds of examples of graffiti. The texts are scrupulously reproduced and grouped by theme, place of origin and date. Drawings, compiled with the same thoroughness, complete this astonishing panorama. For offending public decency, the 17th chambre correctionnelle in Paris imposed a fine on Libération for publishing a review of Sexe & graffiti. Defined in the judgement as ‘literature of the urinal’, the sale of the book to minors was banned.