The Floating Bear obscenity case delayed Naked Lunch’s publication

Evidence

The First Amendment was an issue in 1961. Grove Press was preparing to publish Henry Miller’s bawdy novel Tropic of Cancer. Indeed, Floating Bear #9 appeared in June, some weeks before Grove succeeded in getting the postal ban lifted on Tropic of Cancer. Grove publisher Barney Rosset had planned to bring out Burroughs’s Naked Lunch once the Tropic of Cancer case was settled. The Floating Bear case stayed his hand until late 1962 even as it heightened Burroughs’s notoriety. — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 346

Categorization

• XREF: The timing link — a mimeo zine case reaching the same publisher — shows how tightly the avant-garde scene and commercial publishing were coupled.