"We have come to the conclusion," said the Chicago Tribune, in an editorial about the list of bestselling books that it prints each Sunday, "that we can no longer publish this list raw. Recently and tardily, we have become aware that some of the best sellers that have appeared on our lists were sewer-written by dirty-fingered authors for dirty-minded readers. We aren't going to further this game by giving publicity to such authors and their titles." This week the Trib printed a revised list of bestsellers from which two titles had been scrubbed. The missing works: Tropic of Cancer, Henry Miller's steamy bedroom-and-gutter account of his expatriate years in France; and The Carpetbaggers, Harold Robbins' blatantly biological study of Hollywood's seams.
The Trib's self-appointed censor was Editor William D. Maxwell, 61. Recently hospitalized, Maxwell waded selectively through his paper's bestseller list, was scandalized by The Carpetbaggers and Tropic of Cancer. "I found language in there that you wouldn't hear in a men's locker room," said Maxwell, whose father was a Methodist gospel singer. He fired an order to Book Editor Robert Cromie. Henceforth, said Maxwell, the Trib's bestseller list, which is based on sales reports from bookstores, will include only books that pass Maxwell's muster.
The paper said that reader response is running heavily in favor of the move ("Thank you for a helpful change of policy. We should stem this dirty deluge"). But some of the critical mail seemed more to the point. Sample: "This new policy is something I would have expected from a country weekly but not from one of the country's 10 best newspapers."