Henry Miller's Novel To Face Trial Today

Although Boston newspapers have primly refused to print anything about it, Henry Miller's controversial Tropic of Cancer goes on trial in the Suffolk Superior Court this morning. The Massachusetts Attorney-General's office has indicated the book on charges of obscenity.

Publishers of the Tropic, Grove Press Inc., Plan to have a Psychiatrist, an etymologist, and Harry T. Levin, Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature, appear in the book's defense.

Since the first part of July, the book has been under a (Temporary) interlocutory ban throughout the state. On the request of Attorney-General Edward J. McCormack Jr., Superior Court Judge Don MacCaulay granted the temporary ban against selling, distributing, importing, and loaning the book anywhere in the state. The Judge called the book "obscene, indecent, and impure."