Snow-white, peerless, “arrogantly pure,” once the chosen disguise of Zeus himself and symbol throughout human history of solitary, self-delighting beauty, the swan is naturally hated beyond reason by scientific farmers, water engineers, pylon-worshippers and statisticians.

A successful campaign against commercial pornography and violence would almost certainly involve the victory of a narrow, bigoted kind of puritanism, which might even be addicted to a kind of violence of its own.

The price of civilization is repression. The only part of it the Beats reject is the bill.