Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship - Softcover

Rosset, Barney

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1944869530 ISBN 13: 9781944869533

Publisher: OR Books, 2018

Synopsis

Genet…Beckett…Burroughs…Miller…Ionesco, Oe, Duras. Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. Hubert Selby Jr. and John Rechy. The legendary film I Am Curious (Yellow). The books that assaulted the fort of propriety that was the United States in the 1950s and ’60s, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and The Tropic of Cancer. The Evergreen Review. Victorian “erotica.” The Autobiography of Malcolm X. A bombing, a sit-in, and a near-fistfight with Norman Mailer. The common thread between these disparate elements, a number of which reshaped modern culture, was Barney Rosset.

Rosset was the antidote to the trope of the “gentleman publisher” personified by other pioneering figures of the industry such as Alfred A. Knopf, Bennett Cerf and James Laughlin. If Barney saw a crowd heading one way—he looked the other. If he knew something was forbidden, he regarded it as a plus. Unsurprisingly, financial ruin, along with the highs and lows of critical reception, marked his career. But his unswerving dedication to publishing what he wanted made him one of the most influential publishers ever.

Rosset began work on his autobiography a decade before his death in 2012, and several publishers and a number of editors worked with him on the project. Now, at last, in his own words, we have a portrait of the man who reshaped how we think about language, literature—and sex. Here are the stories behind the filming of Norman Mailer’s Maidstone and Samuel Beckett’s Film; the battles with the US government over Tropic of Cancer and much else; the search for Che’s diaries; his romance with the expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, and more.

At times appalling, more often inspiring, never boring or conventional: this is Barney Rosset, uncensored.

Illustrated with black-and-white photographs; includes index

About this title

About the Author

BARNEY ROSSET was born in 1922 in Chicago to a Jewish father and an Irish Catholic mother. He bought Grove Press in 1951, and sold it to the Getty family in 1985. He died in 2012.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Some people think my chief claim to fame is having published the first book to be sold over the counter in this country with the word fuck printed on its pages in all its naked glory. Perhaps to the mainstream that's all there was to D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover―just fuck, fuck, fuck. I saw the publication of Lawrence's masterwork somewhat differently―as a major victory against ignorance and censorship.

There has been much more to my publishing career, of course, than that. I believe, more fairly, that I should be thought of as the publisher who broke the cultural barrier raised like a Berlin Wall between the public and free expression in literature, film, and drama. My determination to publish an unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley in 1954 was consistent with my long-held conviction that an author should be free to write whatever he or she pleased, and a publisher free to publish anything. I mean anything.

This relatively uncomplicated idea has gotten me into all kinds of trouble with the authorities. The resultant battles have eaten up great chunks of my time and energy, not to mention money, and enriched a whole generation of attorneys. But we broke the back of censorship. I think this is a good time to tell the story of my life―as a man and as a publisher. I will try to explain what shaped me as a crusader against the anti-obscenity laws, and why very early in my life I believed them to be an outrageous denial of freedom. But it seemed that almost nothing I did was greeted calmly and peaceably. How did I get that way? What made me into such a maverick troublemaker?

Edition details

• Publisher: OR Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1944869530
• ISBN 13: 9781944869533
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368