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The year 1961 saw a reversal-perhaps only temporary-of the trend toward freedom from censorship of printed materials. It had seemed in the late fifties that the trend was becoming well established. In particular, the U.S. Supreme Court had said that censorship may be practiced only very narrowly-i.e., only on "hardcore" pornography.

This happy state of affairs went out the window, however, with the many cases decided against Henry Miller's 27-year-old novel Tropic of Cancer, the latest being in Los Angeles where the book is now banned and a book dealer convicted of selling pornography. While the reversal, in a narrow sense, was limited to one book, its implications are much broader. On the Federal level, Tropic had received favorable decisions. But despite this the book has been effectively banned in many portions of the U.S. Irrational, and quite possibly unconstitutional, as the large number of local Tropic bans are, they leave the reading public with little choice for themselves, and place a tremendous burden upon the publishers. A publisher with a book as "controversial" as Tropic might, in the future, decline to issue it, rather than run the innumerable local police gauntlets. Book dealers may surely feel the same way and not sell it. Not so J. D. Mercer, however, who has the distinction

one

by del mcintire

of being probably the only man to peddle Tropic in the very courtroom where the book was being tried for obscenity.

PORTLY PORNOGRAPHER

On Jan. 26, 1962, J. D. (standing for nothing in particular) Mercer, author of They Walk In Shadow, and currently unbusinesslike bookseller in San Francisco, steamrollered his way to contact Atty. Mark V. Tumbleson who was representing Bradley Smith, defendant, in the "Tropic of Cancer'' trial in Judge Holaday's Los Angeles Municipal Court. He arrived shortly after the noon recess, too late to see Tumbleson, and so spent the noon hour in the Press room handing out sworn affidavits to the several newspapers to the effect that he was the owner of the Cosmo Book Sales and had sold in excess of 6,000 copies of the book by mail, partially as a result of an ad accepted and run in the L.A. Times. Over 1,350 of Mercer's sales were to L.A. County residents. It seemed ridiculous to Mercer for L.A. to penalize a local bookseller for selling that which is so easily available via the U.S. mails.

At 1:40 P.M. Mercer returned to the locale of the court room and found that KABC-TV had set up a camera and sound equipment just outside the court room door. He volunteered to read pertinent pas-