SOURCE: Hutchison, E. R. “The Trials and Tribulations of Cancer—.” In Tropic of Cancer, pp. 33-50. New York: Grove Press, 1968.

[In the following essay, Hutchison discusses the publishing history of Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, in the context of the American legal system's censorship of “obscene” materials against the increasing popularity of publications such as Playboy magazine and changing attitudes about sex. The author argues that the first American publication of Miller's novel in 1961, along with the ensuing trial about its obscenity, was carefully planned by Barney Rosset of Grove Press, who fiercely opposed censorship.]

What happened to Tropic of Cancer had broader significance, of course, than the impact upon Grove Press of Henry Miller. With the American publication of Cancer, a new and critical phase in the continuing struggle over freedom of expression in literature began.

From the very beginning, in Paris in the 1930's, Cancer was in trouble. When Obelisk publisher Jack Kahane first read the manuscript at his country home in France, he was deeply stirred. This Englishman, publisher of salacious novels as well as books of noted authors, said this of Cancer: “At last! … I had read the most terrible, the most sordid, the most magnificent manuscript that had ever fallen into my hands; nothing I had yet received was comparable to it for the splendour of its writing, the fathomless depth of its despair, the savour of its portraiture, the boisterousness of its humour. … I was exalted by the triumphant sensation of all explorers who have at last fallen upon the object of their years of search. I had in my hands a work of genius and it had been offered to me for publication.” After this emotional outburst, however, and after signing a contract with Miller, Kahane waited two years before he published the book, in English, in Paris. Then he had to have a guarantee against financial loss from Anaïs Nin.

Kahane took every precaution to keep Cancer's publication shrouded in secrecy. He placed an almost prohibitive price of fifty francs on the novel. An instructive leaflet to Paris bookstores cautioned, Ce volume ne doit pas etré exposé en vitrine. (“This volume must not be displayed in the window.”) But soon after publication stray copies reached England and the United States—and Cancer was promptly banned in both countries. Almost by word-of-mouth recommendations alone, Cancer went into its fifth Paris edition before World War II and was translated into three languages. Unscrupulous publishers brought out pirated editions in such places as Vienna, Budapest, Amsterdam, and Shanghai. Miller never received any royalties on these sales.

Through the years, Europeans were amazed at the number of Americans unaware of Miller and his prose, and the impact of his books on their country and the world. But the literati knew and read Miller's works. And American GI's in Paris bought the book and surreptitiously brought it through customs when they came home.

In 1948, Ernest J. Besig thought the book-legging had gone far enough. He tried importing the two Tropics into the United States openly through San Francisco customs and was stopped. Federal Judge Louis E. Godman, upholding the ban, said that he was protecting “the dignity of the human person and the stability of the family unit, which are the cornerstone of our system of society.” Ten years later a critic commented that one of the intellectual disgraces of the English-speaking world was the fact that Cancer still could not circulate legally in the United States and England.¹ But, as the Supreme Court decisions through these years suggest, times were changing, and the social milieu by 1961 seemed open enough for the publication of Cancer.

For example, in 1960 Publishers Weekly reported that the hard-core pornography line

enunciated a number of times by the U.S. courts and especially by the U.S. Supreme Court in the past several years … now seems to be filtering down through the hierarchy of government and finding a certain acceptance among jurists and legislators at state and municipal levels.²

The free circulation of Lady Chatterley's Lover, banned in the United States since 1928, was symptomatic of a new pro-freedom-to-read atmosphere. Critics such as Alfred Kazin and Malcolm Cowley were struck by the literary trends and the public's acceptance of them. Observers of the sexual mores of the country, with the backing of the Kinsey reports (circulating freely in the country as best-sellers), were speaking of the American sexual revolution.³ Writing in 1954, Lockhart and McClure observed that it was common knowledge that in recent years there had been wide distribution and sale of books and other publications dealing with many aspects of sex “from a great many points of view—psychology, sociology, anthropology, education, birth control, marital relations, sex instruction, and sex techniques.”⁴

One measure of what was happening is given by the success of Playboy magazine, with its formula of racy jokes and foldout nude pictures. Playboy editor Hugh Hefner solicited only prestige advertisers and printed quality fiction and non-fiction along with the risqué, so that his audience included a sizable number of serious and sophisticated readers. Starting in 1953 with an initial press run of 70,000, Playboy circulation jumped to 175,000 in 1954 and to 350,000 in 1955. By August 1964 it had reached 2,489,000, and by March 1965 it had attained three million circulation. Playboy Key Clubs sprang up all over the nation, so that persons could do in private what the advertising and entertainment industries and the Miss America pageants were doing in public—pay tribute to the female body.

A girl who had posed nude for calendar pictures became the American sex symbol, and the calendars that Marilyn Monroe had graced became collectors' items. Even during the three-year censorship uproar caused by the publication of Cancer, another kind of woman became something of a symbol of sexual freedom. Offering such advice as, I consider it “complete lunacy” not to have “slept with the man you're going to marry,” Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl not only was not banned, it became a best-seller and was made into a movie.

Such free-wheeling sex thinking was not unopposed, naturally, and other developments too brought out censorship forces that did not augur well for Grove Press's latest publishing venture.

Four congressional committees investigated “dirty” literature in the 1950's. During one of these investigations Senator Estes Kefauver reported 50,000 complaints of solicitations for pornography mailed to juveniles in 1958. In 1959 this figure increased to 700,000. In the year of Cancer's publication, New York Postmaster Robert K. Christenberry reported that the mailing of pornographic films, magazines, books and circulars had increased nationally 300 to 600 per cent in 1960.

Simultaneously with the growing freedom-to-read, a discernible trend in book censorship had also been developing since World War II:

The unsettled state of the world, the rise in juvenile delinquency, and a general feeling that moral standards have been relaxed, led to a search for a cause for the current state of anxiety. Many felt that so-called “bad books,” particularly those read by young people, were the reason for social upset.

Book censorship occurred before World War II. But the distinguishing difference is that while the major pressures in the pre-World War II period came from government attempts to ban books and other printed matter, during the last twenty years the heaviest pressure has come from private censorship bodies. These groups have by economic pressures or other intimidatory action sought to remove what they regard as offensive books from circulation.⁵

Publishers Weekly also commented on the American scene that Cancer was to disrupt so soon, and what that authoritative journal reported was disquieting:

In 1960, trade books on retail sale generally enjoyed a greater freedom from official censorship than at any other time in recent years. But while official censorship attitudes and practices were liberalized on the whole, extra-legal censorship pressures increased. And while publishers and their retail and wholesale distributors bore less of the direct brunt of censorship than in some previous years, the pressures of book censorship were intensified on the schools.⁶

For five consecutive years starting with 1958, textbooks in the schools were banned and burned, stripped of many passages that would have enlightened students, and assailed again and again as subversive documents undermining our children's faith in their nation. Textbooks came under fire in nearly a third of the state legislatures from New England to California and from Wisconsin to Texas.⁷

Although one major citizen's censorship group was waning by 1960—the National Organization for Decent Literature with its lists of proscribed publications—the Citizens for Decent Literature had stepped into the vacuum. A sharp increase in the practice of abruptly prosecuting news dealers on criminal charges without forewarning resulted. CDL

carefully avoids the much-criticized practices of the NODL. CDL counsels against telling any dealer what not to sell. Instead, CDL stirs up public agitation against magazines thought to be obscene, and encourages and assists law enforcement officials in the prosecution of obscenity cases.⁸

The founder of the CDL, Clarence Keating, in May 1960 wrote in these intemperate terms:

The case for the substantial majority of the American people … is seldom heard due to the control of most areas of mass communication by a vociferous minority whose position is not only opposed to the basic Judeo-Christian morality of the Nation … but actually seems to violently advocate its overthrow.⁹

Stating the censorship forces' case in another way, while still assaulting the press, a more astute procensorship scholar, Terence J. Murphy, notes:

Only in recent years has public opposition to legislative proposals to control obscenity appeared. The new critics are, for the most part, spokesmen of the communication industries, and the American Civil Liberties Union and its followers. These same groups, unsuccessful in the legislative chambers, have frequently transferred the conflict from the legislative to the judicial arena. They have generally been more successful with the courts than with the lawmakers. Thus the line has come to be drawn with the legislatures and civic groups on one side and the courts with the American Civil Liberties Union, other libertarians, and the communication industries on the other side.¹⁰

Into this arena of libertarians versus censors, Tropic of Cancer plunged. The publication was not happenstance, but a venture long planned by a book publisher who was also an opponent of censorship. American book-publishing history reveals that these two roles are seldom combined.

Our dark era in book publishing came in 1870 and lasted to 1915. Most book publishing is centered in New York, and during this period manuscripts were submitted to Anthony Comstock or the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice for their approval. Publishers began fighting this kind of censorship in 1915, but in the late thirties they once again grew timid, preferring the background to the battleground. As they do today. What results from such an approach? Timidity naturally encourages the censorious. Morris Ernst and Alan Schwartz write:

More important, it helps produce unconsidered laws on censorship. A street-corner newsstand owner does not make enough profit on the sale of any magazine to warrant the expense of a court defense. It is cheaper to plead guilty. … No wonder vice hunters and police usually level their guns, not at the wealthier publisher who selects the manuscript (and who is usually responsible for its publication), but at relatively impecunious retailers who order a few copies, often as samples, and usually on consignment.

In historic terms, perhaps these publishers do not deserve the richness of our freedom of the press. Perhaps freedom of speech and press should belong only to those who dig their heels into the ground and say: “This is my own imprint. I and I alone shall defend it. I do not choose to hide behind the bookseller or the newsstand dealer.”¹¹

“Publishers,” ACLU's Reitman adds, “are not always the most courageous people, particularly when their economic interests are concerned.”¹²

But it is expensive to defend all lawsuits on a book and fight a case all the way to the Supreme Court, and publishers today cannot be utterly condemned for personally evasive actions. As Ernst and Schwartz point out, however,

we can at least deplore the failure of those interested in the free dissemination of all literature (perhaps subject only to judicial censorship) from establishing a climate of opinion strong enough to counterbalance the activity of the censorious private pressure groups. True, there have been some, but they are too few and their voices weak.¹³

Jason Epstein, a vice-president of Random House, recently chided his publishing colleagues for not seeking out obscure polemicists with radical proposals to make, for not establishing that “climate of opinion” Ernst and Schwartz mentioned. Publishers, he said, are not bold spirits.

Indeed, they have been so remiss in this respect as to have helped create the impression that such writers should expect as a matter of course not to see their work in print at all—at least not for quite a while. Over the years the cumulative effect of this attitude may conceivably have been to discourage almost everyone but the genuinely insane from trying to say what he may in his heart have wanted to say, and to turn whatever his talents and virtues may have been to silence or into the kind of product with which publishers are accustomed to deal.¹⁴

Not only has the effect been upon writers, Epstein suggests:

I notice these days a certain despair among my colleagues in the publishing business, more conscious in the wiser ones, but still enough to trouble those who are not so sensitive to their predicament. The joy seems to have gone out of their work and, while the industry thrives and everyone seems to be making money, almost everyone sooner or later gets around to the drudgery and boredom of it all. Everywhere I seem to hear (and it is not just my own echo) that it is not what it used to be in the book business; that everything has grown too complicated; that the simple pleasure one once could take in publishing a worthwhile book comes less often now and is soon engulfed in all the effort one spends just to keep the business going.

I wonder if the reason for this may not be that … we all know … what we should be doing—because we are still free to do it—but that none of us is really doing it at all. Perhaps we have even become at last like our cousins on the big magazines or on television or in the universities—frozen in the system and powerless, like them, to do anything about it.¹⁵

There was one book publisher that Jason Epstein surely was not referring to—Barney Rosset of Grove Press, publisher of Cancer.

Rosset acquired Grove Press for ＄3,000 in 1952. From the then expiring company's inventory of three titles he built Grove Press into a thriving, reputable avant-garde publishing house. He introduced the American public to such authors as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Brendan Behan, Shelagh Delaney, Eugène Ionesco, Alain Robbe-Grillet and William Burroughs. Older, established authors' works were also published by Grove Press—books by Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and Henry James. Steadily increasing the number of titles published (fifty in 1958; sixty-one in 1959; ninety-four in 1960), Rosset and Grove Press by 1961—the year of the publication of Cancer—had published approximately five hundred books. Grove's best-sellers in 1961 were all plays which appeared on and off Broadway in the fall: The Apple, by Jack Gelber, The Caretaker, by Harold Pinter, and Happy Days, by Beckett. Grove Press titles included fiction and nonfiction, hardcover and softcover—novels, poetry, plays, and works on science, history, criticism, art, and music. Original titles were published in quality paperbacks. And in 1957 Rosset founded the avant-garde literary magazine, Evergreen Review—1967 circulation, well over 100,000.¹⁶

Perhaps Grove's and Rosset's most significant contribution to the publishing world and the American literary scene, however, is their contribution to freedom of expression. As Henry Heifetz pointed out in 1964:

The last five years have seen immense changes in the criteria of both legality and respectability applied to writing which handles sex. Grove Press, which swept into the big time on the first waves of the Beat Generation, and its lawyer, Ephraim London, have played an important role—through the Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tropic of Cancer court fights—in turning the legal tide against censorship.¹⁷

“Rosset is a remarkable man,” wrote Chicago lawyer Elmer Gertz. “He has made more contributions to the cause of literary freedom than any other publisher of our day.”¹⁸ ACLU believes Grove Press serves an important civil liberties function by challenging efforts to censor the books they publish.¹⁹ Perhaps the greatest tribute comes from the book industry itself, in an article in the March 1962 issue of Paperback Trade News, “Grove Press: Little Giant of Publishing.”²⁰

Barney Rosset's goal as a publisher, the article points out, is: “To do things which stimulate people, to help them see new things, to broaden and irritate them, to give them pleasure and always to keep probing.” There is only one way to be a publisher, Rosset declares: “If you feel a book has literary merit you publish it. If you get arrested in the process you fight it.” In a free society, there is nothing that an adult should not see. To withhold questionable material from adults is dangerous. And as for censorship, Rosset believes the ultimate responsibility lies with the parent.

Rosset believes that American publishers have not distinguished themselves by their daring in the twentieth century. “It is inexplicable to me,” he wrote, “why Lady Chatterley's Lover was not published many years before we published it in this country. And the same holds true for Tropic of Cancer.”

Rosset's reasons for publishing Lady Chatterley's Lover and Tropic of Cancer are quite simple. In a letter to M. Henri Filipacchi, a French publishing figure, he wrote: “I am personally anxious to publish the books [Cancer and Capricorn], both because I have always admired them, and because I have started with Lady Chatterley a battle against censorship which I would like to carry on.”²¹ But Rosset's commitment to Cancer should be commented upon. One author writing about why a book sells said:

Nearly every best-seller, classic or claptrap, shares one quality—it has called forth commitment from those interested in its publication. Commitment, by the author, the publisher, or a third agency (the early readers, perhaps, or someone else passionately devoted to its cause), is what sells most books.

Commitment somehow manages to make itself felt, to give a book an aura. Commitment can enhance an author's reputation or transcend his talent. It can overcome all ordinary resistance—terrible reviews, the house's previous bad luck with similar titles, or the timing, or the competition.²²

Grove publisher Barney Rosset had just such a commitment for Tropic of Cancer. He had become interested in the novel when, as an undergraduate at Swarthmore, he wrote a paper on Henry Miller for an American literature course. (Entitled “Henry Miller Versus ‘Our Way of Life,’” it received a B-minus.) His belief in the book as a literary masterpiece, and his basic antipathy to censorship, led to Rosset's first attempts to publish it after winning the Lady Chatterley case. But Henry Miller was surprisingly reluctant to agree to the publishing venture. It took three years of persistent wooing before Miller capitulated.

A key figure in the whole affair was Maurice Girodias, then publisher of Olympia Press in Paris. Rosset describes Girodias' role:

Maurice Girodias' part in the publication by Grove Press of Henry Miller's Tropics was very important. He personally introduced me to Mr. Miller; he argued on my behalf with Mr. Miller to allow me to be the publisher of the books; and in various ways he was a vital force in the whole project. All of this recent assistance was, as you know, of course, preceded by the long history of Maurice Girodias and his father [Jack Kahane] having published Henry Miller's work. This naturally put Mr. Girodias in a key position to be an influence upon Mr. Miller's arrival at a decision about American publication.²³

Girodias first wrote to Rosset from Paris in March 1959. Girodias told Rosset he was writing because of a letter he had received from Henry Miller. Cancer had been allowed through Customs for serious study by a professor. What a pity, Miller wrote, that Girodias no longer had the rights to Cancer. Girodias then told Rosset how he had lost the rights of Cancer to the Parisian publishing house of Hachette through what he referred to as sharp business practices, and outlined the strategy Rosset should follow to obtain Cancer publication rights—down to dealing with M. Henri Filipacchi's vanity: treat Filipacchi “just as if he were the top man at Hachette's,” even though he isn't. Girodias assured Rosset that Filipacchi was “awfully vain,” and that the “rights” decision rested essentially with him. Writing “to him directly (which the other publishers won't think of doing) will give you an initial advantage.” Girodias warned Rosset not to mention him to Filipacchi because “he hates me.” Rosset was also directed to write Henry Miller and his agent, Michael Hoffman. “The deal will probably have to go through Hoffman as well, and Miller will consult him in any case.” The Customs incident, Girodias remarked, “shows that there is an emphatic change in the situation.” In only a few years or months, he predicted, there would probably be publication possibilities for Cancer in America. More detailed instructions then followed:

It must be an impressive offer; if I were you, I would offer a ＄10,000 advance, payable half upon signature, half upon publication or at latest one year after the contract has been signed. If you think you can offer more, all the better: you will not lose money on that in any case. The royalty could be 10, 12[frac12] and 15 per cent for the first 10,000, the next 10,000, and above, respectively (they may ask for more, but it gives you bargaining possibilities; and they will be more impressed by the size of the advance than by the actual rate of royalties).

Up to now, Miller has been firmly opposed to expurgation. But … explain to him that you want to follow that procedure in order to ward off trouble during the transitional period.

Rosset was to tell Miller that the unexpurgated edition would follow later—Miller no doubt would agree to this.

None of this scheme, however, was to be mentioned to Filipacchi. Tell him, Girodias urged, that you'll risk immediate publication, which no other publisher will do. Insist on the United States and open market rights for other countries, except the United Kingdom. “Thus I will be able to distribute for you in France, and symbolically recover my lost property.”

Rosset must have written to Miller immediately, because on April 3, 1959, Miller replied to him from Big Sur. “Whether you or New Directions do Cancer,” Miller wrote Rosset, “one thing is certain. I will never agree to any cuts or modifications of the text. Not if I were offered ten times as much. For America I will never make any concessions.” And the very next day Miller added:

I think any attempt to publish these books [Tropics] here is still premature, but I shall see what my agent, Dr. Hoffman, has to say … [but] even if the Treasury Department were to lift the ban on these books of mine, which they have not done! the question of publication and circulation here in America is another matter entirely. Before any move here is made, it would be important to know what might be the attitude of our Postmaster General.

By contract, Miller wrote, New Directions Publishing Corporation had first chance to publish the books.

Rosset assured Miller that there had been no trouble with Lady Chatterley's Lover, and that

The publication of Lolita was another big step forward and I think that the time may well have arrived when we can publish another great book, namely Tropic of Cancer.

We would most strongly advise against attempting to get any opinion from the Postmaster General or any local authorities. We have found that that can only create problems where perhaps none exist. We believe that we are as competent as anybody to act in this field. I believe that our legal advice is of the highest quality and the most aggressive in fighting for freedom of the Press. I assure you that if we decide to go ahead with Tropic of Cancer—with your permission—we will endeavor to do it in a highly competent and organized manner.²⁴

The publishing of Lady Chatterley, Miller retorted,

is, of course, a big step forward. But how slowly everything proceeds. The Cancer will be 25 years old this September. Soon I will be dead. I've lived so long without my rightful earnings I'm used to it now. One has to die first, if you notice, before the ball gets rolling. …

My own view is that it may take another fifty to a hundred years before these banned books of mine can circulate freely in this country. But I may be wrong.²⁵

Relenting on his nonexpurgation vow, Miller added:

What I sometimes think is that the way to start the ball rolling is to bring out Cancer, let's say, with all the censorable words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs deleted. That's what Girodias did with the French version of Sexus.

The unexpurgated editions of Sexus, Miller added, were given to the reviewers. Rosset said that it might be wise to do some censoring but that he would really rather consider that matter at the last moment. Actually, he was strongly against any expurgation at all.

Warning Miller of possible piracy in America, Rosset said:

The Tropics are susceptible to piracy and I think a contract with me—or New Directions, or somebody else—for American publication, would strengthen your grip on your own work.²⁶

But Miller, for his own personal reasons, balked:

Wait and see what happens with Chatterley. If the prospects (later) seem favorable [we'll go ahead].

Frankly, I am beginning to doubt that I ever want to see an American edition of these banned books. The notoriety, the unpleasantness involved, seem hardly worth the price. I have always felt deep down that no great change can be expected in America—either on the part of our legislators or our judges. As for the public—it is indifferent, it seems to me. The vast majority, I mean. I am in no hurry to make myself a scapegoat for what seems like a lost cause.²⁷

Again Rosset tried to reassure Miller:

I must say that I very much disagree with your idea that there would be notoriety and unpleasantness involved … all has been extremely pleasant thus far. Perhaps if the United States Post Office had not banned Lady Chatterley from the mails, we would not have known how strongly in our favor the press of the United States is. Literally, tens of editorials have appeared day by day in papers of cities and towns in the north, south, east and west. In addition to that, we have been deluged with favorable letters from throughout the country. Thus, I cannot say that the public is indifferent—quite to the contrary, it seems extremely involved in the matter of censorship. I am absolutely convinced that you would not in any way be made a scapegoat. I also feel quite positive that no lost cause is involved.²⁸

Rosset's estimation of the country's censorship climate is interesting. No doubt he was sincere in his assurances to Miller that not much furor would be raised with the Cancer publication.

Rosset urged Miller not to “wait and see” what happens to Lady Chatterley as James Laughlin of New Directions had earlier advised. “That,” said Rosset, “does not strike me as being a particularly courageous” attitude. Rosset offered Miller ＄2,500 as an immediate advance against future royalties of the Tropics. The stipulation was that if the two books were published in the country during the next four years, Grove Press would be the company to do it. If Miller did not grant permission to publish in the next four years, he could still keep the ＄2,500. If he did grant permission, a total advance of ＄10,000 would be paid against royalties to be earned by the Tropics.

Miller answered one month later refusing permission to publish Cancer: “I am still of the opinion that the Chatterley decision, like the Ulysses, is an exceptional one, and would have no bearing on the treatment accorded my works.”²⁹ Rosset replied:

I definitely do not agree with you in your feeling that the Lady Chatterley decision was an exceptional one. I think that it will set future standards, just as the Ulysses decision did. We believe that the Ulysses decision directly led to the Lady Chatterley decision.

I therefore think that your books could be published here and that any court fight which came up would be won by the publisher.³⁰

Rosset, having been “outbid or outmaneuvered” on another best-seller earlier (Lolita), was working on all fronts to corral the Tropics for Grove Press. He wrote to Hachette's Filipacchi on August 29, 1959, discussing his problems. Miller was holding back, Rosset felt, for these reasons:

a) He says he is not very much interested in profit he may derive from the publication of his books in America. b) He says he does not like the idea of the publicity which will follow the publication of the Tropics. c) He says that he has a moral obligation towards New Directions to give them preference (but New Directions never offered to publish the Tropics, and may never do so). d) Finally, I feel that he has gotten accustomed to his status of “literary outcast” and has some difficulty adjusting himself to the idea of becoming an entirely legitimate “great American writer.”³¹

Miller's reluctance to sign the contract, Rosset wrote, might also stem from his agent's feeling that Hachette's share on the American rights was too high. Rosset advised getting together with Hachette and Miller so that he could modify his proposal.

Rosset kept on with the job of convincing Miller. He visited him in Big Sur, with no success. He wrote once again about the piracy possibilities (having just been pirated himself on Lady Chatterley). Just as Ulysses had been pirated, Cancer, he wrote, could also be. He suggested ＄10,000 for an option on the Tropics with a guarantee of ＄50,000. “I believe,” he wrote, that while

it is impossible to prevent pirated editions to be published on the strength of the existing copyright laws, I could attempt to prevent publication on the grounds of unfair competition if I could prove that I had a substantial interest in the matter; having paid ＄10,000 for an option on the publication rights would probably be considered as a sufficient interest to justify the court ruling in our favor.³²

In the agreement would be a stipulation that if one of the books were pirated, Grove Press would immediately be able to publish. The contract meanwhile would be signed when Miller decided that the books should appear, “whether it be in six months or ten years.”

Two days later, Miller, weakening, dramatically inquired: “There are drastic changes in my life which I'd like to make right now. Travel is only one of them. I'm assuming that if you offer fifty thousand as a guarantee it implies earnings running much higher, no?”³³

The next month Miller notified Rosset that New Directions had released the rights to the Tropics. When I asked Rosset why New Directions had released the Tropics instead of publishing them themselves, he was unable to tell me: “They had ample opportunity to do so. I even offered to be their partner. In the end, they released all rights to the books in a most gentlemanly fashion.” Years earlier, however, Miller had publicly condemned James Laughlin of New Directions for refusing to publish his banned books. In “Another Open Letter” he bitterly wrote:

About 1938 or '39 James Laughlin IV of New Directions began to make it known that he would bring out in unexpurgated form an American edition of the books published by the Obelisk Press, Paris. To date nothing of the kind has happened. A great many people think him to be my champion and benefactor. Nothing could be further from the truth.³⁴

In the same letter informing Rosset of New Directions' release of the book rights, Miller asked him to write his friend Huntington Cairns, director of the National Gallery of Art, for an opinion. Rosset asked Cairns, who is often consulted by the Customs Bureau on questions of obscenity, to give a private opinion on the chances of winning a case if Cancer should go to court:

We have been pestering Henry Miller to make a contract with us for publication of Tropic of Cancer in this country. Naturally he is worried about possible censorship problems and, although I feel that problem is basically ours, I am writing you as per his request.³⁵

Cairns' reply came two weeks later. “I would like to oblige Henry,” Cairns wrote, “but I feel that in view of my official connection with the Government I should not venture an opinion.”³⁶

That was a strange answer for Cairns to give Rosset, for five years later, on January 25, 1965, he wrote to me:

When the Tropic of Cancer was first submitted to me I advised the Bureau that as the law then stood it was a prohibited importation within the meaning of Section 305 of the Tariff Act of 1930. After the Roth and related cases I advised the Bureau that in my opinion the book was no longer prohibited.

Certainly he could have told Rosset what he freely told me.

When I asked Rosset about Cairns' reticence, he offered this acid explanation:

Cairns is very elusive. It seems (and “seems” is all I can say) to me that he sort of clung to censorship where the “people” were concerned but felt it all right for him and a few others to read books like those of Miller—and even to be friendly with such authors. Maybe this explains why he could not advise us.³⁷

Rosset continued writing persuasively to Miller:

As far as censorship problems are concerned—of course there can be some legal mishmash. We are ready to cope with it, that's all. Nobody can be sure of what might eventuate, but I am not worried about it and the trouble will fall on us—when and if it develops. It is perfectly possible to have local irritations—there's always some ladies' club to cry out.³⁸

Although there is little more in the Grove Press files about the signing of the Tropics contract, other sources contribute further information on the subject. Miller left for Europe in April 1960, and in May he told one British journalist:

There's no chance that these books will ever come out in America, or in England. I have had offers from publishers who think they can now get away with it and who want to bring out the books unexpurgated, but I've turned all their offers down.

I'm a marked man: they would seize on me. In England the men who matter are solidly against me. They think I'm a sort of idiot or freak.

So what do I live on? I live on money. At the age of 68 I'm finally getting some royalties, the bulk of it from Europe.³⁹

Then, while Miller was visiting a friend in Germany, his agent Michael Hoffman wrote to Rosset a few months later to say that Miller had changed his mind. Rosset discusses this in a taped interview:

What finally made Henry Miller change his mind about publishing Cancer? I don't know. All I know is that I tried my best over a period of time to get Miller to allow me to do Tropic of Cancer. It's very complex. He actually was in Hamburg, Germany, when he made the decision. He was there with a very close friend, Henry Ledig-Rowohlt, a distinguished German publisher who had published Miller books over a period of many years, and who may well have been the crucial influence in Miller's decision to permit publication.

I flew to Hamburg, where Henry signed the contract.

In a press release of April 25, 1961, Grove Press announced the signing of a ＄50,000-minimum contract with Henry Miller for the publication of Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer.

Notes

1. Thomas Parkinson, “The Hilarity of Henry Miller,” The Listener, LIX (June 19, 1958), 1021. For a partial chronology on the publication of Cancer around the world, see the bibliography.

2. “Censorship Issues, Legal and Otherwise,” Publishers' Weekly, CLXXIX (Jan. 16, 1961), 83.

3. Pitirim Sorokin, The American Sex Revolution (Boston, 1956), p. 19; Leslie Fiedler, Waiting for the End (New York, 1964), p. 160; David Fellman, The Limits of Freedom (New Brunswick, N.J., 1959), p. 81; Eric Larrabee, “The Cultural Context of Sex Censorship,” Law and Contemporary Problems, XX (Autumn, 1955), 684.

4. William B. Lockhart and Robert C. McClure, “Literature, The Law of Obscenity, and the Constitution,” Minnesota Law Review, XXXVIII (March, 1954), 361.

5. Alan Reitman of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a letter to me, Oct. 9, 1964. Robert B. Downs ed., The First Freedom: Liberty and Justice in the World of Books (Chicago, 1960), p. xiii, speaks of these groups. As Time does, later: “The New Pornography,” Time, LXXXVIII (April 16, 1965), 28-9. See also Peter Jennison, “Freedom to Read.” Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 344 (New York, 1963), p. 6. See Larrabee too, p. 680.

6. “Censorship Issues, Legal and Otherwise,” p. 83.

7. See Jack Nelson and Gene Roberts, Jr., The Censors and the Schools (Boston and Toronto, 1963), p. 20, for a fuller account. And the book itself for the role the DAR plays in this area, and America's Future, Inc.

8. William B. Lockhart and Robert C. McClure, “Censorship of Obscenity: The Developing Constitutional Standards,” Minnesota Law Review, XLV (November, 1960), 9.

9. Emphasis added. Cited by Jennison, p. 14.

10. Terence J. Murphy, Censorship: Government and Obscenity (Baltimore, 1963), p. 100. Emphasis added.

11. Morris L. Ernst and Alan U. Schwartz, Censorship: The Search for the Obscene (New York and London, 1964), pp. 114-15. Hereafter, Censorship.

12. Reitman letter to me, Oct. 9, 1964.

13. Censorship, p. 241.

14. Jason Epstein, “A Criticism of Commercial Publishing,” Daedalus, XCII (Winter, 1963), 66. Emphasis added.

15. Ibid., p. 67.

16. For an account of an unconstitutional seizure of it, see “About Evergreen Review No. 32,” Evergreen Review, VIII (August-September, 1964), 32.

17. Henry Heifetz, “The Anti-Social Act of Writing,” Studies on the Left, IV (Spring, 1964), 5.

18. Elmer Gertz letter to me, Feb. 16, 1965. Agreeing is Karl Shapiro, in an interview Nov. 13, 1964, University of Wisconsin. For more praise, see Peter Revell, “Propaganda and Pornography,” Library Journal, LXXXVIII (Oct. 1, 1963), 3562.

19. Reitman letter to me, Oct. 9, 1964.

20. See, too, Censorship, p. 241; Toronto Daily Star, Oct. 17, 1962; and Trumbull Huntington, “Censorship: A Bookseller's View,” Publishers' Weekly, CLXXXV (March 2, 1964), 57-8, for similar praise.

21. Rosset letter to Filipacchi, Aug. 26, 1959. All letters cited here are either in the Grove Press files at Syracuse University, or, if addressed to me, in my files. Unless otherwise stated, all are unpublished.

22. Samuel S. Vaughan, “Why a Book Sells Is Not as Much a Mystery as It Seems,” New York Times Book Review, Feb. 25, 1962, p. 4.

23. Rosset letter to Guy Schoeller. Date unknown. A carbon copy was examined.

24. April 6, 1959. Emphasis added.

25. April 9, 1959.

26. May 18, 1959.

27. July 4, 1959. Emphasis added. Later, the Economist reported that Miller held back for the same reasons, in “Storm Over the ‘Tropics.’” Economist, CC (July 1, 1961), 390:

    “‘I don't want to be the central figure in a great controversy about my books. I don't want to take time from my writing to be interviewed on the radio and television or for the newspapers. Besides, the people whose opinion I most care about have read the books and I am not interested in those who want to buy them just to look at what they think are dirty words. …’

    “[Miller] is a very shy man. … Miller has always tried hard to maintain a certain measure of isolation from the world at large.”

28. Rosset letter to Miller, July 8, 1959. Emphasis added.

29. Aug. 5, 1959.

30. Rosset letter to Miller, Aug. 11, 1959.

31. Rosset letter to Filipacchi, Aug. 26, 1959. Emphasis added.

32. Jan. 18, 1960.

33. Miller letter to Rosset, Jan. 20, 1960. The “drastic changes” probably involved divorce. One year later Newsweek reported that Miller's wife was divorcing him for desertion in California while he “was traipsing around Europe, vainly looking for a place to settle down.” “Tropic Storm,” Newsweek, LVII (June 19, 1961), 33.

34. Henry Miller, “Another Open Letter,” New Republic, CIX (Dec. 6, 1943), 813.

35. Feb. 11, 1960.

36. Feb. 24, 1960.

37. Feb. 3, 1965.

38. Feb. 11, 1960.

39. Robert Muller, Daily Mail (London, Eng.), May 13, 1960.