This archive document contains both parts of this story, which ran on September 29, 1995 and October 6, 1995.
Could such a thing be possible at the University of Chicago? Had Robert Maynard Hutchins’s glorious experiment in liberal education, the home of the Manhattan Project, somehow become involved in the smut business? Now Mabley turned coy. “I’m not naming the magazine because I don’t want to be responsible for its selling out.” At that, most Daily News readers probably glanced over the tops of their papers, thought “I always knew something was wrong with that place!” and forgot the whole thing. But for anyone sufficiently interested, there was only one student literary magazine at the University of Chicago.
Ed Morin joined the magazine at the same time as Rosenthal and Kokkinen. Morin recalled that “Irving was quiet, courteous, very small, very quiet. He didn’t want to impose. He wouldn’t hurt a flea. He didn’t have what are popularly called social skills. He was really kind of fearful and helpless around people. There were times when conversation was called for and he’d just freeze up. He wouldn’t be able to talk, especially to important people.”
After the fall semester, Rosenthal had gone to Hawaii to work on his dissertation. But before leaving he’d given Ray a story he’d written, a piece introverted to the point of claustrophobia. Ray liked it though, and “An Invitation to Sleep” was published in the spring ’57 Review. The story made such a good impression on Ray that when he had to give up the editorship he appointed Rosenthal to succeed him.
Unfortunately, Chip Karmatz’s deepest mark on the Review was less positive. Part of his scheme to go national involved attracting prestigious New York advertisers. Toward that end he committed one issue to an especially large print run. At a time when circulation was never more than 3,000, advertisers were promised a reach of between 10,000 and 15,000 copies. The plan backfired. Thousands of unsold copies piled up in the basement of the Reynolds Club, as the Review plunged $7,400 into debt.
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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.
