This archive document contains both parts of this story, which ran on September 29, 1995 and October 6, 1995.
This comment had been occasioned by the group of writers the Review was now publishing, whose supercharged language, uniquely American rhythms, and starkly personal themes set them in stark contrast to the mannered and bloodless heirs to modernism that populated the pages of most literary journals at the time. Many of these writers in the Review were bound by a connection–actual, invented, or imagined–to the city of San Francisco. They were Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Michael McClure, John Wieners, Philip Lamantia, Philip Whalen, and the completely unknown William S. Burroughs–few of whom had ever been printed in so prestigious a publication. Issues in which their work appeared were the most popular and successful in the Review’s history.
He had come to the University of Chicago from San Francisco to do graduate work in psychology. His particular interest was personality theory, especially the work of Carl Rogers, then a professor at Chicago. The only writing he was doing himself was his doctoral dissertation. He and his friend Eila Kokkinen joined the magazine together. Years later neither could recall exactly what had prompted them to do so.
Rosenthal and Kokkinen (and Morin as well) started out like most other students at the Review–as associates. They sifted through manuscripts, read and commented on them; they helped with correspondence and the quarterly mailings to subscribers; they were gofers. The work was completely unromantic and there was always a lot of it. Attrition among the associates was high.
The Review played in the minor leagues of literature, and it had trouble generating enthusiasm even in its home park. Circulation didn’t extend far beyond the edge of campus, and the staff sometimes wondered if anyone on campus actually read it. The emergence of editorial ambition–one could almost call it hubris–began in earnest with F.N. “Chip” Karmatz, who presided over the Review from 1953 until 1955. Envisioning the Review as a national magazine, Karmatz went after names: Bruno Bettelheim, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, Ben Shahn, Nikos Kazantzakis. Karmatz’s issues have a bit of a ponderous, academic feel. Still, he was trying to improve the Review. And he provided a model for his successors.
Eila Kokkinen met Carroll first, and after Rosenthal returned from Hawaii in the summer of 1957 the three of them had dinner together. Not long afterward Rosenthal invited Carroll to join his staff. “I had actually left the university,” Carroll remembers, “and technically I shouldn’t have been on the staff. But I was a guest editor, which was fair according to Irving. According to the bylaws too. But I was permanent guest editor for two or three years!”
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Nevertheless, Rosenthal decided to play it safe. His plan was to publish a series of excerpts, each stronger in tone and substance than the one before. If a particular selection didn’t evoke protest, and the next was only slightly more offensive, a potential censor was likely to say, “Well look, why bother raising a stink now? We let the other stuff pass, didn’t we?” Before anyone had noticed–so the plan went–Naked Lunch would be a fait accompli. Rosenthal believed ardently that once Naked Lunch had been published in the Review, once it had been read and appreciated by the nation, American publishers would flock to Burroughs with publishing contracts and that would be the story’s happy ending.
