William S. Burroughs, as I also mentioned in The Paris Review, was so special by himself, very special in a literary sense. One day Ginsberg brought Burroughs’s manuscript, Naked Lunch, to the Grove office. I believed it was a work of genius, especially the Dr. Benway character. Now when you read the book it sounds almost coherent, but back then, it was like looking at an abstract painting. We had never seen anything like it before. Burroughs turned language and concepts all around, and he used a good figure, a doctor, to send up the whole society. And of course he had strong concepts about all kinds of drugs, whether they were good or bad and how to break your habit.
Ginsberg had taken it upon himself to market the Naked Lunch manuscript and had met rejection for two years, even from such venerable champions of free expression as Olympia Press and City Lights. Maurice Girodias’s first response to Naked Lunch, which had been brought to him by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, was negative, a “no go.” Allen next showed the manuscript to City Lights, but Ferlinghetti wasn’t interested in the mixture of sexuality, violence, and psychopathology.
The next stop was the office of Chicago Review, the literary magazine of the University of Chicago. Ginsberg sent Naked Lunch to what he thought—correctly, as it turned out—would be sympathetic student editors. Both Paul Carroll and Irving Rosenthal were drawn to Burroughs’ iconoclastic satire. The first excerpt from the book was published in the Spring 1958 issue of Chicago Review. Although a faculty member, Richard Stern, groused about the journal becoming “a magazine of San Francisco rejects,” since it had also published such California writers as Robert Duncan and Michael McClure, the storm had not yet broken. The lack of outcry emboldened Rosenthal and Carroll to publish an even larger chunk from the novel in the Winter 1958 issue, which included Kerouac, Burroughs, and Edward Dahlberg.
Then, of course, the press caught wind of what had been going on at the magazine. A front-page column by Jack Mabley appeared in the Chicago Daily News in which the “vulgarity and courseness” being purveyed by the Chicago Review was excoriated. No actual authors were cited in Mabley’s piece. When the University of Chicago chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins, was alerted to this controversy, he banned Burroughs and other Beats from appearing in the Review. Hutchins had previously made a name as being a liberal leader, but now he radically changed his position by clamping down on free literary expression. Rosenthal, Carroll, and others resigned in protest and decided to start their own independent magazine, Big Table. It was financed with private donations and ads, but now faced a new hurdle when an issue with another excerpt from Naked Lunch was seized by the Post Office as obscene.
The poet John Ciardi wrote a June 27, 1959 editorial in the Saturday Review castigating the Chicago Post Office, pointing out “it is not interested in the law, but only its own kind of harassment.” He also offered a reading of Naked Lunch: “Only after the first shock does one realize that what Burroughs is writing about is not only the destruction of depraved men by their drug lust, but the destruction of all men by their consuming addictions.”85
The work was put on trial in Chicago in front of Judge Julius Hoffman, who would later try the Yippies for their alleged disruption of the Chicago convention and, in a less historically significant moment, presided over my divorce from Joan Mitchell. His verdict was “not guilty.” In his judicial opinion he wrote, “Naked Lunch, while not exactly a wild prose picnic in the style of Kerouac, is, taken as a whole, similarly unappealing to the prurient interest. The exacerbated, morbid and perverted sex related by the author could not arouse a corresponding interest in the average reader.”86
Meanwhile, the hullabaloo and national press coverage—along with the steady sales of Big Table—convinced the publishers that had earlier ignored Burroughs’ novel to rethink their positions. While still involved with Carroll and the Chicago people, Rosenthal, who had meticulously edited the excerpts from Naked Lunch that had appeared, moved to New York. We gave him a job at Grove Press. He began editing the manuscript with Burroughs but found himself cut off at the pass when Girodias, who had earlier disdained Naked Lunch, now offered Burroughs $800 for the book. Olympia quickly rushed out an edition, done with minimal editing. Now Burroughs came to value the more chaotic, collage-like style that had been edited out of the Chicago Review excerpts and insisted that the Grove edition conform to the Olympia version. This cut down on Rosenthal’s ability to shape the text and later led to acrimony between Burroughs, Rosenthal, and Grove.
On July 29, 1960, Allen Ginsberg stepped in, to no avail, urging Burroughs to listen to Rosenthal’s advice: “Irving put a lot of work into the detail, and your last letter tends to sweep all further detail under carpet. But it won’t be much work for you just to check what he did. I think book’ll be better, easier to read.” (Allen also did work on the text, and I recently found a copy of an invoice he submitted for eight hours of copyediting at $2.50 per hour—$20.00 due in total.) Although Burroughs acceded to some of the suggestions, he had his own ideas regarding his book’s integrity. When he wrote to Ginsberg agreeing to some of Rosenthal’s editorial suggestions, such as adding chapter heads, Burroughs added, “Please send more mescaline. I will send along more money very soon.”
Meanwhile, I cabled Girodias on August 12, 1959, “DON’T FORGET I WANT NAKED LUNCH FOR STATES STOP DO YOU HAVE CONTRACTUAL RIGHTS STOP AND DON’T DRINK YOURSELF TO DEATH UNTIL I GET THERE.”
At the outset of Rosenthal doing the editorial work, Burroughs wrote him:
First a general statement of policy with regard to Naked Lunch. The Olympia edition aside from actual typographical errors is the way the book was conceived and took form. That form can not be altered without loss of life. … [I]t definitely is my intention that the book should flow from beginning to end without spatial interruption or chapter headings. I think the marginal headings are definitely indicated. THIS IS NOT A NOVEL. And should not appear looking like one.87
Burroughs now adhered to the cut-up method of composition, which he said he had adopted unconsciously in relation to Naked Lunch. He explained in his essay “The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin” in A Casebook on the Beat that this technique had been introduced by Dadaist writer Tristan Tzara, who “at a surrealist rally in the 1920s proposed to create a poem on the spot by pulling words out of a hat. A riot ensued wrecked the theatre.”88 In other words, as Tzara suggested, an artwork would be composed by utilizing chance operations to one degree or another. Burroughs’s version of this, he said, was that he sent the different parts of Naked Lunch to the printer in random order, so that while each section had continuity in itself, the ultimate arrangement of the pieces of the book arose by accident.
Burroughs also wanted to include an introductory note in the Grove edition explaining the background of the book, coming as it did from years of a drug addiction he had now cleaned up from, as something of a reply to critics. He put his justification like this: “I get tired of people telling me they lost their lunch reading my Lunch.”
Aside from difficulties editing the book, there was the problem of getting copies from Olympia (which would be easier to work from rather than the original manuscript) because the government kept seizing the ones that were sent to us. As my assistant, Judith Schmidt, observed, “By this time the Customs Department must have so many Naked Lunches on hand that they could easily open a bookstore to compete with us when our edition is published.”
Indeed, I received a letter from the Bureau of Customs, which managed to misspell the author’s name. The letter, dated August 29, 1960, read in part, “You are advised that a mail package addressed to you from _________ found to contain the following listed merchandise, has been seized as in violation of the provisions of Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930:—1 book “The Naked Lunch” by W. Burrough.”
We had bought the rights to Naked Lunch from Girodias in November 1959 and even printed copies, but I hesitated to distribute the book when I was already embroiled in the Tropic of Cancer censorship trials. The Mill
er situation was still up in the air and adding more fuel to the fire by bringing out another controversial book seemed like a poor move.
As I wrote Girodias,
At this point we have legal battles over TROPIC ranging up and down the length of the country. We have employed legal firms in perhaps ten cities, leaving others to wait, and the book has been taken off sale in a major part of the United States. … [C]opies have been confiscated and in many places the wholesalers have kept the books but have not distributed them. Most of the trouble comes from police who intimidate the wholesalers and the actual retailers. Unless there is some sort of censorship by police intimidation and it is [a] very difficult thing to fight because in many places you cannot even prove that intimidation has taken place.
It would be absolutely suicidal to publish Naked Lunch at this moment—Burroughs seemed perfectly aware of that fact.
Girodias, in fact, sent Miller a copy of the Burroughs work, hoping to get a positive blurb. Miller replied in December 1960,
I’ve tried now for the third time to read it through, but I can’t stick it. The truth is, it bores me … However, there’s no question in my mind as to Burroughs’ abilities. There is a ferocity in his writing which is equaled in my opinion, only by Céline. No writer I know of made more daring use of the language. Thinking about the law, it seems to me that the effect of Burroughs’ book on the average reader—if publication were ever permitted—would be the very opposite of what the censors feared. One would have to have a diseased mind to ask for more. To read that book is to take the cure.89
Even with the Chicago Review controversy, William S. Burroughs was still not a recognized name and could not expect the attention and (relative) courtesy afforded Miller. Girodias, who was anxious for my American edition to succeed because he would receive a percentage, sent a piece by Burroughs for publication in Evergreen Review, writing, “It is quite essential that we rapidly establish Burroughs’ reputation as a serious writer in this country.” We published it as quickly as possible but this didn’t stop Maurice’s complaints.
He also lamented the financial consequences of the delayed publication, writing on February 21, 1961, “You certainly have valid reasons for adopting this policy [of delaying the distribution of the book] but it is quite disastrous from Burroughs’ point of view and mine. I have been anxiously looking forward to the publication of Naked Lunch in the U.S. as one of the only imaginable means of restoring my shaky finances.”
On July 21, Girodias again wrote to me frantically, “Concerning Naked Lunch, I must also once more ask you to let me know what you have decided. I would not like the idea of having waited one year and a half for you to publish a book, and learn at the last minute that you finally decided not to do it.”
I cabled back, “PLANS PROCEEDING PUBLISH LUNCH THIS FALL.”
Nonetheless, the complaints from Girodias, now happy that the book was on the verge of publication, did not stop. Burroughs had offered me excerpts from The Soft Machine, his follow-up book to Naked Lunch, and, Maurice, who was doing the novel in Paris, became incensed and complained that I was stealing his thunder, since he had already contracted to do the book and run an excerpt in his own magazine. I responded on November 13, 1961,
Usually publishers are delighted by the chance to have a section of one of their books appear in a magazine, even if the circulation of the magazine is not too large. Usually, you have to pay for advertising, and the chance to get some free exploitation is not easily come by. Obviously in this case it is your magazine that you are protecting, and you are not concerned with the welfare of the book. Again, I think you are very silly because although I would like to think that the EVERGREEN REVIEW blankets the globe, I’m afraid that it does not. Also I think perhaps you are having some delusions of grandeur concerning your own magazine, if you believe that the section from THE SOFT MACHINE will jet propel the whole affair into the stratosphere of SUCCESS and glory. … If you will really think this matter over a little bit, I think you will come to Burroughs’ and my point of view. You cannot consider him a slave who can only be published in your magazine.
To appease Girodias, I cancelled the inclusion of the excerpts. And although this was obviously not a result I would have wished for, I held up publication a little longer, as the Tropic trials dragged on. Girodias became angry and talked of buying back the copies I had already printed and offering them to Dial Press. In a letter dated December 7, 1961, I explained Grove’s difficulties in relation to our censorship trials:
When the book [Tropic of Cancer] is sold to the thousands of booksellers, of all description, in this country, an indemnification goes with it under which we guarantee to take up the defense for any wholesaler or retailer who might be arrested. It seems difficult for you to understand, but the arrests are CRIMINAL ones, and if someone is convicted he can go to jail—and even if he does not go to jail he suffers various penalties for the rest of his life because of the conviction. Legal fees are expensive and these dealers cannot pay them. If we did not indemnify them, there would be absolutely no sale. Therefore the investment in lawsuits is a matter of necessity, not frivolity, providing one finds it important to publish the book. This same problem will also hold true for NAKED LUNCH.
More than fifty people are now awaiting criminal trial.
Burroughs was much harder to defend than Miller at that time. You could make a good case that Henry Miller was an established twentieth-century writer. But, as I say, nobody had heard of Burroughs. Lawrence had set the stage for Miller, and Miller set the stage for Burroughs. At the time we signed the contract for Naked Lunch, we hadn’t won anything. We were right in the middle of it. Had we just gone ahead and published Burroughs it would have been a mess, because we already had all these lawsuits to contend with. That book would have proven that we were pornographers not satisfied with doing one dirty book—look, now we’ve got another one!
Even this did not stop Maurice’s complaints and threats to go to another publisher, so I wrote back angrily on December 13, 1961, “Once again, NAKED LUNCH will be published by us. Do everybody a favor by ceasing your attempts to sell it to anybody else and stop telling us how and when to publish it here. You take care of your problems in France, we will deal with the problems here as best we can. Is this precise enough.”
I put it more delicately in a follow-up letter in January:
The censorship problem has not improved—it may well get worse before it gets better. Today two local booksellers are being hauled before a grand jury right here in New York. We have our fingers crossed. …
A trial in Chicago has been going on for three weeks and one in Los Angles for almost as long. Only a suicidal maniac would plunge in with Naked Lunch at this moment—at least that is the opinion of everyone I have talked to, including Burroughs. We are not sitting on 10,000 books to spite you, believe me.
Indeed, Burroughs himself wrote me, “In any case if he [Girodias] makes any move to put Naked Lunch in the hands of another American publisher you can be sure it is done without my approval.”
One thing that finally precipitated quicker publication was the positive reception Burroughs was receiving from the literary elite. Prompted by British publisher John Calder, who was doing yeoman work to get Burroughs known and accepted, William had been invited, along with Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, and Mary McCarthy, to appear at the Edinburgh International Writers’ Conference in August 1962. Not only was Burroughs well received but both Mailer and McCarthy heaped praise on his head as being a writer of genius. This, along with my lawyer Edward de Grazia’s assurance that any prosecution of Naked Lunch could be beaten, convinced me to publish the book.
So we announced publication on October 30, 1962.
The moment the book was out, we were hit by both negative reviews and a new round of censorship trials. As to the reviews, one of the most scandalous, because it libeled the author, appeared in Time magazine.90 We consulted a lawyer, John V. Long, about the case, and he wrote that w
e should seek legal recourse, since the review was wrong, “1) in falsely stating that he [Burroughs] is an ex-convict, and 2) in falsely attributing his discharge from war-time military service to self-maiming for the purpose of evasion of such service.” Long also bridled at the way the review casts doubts on the writer’s love of country, making a perhaps disingenuous argument:
Nor would his [Burroughs’s] non-conformist biography have any relevance to the amount of damages to which he would be entitled by virtue of false statements impugning his patriotism in war time. It simply does not follow that since one is or was a drug addict, he is probably unpatriotic anymore than that an unpatriotic person is likely to be a drug addict.
As for the censorship trials, we assembled expert literary witnesses, including Norman Mailer and John Ciardi. For the Boston trial, held in January 1965, we asked Burroughs himself to testify. Our lawyer Edward de Grazia prepped him with these words:
Allen [Ginsberg] thinks you might describe how this book developed from your recordings in depth what passed through your mind, your recollections, following the apromorphine treatment and how elements of “isolation” and “alienation” got involved and how even a process of adjustment to outer world was involved, etc. I would think the material can be described as originally unconscious, made conscious through your act of creating this book, etc. and others (our psychiatric witnesses) can testify that the “horror” or “obscenity” of that unconscious material is kin to that of most people. You can perhaps relate this personal creative process to your personal drug “problem.” Others may speak, as you have suggested, of “drugs” [as] the perfect American commodity. Mailer, like Ciardi, wants to talk about hell and I hope you won’t feel bad if no one talks about heaven.
Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship Page 24