Official condemnation of a philosopher’s work sparks desire to read it.

Evidence

Meanwhile, in April 1948, he got himself into even more trouble with his new play called, naturally, Dirty Hands. This showed party members in Illyria, a fictional small country reminiscent of post-war Hungary, making moral compromises with their ideals and trying to come to terms with their prospects as they wait for a Soviet-style takeover. The Communists were not amused. The Soviet cultural commissar Alexander Fadayev called Sartre ‘a hyena with a fountain pen’ and Sartre went out of favour in all the Soviet bloc countries. The Czech writer Ivan Klíma, then a college student, listened to his teachers attacking Sartre for his ‘decay and moral degeneration’ — which immediately made Klíma desperate to read him. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 794

Categorization

• CANDY: Soviet officials calling Sartre ‘a hyena with a fountain pen’ and the irony that official attacks made young Klíma desperate to read him — a fun, self-contained anecdote.
• XREF: connects to: Deliberate propagandistic falsehood permeated ancient texts and drew explicit moral condemnation — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting…, 489

Broader Connections

• Deliberate propagandistic falsehood permeated ancient texts and drew explicit moral condemnation #complicates (0.72) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 489