Recently Read

 Last weekend I noticed a passage in The Hall of Uselessness by Simon Leys, which I don't remember reading before. though the short items on either side are quite familiar. It is headed "Urinals and Literary Practice", and begins

At the end of the nineteenth century, as France was swept by a wave of fanatical anticlericalism, many town councils and municipalities adopted the policy of erecting urinoirs along the walls of local cathedrals and churches; under the pretext of ensuring hygeine and public decency, the brilliant idea was to have the entire male population of the town pissing day and night against the most venerable monuments that the religious had built.

It seems to me that many modern editors of classic works of literature--and also many film-makers adapting literary masterpieces to the screen--are impelled by a somewhat similar desire for desecration. They append impertinent and preposterous introductions, they impose cover designs and presentations in complete contradiction with the expressed intention of the authors, they write film scripts that negate the meaning of the book they are supposed to adapt, they coolly chop off the epigraphs the authors had lovingly selected--they generally display patronizing arrogance and crass ignorance; they behave as if they were the proprietors of the works they should serve and preserve....

I wonder how I could have missed this. It appears in the chapter Detours of Part IV, Marginalia.