Local Police Ban John O'Hara Novel In Newsstand Drive on 'Sex Books'

Pocket-sized reprints of John O'Hara's best-seller. "A Rage to Live," have been banned from all local news stands by the Cambridge police because of "certain obscene sections in the book." Chief Patrick F. Ready disclosed last night.

Detectives who ordered the crackdown explained they did not plan to extend it to the more expensive hard-cover version of books. They said they are concentrating on the cheap editions because it is the one that is likely to be read by children.

Four Books Banned

Meanwhile, the number of paper-bound titles blacklisted in the current police drive against "sex books" thus rose to four yesterday when Cambridge officers ordered three other volumes yanked off the city's racks. Police named "Women's Barracks," by Tereska Torres, as another of the "over-lurid" quartet, but refused to disclose at present what the other two were.

O'Hara declined to comment on the police move when contacted yesterday at his Princeton, N.J., home.

Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, last night called the ban "obscurantism and reactionary." Censorship of this sort, he said, should not occur without a hearing and a trial.

"I don't think the Cambridge police are very skilled in literary criticism." Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English, commented on the O'Hara ban.