by Loren Glass
34. Barney Rosset to Samuel Beckett, 18 June 1953, GPR.
35. Samuel Beckett to Barney Rosset, 25 June 1953, in The Letters of Samuel Beckett, vol. 2, 1941–1956, ed. George Craig, Martha Dow Fehsenfeld, Dan Gunn, and Lois More Overbeck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 385.
36. Seaver, Tender Hour of Twilight, 252.
37. Paul Auster, “Editor’s Note,” in Samuel Beckett: The Grove Centenary Edition (New York: Grove Press, 2006), 1:viii.
38. Alain Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 8.
39. Georges Borchardt to Judith Schmidt, 23 April 1957, GPR.
40. Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel, 24.
41. Roland Barthes, “Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet,” in Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1965), 13.
42. “Robbe-Grillet,” Talk of the Town, New Yorker, 9 January 1965, 24.
43. Barney Rosset to Georges Borchardt, 17 April 1964, GPR.
44. Alex Szogyi, “The Art of the Philosopher and Thief,” New York Times, 29 September 1963, 303.
45. Gerard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane Lewin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 269.
46. Bernard Frechtman to Barney Rosset, 14 January 1953, GPR.
47. Ibid., 13 November 1956, GPR.
48. Donald Allen to Donald Keene, 9 February 1953, GPR.
49. Donald Keene to Donald Allen, 17 February 1953, GPR.
50. Quoted in Donald Keene to Donald Allen, 11 March 1953, GPR.
51. Donald Keene, Chronicles of My Life: An American in the Heart of Japan (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 31.
52. Donald Keene, ed., Modern Japanese Literature (New York: Grove Press, 1956), 8.
53. Ibid., 13.
54. Ibid., 28.
55. Ibid., 14.
56. Glen Baxter, Review of Anthology of Japanese Literature, ed. Donald Keene, Literature East and West: The Newsletter of the Conference on Oriental-Western Literary Relations of the Modern Language Association of America 3, no. 4 (Spring 1957): 60.
57. J. L. Cranmer-Byng, “The Wisdom of the East Series,” promotional pamphlet, GPR.
58. D. T. Suzuki, “Aspects of Japanese Culture,” Evergreen Review 2, no. 6 (Autumn 1958): 40.
59. Ibid., 41.
60. Ibid.
61. Frank O’Hara, “Franz Kline Talking,” Evergreen Review 2, no. 6 (Autumn 1958): 58.
62. Ibid., 61.
63. Gary Snyder, “Cold Mountain Poems,” Evergreen Review 2, no. 6 (Autumn 1958): 69.
64. Ibid.
65. “Kenzaburo Oe,” Publishers Weekly, 3 June 1968, 55.
66. Kenzaburo Oe, A Personal Matter (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 2–3.
67. Kenzaburo Oe, answers to Grove Press publicity questionnaire, GPR.
68. Oe, A Personal Matter, 214.
69. Kenzaburo Oe, “How I Am a Japanese Writer,” n.d., 2, GPR.
70. Barney Rosset to Amos Tutuola, 13 June 1953, GPR.
71. Selden Rodman, “Tutuola’s World,” New York Times Book Review, 20 September 1953, 5.
72. Janheinz Jahn, Muntu: The New African Culture, trans. Marjorie Grene (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 11.
73. Ibid., 154.
74. Ibid., 25.
75. Janheinz Jahn, Neo-African Literature: A History of Black Writing, trans. Oliver Coburn and Ursula Lehrburger (New York: Grove Press, 1968), 16.
76. Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude, trans. Lysander Kemp (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 194. Both titles sold modestly well in Evergreen editions, with Muntu selling around fifteen thousand copies and Labyrinth of Solitude almost thirty thousand.
77. Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude, 184.
78. Octavio Paz to Barney Rosset, 9 January 1961, GPR. The spelling is Octavio Paz’s.
79. Paz, Labyrinth of Solitude, 172–73.
80. José David Saldivar, The Dialectics of Our America: Genealogy, Cultural Critique, and Literary History (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991), 20.
81. Press release, Formentor Prize, n.d., DAP.
82. Ibid.
83. Barney Rosset to Alfred Kazin, 16 December 1960, DAP.
84. Seaver, Tender Hour of Twilight, 313.
85. Quoted in Edmund Wilson, “The Vogue of the Marquis de Sade,” New Yorker, 18 October 1952), 163. According to Seaver, it had an analogous effect on Grove’s global reputation; as he says, the meeting “had hoisted us overnight to a level of international importance” (Tender Hour of Twilight, 314).
86. Anthony Kerrigan, translator’s introduction to Ficciones, by Jorge Luis Borges (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 9.
87. Ibid.
88. Jorge Luis Borges, Labyrinths, ed. Donald Yates and James Irby (New York: New Directions, 1964), 180, 184.
89. Borges, Ficciones, 15.
90. Jason Wilson, Jorge Luis Borges (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 13.
91. Ben Belitt to Donald Allen, 13 May 1952, GPR.
92. Ben Belitt, Adam’s Dream: A Preface to Translation (New York: Grove Press, 1978), 23.
93. Ibid., 79.
94. Emir Rodríguez Monegal, ed., The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, vol. 2, The Twentieth Century—from Borges and Paz to Guimaraes Rosa and Donoso (New York: Knopf, 1977), 611.
95. Ben Belitt, translator’s foreword to Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 32–33.
96. Belitt, Adam’s Dream, 10.
97. The 1966 PEN conference, the first in the United States in forty years, was also attended by Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa and was itself a benchmark in the cultural and diplomatic relations between the United States and Latin America. According to Deborah Cohn, “The conference serves as both a model and a touchstone for hemispheric American studies” (“PEN and the Sword: U.S.–Latin American Cultural Diplomacy and the 1966 PEN Club Congress,” Hemispheric American Studies [2008]: 220).
98. Belitt, Adam’s Dream, 48.
99. Ben Belitt to Barney Rosset, 6 April 1955, GPR.
100. “Contributors,” in “The Eye of Mexico,” special issue, Evergreen Review 2, no. 8 (Winter 1959): 8.
101. James Schuyler, review of Anthology of Mexican Poetry, ed. Octavio Paz, in “The Eye of Mexico,” 221.
102. Ibid.
103. S. E. Gontarski, ed., On Beckett: Essays and Criticism (New York: Grove Press, 1986), 4.
104. Octavio Paz, “Todos Santos, Dia de Muertas,” in “The Eye of Mexico,” 37.
105. Donald Allen, ed., preface to The New American Poetry (New York: Grove Press, 1960), xi.
106. Ibid., xii.
107. Rosset interview transcript, 63.
Chapter 2
1. For an excellent performance history of this play, see David Bradby, Beckett: Waiting for Godot (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
2. W. B. Worthen, Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 15.
3. Ibid., 8.
4. Antonin Artaud, The Theater and Its Double, trans. Mary Caroline Richards (New York: Grove Press, 1958), 73, 76.
5. Ibid., 60.
6. James Harding, ed., Contours of the Theatrical AvantGarde: Performance and Textuality (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000), 4.
7. Julie Stone Peters, Theatre of the Book 1480–1880: Print, Text and Performance in Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 311.
8. Wallace Fowlie, Dionysus in Paris: A Guide to Contemporary French Theater (New York: Meridian Books, 1960), 18.
9. Martin Esslin, The Theatre of the Absurd (New York: Vintage, 1961), 403.
10. Barney Rosset to Samuel Beckett, 18 June 1953, GPR.
11. Barney Rosset to Alexander Trocchi, 18 June 1953, GPR.
12. Barney Rosset to Jerome Lindon, 11 November 1953, GPR.
13. John Lahr, “The Fall and Rise of Beckett’s Bum: Bert Lahr in Godot,” Evergreen Review 13, no.
70 (September 1969): 30.
14. Barney Rosset to Samuel Beckett, 6 January 1956, GPR.
15. Samuel Beckett to Barney Rosset, 2 February 1956, in Craig et al., Letters of Samuel Beckett, 602.
16. Michael Myerberg to Samuel Beckett, 8 June 1956, GPR.
17. Barney Rosset to Dramatists Play Service, 1 November 1956, GPR.
18. Sommerville, Commerce and Culture, 294.
19. Samuel Beckett to Barney and Loly Rosset, 14 December 1953, in Craig et al., Letters of Samuel Beckett, 431.
20. “Read It before You See It,” display ad, New York Times, 4 February 1958.
21. Vivien Mercier, “How to Read Endgame,” Readers’ Subscription catalog, GPR. See also Jack Frisch, “Endgame: A Play as Poem,” Drama Survey 3 (Fall 1963): 257–63.
22. Judith Schmidt, boilerplate letter (Samuel Beckett), GPR.
23. Jules Geller to Donald Allen, 10 October 1967, DAP.
24. Ruby Cohn, ed., Casebook on “Waiting for Godot” (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 7.
25. Barney Rosset to Claude Gallimard, 19 May 1958, GPR.
26. Ibid., 25 May 1962, GPR.
27. Richard Coe, Eugene Ionesco (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 43.
28. Grove promotional flyer, The Bald Soprano, n.d., GPR.
29. Grove press release, The Bald Soprano, n.d., GPR.
30. Fred Jordan to Marshall McLuhan, 10 February 1967, GPR.
31. “Four Plays,” display ad, New York Times, 21 January 1958, 27.
32. Eugène Ionesco, Notes and Counternotes, trans. Donald Watson (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 9.
33. Ibid., 210.
34. Quoted in Edmund White, Genet: A Biography (New York: Vintage, 1993), 349.
35. Bernard Frechtman to Barney Rosset, 3 March 1952, GPR.
36. Barney Rosset to Bernard Frechtman, 11 July 1952, GPR.
37. Jean-Paul Sartre, Introduction to The Maids (New York: Grove Press, 1954), 17.
38. Judith Schmidt, boilerplate letter (Jean Genet), 15 January 1959, GPR.
39. Ibid., 19 January 1960, GPR.
40. Sartre, Introduction to The Maids, 18.
41. Barney Rosset to Bernard Frechtman, 25 November 1959, GPR.
42. Bernard Frechtman to Barney Rosset, 27 November 1959, GPR.
43. Richard Seaver to Bernard Frechtman, 2 December 1959, GPR.
44. Jean Genet, The Blacks, trans. Bernard Frechtman (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 18.
45. Ibid., 35.
46. Norman Mailer, The Presidential Papers (New York: Bantam Books, 1964), 202.
47. Lorraine Hansberry, “Genet, Mailer, and the New Paternalism,” Village Voice, 1 June 1961, 12.
48. Ibid., 15.
49. Genet, The Blacks, 4.
50. Jerry Tallmer, “Theater: The Blacks,” Village Voice, 11 May 1961, 11.
51. Ibid., 12.
52. Ibid.
53. Harold Pinter, “Writing for the Theatre,” introduction to Complete Works: Volume 1 (New York: Grove Press, 1976), 9.
54. Ibid., 9.
55. Worthen, Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama, 80.
56. Esslin, Theatre of the Absurd, 261.
57. Martin Esslin, The Peopled Wound: The Work of Harold Pinter (New York: Anchor Books, 1970), vii.
58. Pinter, “Writing for the Theatre,” 10.
59. Varun Begley, Harold Pinter and the Twilight of Modernism (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 6.
60. Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party & The Room (New York: Grove Press, 1961), 9.
61. Ibid., 104–105.
62. Kenneth Tynan, preface to The Connection, by Jack Gelber (New York: Grove Press, 1960), 8.
63. Donald Allen to Barney Rosset, 2 June 1958, GPR.
64. “Seven Plays,” display ad, New York Times Book Review, 2 April 1961, 19.
65. Eric Bentley, ed., introduction to Seven Plays by Bertolt Brecht (New York: Grove Press, 1961), xxxii.
66. Esslin, Brecht: The Man and His Work, 103.
67. Bentley, introduction to Seven Plays, xxxii.
68. Ibid., xiii.
69. Ibid., xxxiii.
70. Bentley, acknowledgments to Seven Plays, vii.
71. Grove published the following Brecht plays as massmarket paperbacks: The Threepenny Opera (1964); The Mother (1965); The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays (1965); The Visions of Simone Machard (1965); The Jungle of Cities and Other Plays (1966); Mother Courage and Her Children (1966); Galileo (1966); The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1966); and The Good Woman of Setzuan (1966). Fred Jordan was responsible for the rapidity with which these plays were issued. Doubting Bentley’s abilities as a translator, he told me he requested a tight time line that would force Bentley to find others to perform the task. And these were the titles that sold. Although Seven Plays sold only about ten thousand copies in hardcover over the course of the 1960s, the Black Cat versions of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Good Woman of Setzuan, and Galileo sold more than twenty thousand copies each in 1966–67 alone.
72. Bentley, introduction to Seven Plays, xxxi.
73. Bertolt Brecht, “On the Experimental Theater,” trans. Carl Richard Mueller, Tulane Drama Review 6, no. 1 (September 1961): 6.
74. Erwin Piscator, “Introduction to The Deputy,” in The Storm over “The Deputy,” ed. Eric Bentley (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 14.
75. Bentley, foreword to Storm over “The Deputy,” 8.
76. Ibid.
77. Grove tended to issue the work of its German-language dramas on this “epic” scale. Friedrich Durrenmatt’s Four Plays, which includes his lengthy preface, “Problems of the Theater,” is 350 pages long.
78. “The Deputy,” display ad, New York Times, 12 March 1964, 33, GPR.
79. Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston (New York: Grove Press, 1964), 14.
80. Barbara Garson, MacBird! (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 3.
81. Ibid., 8.
82. Ibid., 99.
83. Ibid., 41–42.
84. Ibid., 85.
85. Ibid., 93.
86. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” press release, n.d., GPR.
87. “A Study Guide for the Play—Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard,” 11, GPR.
88. Thomas O’Brien, “Hamlet and the Player,” 2, GPR.
89. Ibid.
90. Ibid.
91. Worthen, Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama, 20–21.
Chapter 3
1. Charles Rembar, The End of Obscenity (New York: Bantam, 1968), 483. The complex and constitutive relations between literature and obscenity in the modern era have been the subject of a number of important studies. In addition to Pease, Modernism, Mass Culture; Parkes, Modernism; and Dore, The Novel and the Obscene, see also Elisabeth Ladenson, Dirt for Art’s Sake: Books on Trial from “Madame Bovary” to “Lolita” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006); Paul S. Boyer, Purity in Print: Book Censorship in America from the Gilded Age to the Computer Age (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002); Felice Flanery Lewis, Literature, Obscenity, and the Law (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1976); and Edward de Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius (New York: Random House, 1992). Somewhat surprisingly, none of these texts deal centrally with Grove Press or the period Rembar chronicles in his account. For a useful discussion of Grove’s battles in the 1960s, particularly in relation to the publishing industry, see Richard Ellis, “Disseminating Desire: Grove Press and ‘the End[s] of Obscenity,” in Perspectives on Pornography, ed. Gary Day and Clive Bloom (New York: St. Martin’s, 1988), 26–43.
2. Barney Rosset, “A Few Steps from the Long March,” BRP.
3. Rosset affidavit, Grove Press, Inc. v. Robert K. Christenberry, 10 June 1959, GPR.
4. Rosset affidavit, Franklyn S. Haiman et al. v. Robert Morris, n.d., GPR.
5. Frederick F. Schauer, The Law of Obscenity (Washington, DC: Bureau of National Affairs, 1976), 277. These devel
opments were closely paralleled in England, where passage of the Obscene Publications Act in 1959 provided statutory support for expert testimony, which in turn precipitated legal cases over many of the same texts. Indeed, there was a transatlantic circuit running from Girodias’s Olympia Press to Calder and Boyers in Britain and Grove in the United States, and out into the Anglophone world and beyond (there were also trials of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in Japan and India), making the “end of obscenity” a truly transnational phenomenon.
6. De Grazia, Girls Lean Back Everywhere, xii.
7. Ibid., 686.
8. Quoted in Boyer, Purity in Print, 227.
9. Quoted in Michael Moscato and Leslie LeBlanc, eds., The United States of America v. One Book Entitled “Ulysses” by James Joyce: Documents and Commentary: A 50-Year Retrospective (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1984), 189.
10. Felice Flanery Lewis affirms that “the most significant aspect of the Ulysses opinions was the classification of that novel as a modern classic” (Literature, Obscenity, and the Law, 133).
11. Rembar notes that “censorship and copyright have closely connected origins” (The End of Obscenity, 5) but doesn’t pursue this connection. There is remarkably little legal or literary scholarship on this crucial intersection. One exception is David Saunders, who makes no mention of Ulysses (“Copyright, Obscenity, and Literary History,” English Literary History 57, no. 2 [Summer 1990]: 431–44). For a fascinating discussion of the history of the American copyright in Ulysses, see Robert Spoo, “Copyright and the Ends of Ownership: The Case for a Public-Domain Ulysses in America,” Joyce Studies Annual 10 (Summer 1999): 5–60.
12. Bennett Cerf, At Random: The Reminiscences of Bennett Cerf (New York: Random House, 1977), 94.
13. Susan Stewart, Crimes of Writing: Problems in the Containment of Representation (Durham, NC: Duke University of Press, 1991), 3.
14. The story of Grove’s publication of Lady Chatterley’s Lover has been told many times in many places. The most thorough and reliable account, on which my own is based, can be found in Raymond T. Caffrey, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover: The Grove Press Publication of the Unexpurgated Text,” Syracuse University Library Associates Courier 20, no. 1 (1985): 49–79.
15. Ephraim London to Barney Rosset, 10 March 1954, GPR.