by Loren Glass
8. Duras and Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour, 17.
9. Barthes, “Objective Literature: Alain Robbe-Grillet,” 13. Barthes’s essay was reprinted in translation in the Evergreen Review in 1958, and then again reprinted as one of three introductory essays for Grove’s Black Cat version of Two Novels by Robbe-Grillet (Jealousy and In the Labyrinth) in 1965.
10. Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais, Last Year at Marienbad, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Grove Press, 1962), 8.
11. François Thomas, “The Myth of Perfect Harmony,” in Last Year at Marienbad, Criterion Collection, 36.
12. Robbe-Grillet and Resnais, Last Year at Marienbad, 18.
13. Samuel Beckett, Film: Complete Scenario Illustrations Production Shots (New York: Grove Press, 1969), 57.
14. Ibid., 63.
15. Rosset interview transcript, 11.
16. François Truffaut, The 400 Blows (New York: Grove Press, 1969), 6.
17. Robert Hughes, “A Note on This Edition,” in Jean-Luc Godard, Masculin Féminin (New York: Grove Press, 1969), 6.
18. Ibid., 6–7.
19. “The Starting Point of the Film,” in Godard, Masculin Féminin, 219, 221.
20. “The ‘Script,’” in Godard, Masculin Féminin, 224.
21. Philippe Labro, “Godard Directing,” in Godard, Masculin Féminin, 226–27.
22. Georges Sadoul, “Godard Does Not Pass,” in Godard, Masculin Féminin, 250.
23. Pauline Kael, Review for The New Republic, in Godard, Masculin Féminin, 282.
24. “Grove Press Script Books,” Film Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Autumn 1969): 58–59.
25. Adrian Martin, “A Young Man for All Times,” in Godard, Masculin Féminin, 3.
26. Betz, “Little Books,” 324.
27. “Suggested Courses Using Books and Films,” Grove Press college catalog (1968), 97, GPR.
28. “Why Wait for Godard?,” display ad, Evergreen Review 13 (December 1969): 73.
29. Quoted in Gontarski, introduction to Grove Press Reader, xxxvi.
30. There is some uncertainty about the amount Rosset paid for the rights. In Albert Goldman’s article quoted later, the cost is given as $25,000. Rosset told Rachel Whitaker in an interview that he paid $100,000, a figure affirmed in the interview transcripts in his archive; it is also the figure Seaver states in his memoir. The film Obscene cites an article stating it was $160,000. Whatever the cost, it represented far more than Grove usually paid in advances or rights for book publication.
31. Jon Lewis, Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over Censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 192–229.
32. Goldman, “The Old Smut Peddler,” 49. In an additional sign of Rosset’s prescience, Grove attempted to release Evergreen as a “video magazine” for home consumption in this same year, but, as Rosset lamented, “there was nowhere to play it” (Rosset interview transcript, 28).
33. “Dear Member,” Evergreen Club mail-order offer, n.d., GPR.
34. “Dear Collector,” Evergreen Club mail-order offer, n.d., KI.
35. “Private Invitation,” Evergreen Club mail-order offer, n.d., KI.
Chapter 6
1. “Prospectus: Grove Press, Inc.,” Van Alstyne, Noel, and Co., 25 July 1967, 3.
2. Ibid., 9.
3. “Notes from the Publisher,” Grove Press annual report, 1967, BRP.
4. Seaver, Tender Hour of Twilight, 408.
5. “Women Have Seized the Executive Offices of Grove Press Because:,” 13 April 1970, HFA.
6. Robin Morgan’s account of the takeover can be found in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist (New York: Random House, 1978), 132–33, and in her more recent autobiography, Saturday’s Child (New York: Norton, 2001), 289–96. A more comprehensive version can be found in S. E. Gontarski’s pamphlet, Modernism, Censorship, 15–19. For an earlier and highly informative discussion of the occupation in terms of developments in the publishing industry more generally, see Powers, “Pride and Prejudice,” More magazine 5, no. 1 (January 1975): 17–19, 26. For Seaver’s account, see Tender Hour of Twilight, 414–30.
7. Ellis, “Disseminating Desire,” 40.
8. Catharine MacKinnon, Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 147.
9. Jacques Pauvert to Richard Seaver, 6 December 1960, GPR (my translation).
10. Richard Seaver to Jacques Pauvert, 1 October 1964, GPR (my translation).
11. William Kristol to Richard Seaver, 25 December 1965, GPR.
12. Aury’s authorship was revealed in an article for the New Yorker (1 August 1994) by John de St. Jorre. His account can also be found in Venus Bound, 202–36. Not until the release of the documentary film Writer of O in 2005 was Aury’s real name publicly acknowledged. For Seaver’s account, see Tender Hour of Twilight, 353–65. Grove had in fact published a translation of Aury’s essays, Literary Landfalls (New York: Grove Press, 1961), as an Evergreen Original. The original French title was, significantly, Lecture pour tous, and in her foreword Aury provocatively asserts that “each one reads for himself, but also for others; all reading is for everyone” (3).
13. The admission can be found in Seaver’s New York Times obituary of 7 January 2009. St. Jorre does opine that “‘Sabine d’Estrée’ is, almost certainly, the unmistakably masculine figure of Richard Seaver” (218). Seaver’s widow, Jeanette, whose middle name is “Sabine,” told me that her husband had loved such anagrams and word games (interview with author, 23 October 2010). Such pseudonymous shenanigans were popular during this era, testifying to their transitional significance for the sexual politics of literary publishing. In addition to the sequel to Story of O, Grove also published The Image, written by Catherine Robbe-Grillet under the pseudonym Jean de Berg (with a preface by Pauline Réage), as well as Emmanuelle, written by Marayat Rollet-Andriane under the pseudonym Emmanuelle Arsan. As with Réage, the authors’ real identities were closely guarded secrets at the time of publication. Also in the 1970s, Régine Deforges, herself a controversial publisher and writer of erotica, conducted a series of interviews with “Pauline Réage,” which Seaver translated as Sabine d’Estrée and published as Confessions of O under his new Viking imprint, Seaver Books.
14. Réage, Story of O, trans. Sabine D’Estrée (New York: Grove Press, 1965), xii. “A Girl in Love” was added as front matter in the 1970s.
15. Ibid., n.p.
16. This analogy is further ballasted by the irony that the Evergreen Club’s alternate selection to The Story of O was The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
17. Jean Paulhan, “Happiness in Slavery,” in Réage, Story of O, xxv.
18. Réage, Story of O, ix.
19. “Albert Goldman in the New York Times Book Review (20 March 1966),” Evergreen Club News 1, no. 2, 5, 6.
20. Ibid., 7.
21. “Eliot Fremont-Smith in the New York Times,” Evergreen Club News 1, no. 2, 7.
22. Ibid., 9.
23. Ibid., 8.
24. Thus, it is fitting that Grove’s Sade became a key source text for the feminist engagement with pornography in the 1970s and 1980s. See, for example, Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women (New York: Plume, 1989), 70–101; and Angela Carter, The Sadean Woman and the Ideology of Pornography (New York: Pantheon, 1978).
25. Morgan, Saturday’s Child, 107.
26. Quoted in Paul Meskil, “Grove Press Seized by Gals,” New York Daily News, 14 April 1970.
27. “Women Have Seized the Executive Offices.”
28. Quoted in Mike Golden, “The Women’s Lib Takeover of Grove Press,” http:// smokesignalsmag.com/ISSUE0/Non-Fiction/womenlibtakeover.htm.
29. Julius Lester to Barney Rosset, 14 April 1970, BRP. The charges were, in fact, dropped, and Lester stayed on for another year.
30. “Women’s Lib Occupation: An Exchange of Letters,” Evergreen Review 14, no. 80 (July 1970): 16.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.,
69.
33. Ibid., 70.
34. Grove Press Election Bulletin, no. 1 (28 April 1970), HFA. Other supporters included New York mayor John Lindsay, who praised the FLM for its “constructive role in the political life of our city”; labor activist Cesar Chavez, who expressed “undying gratitude” to the FLM board for “its support of our consumer boycott”; and Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, who claims that the FLM “will always be remembered with gratitude and respect by the underprivileged and oppressed people of our nation.”
35. Grove Press Election Bulletin, no. 2 (29 April 1970), HFA.
36. Committee for the Survival of Grove, “What It’s Really All About,” n.d., HFA.
37. Ibid.
38. Quoted in Powers, “Pride and Prejudice,” 19.
39. Claudia Menza, interview with author, 21 October 2010.
40. Ibid., 26 October 2010.
41. Ibid.
42. Gontarski, Modernism, Censorship, 22.
43. Quoted in Golden, “The Women’s Lib Takeover of Grove Press.”
44. Tebbel, History of Publishing, 4:727.
45. Menza, interview with author, 21 October 2010; Seaver, Tender Hour of Twilight, 424.
46. Menza, interview with author, 21 October 2010.
47. “Grove Fires Union Activists, Women’s Lib Seizes Offices,” Publishers Weekly, 20 April 1970, 38.
48. Committee for the Survival of Grove, “What It’s Really All About.”
49. Menza, interview with author, 21 October 2010. I borrow the term “countercanon” from S. E. Gontarski’s introduction to the issue of the Review of Contemporary Literature dedicated to Grove, “Dionysus in Publishing.”
50. Ellen Krieger to Judith Schmidt, 13 May 1969, GPR.
51. Judith Schmidt to Henry Miller, 14 May 1969, GPR.
52. Theodore Solotaroff to Grove Press, 23 June 1969, GPR.
53. Emily Jane Goodman to Judith Schmidt, 29 July 1969, GPR.
54. Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (New York: Avon, 1970), xii.
55. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society (New York: Doubleday, 1953), 22.
56. Quoted in “Who’s Come a Long Way, Baby?,” Time, 31 August 1970, 16.
57. Millett, Sexual Politics, 303.
58. Ibid., 295.
59. Ibid., 22.
60. Ibid., 17.
61. Ibid., 343.
62. Ibid., 349.
63. Ibid., 356.
64. “Who’s Come a Long Way, Baby?,” 16.
65. Julius Lester, “Woman—the Male Fantasy,” Evergreen Review 14, no. 82 (September 1970): 71.
66. “Jean Genet and the Black Panthers,” Evergreen Review 14, no. 82 (September 1970): 36–37.
67. Kent Carroll, “Grove in the ’70s,” in Gontarski, The Grove Press Reader, 280.
68. Kathy Acker, Blood and Guts in High School (New York: Grove Press, 1984), 133, 137, 138.
Index
Page numbers in italics indicate illustrations.
abstract expressionism: Kuhlman’s covers and, 10, 11, 41–43, 42, 49, 49, 63, 64; world literature and, 41, 224n32
Acker, Kathy, Blood and Guts in High School, 214–15
adult (sexually explicit) writing and film. See sexually explicit (adult) writing and film
African (neo-African literature), 53–55, 54
African Americans: bookstores owned by, 13, 156; “Negro,” as term of use and, 79–80, 146–47, 155, 159; radical literature and, 146–49, 150, 151–57, 153, 158, 159; “White Negro” and, 81–82, 212. See also white people
Allen, Donald: avantgarde aesthetics and, 22–23; biographical information about, 22; Evergreen and, 22, 29, 61; homosexuality in literature and, 126; International Publisher’s Prize committee and, 57; Japanese literature and, 47–48; plays as printed text and, 74, 90; poetry of U.S. and, 63–64; San Francisco scene and, 23–24; translations for Grove and, 58–59
America. See Latin America; United States
Anchor Review, 16
Anderson, Joseph, 173–74
Anderson, S. E., 147–48
Anonymous: My Secret Life, 138–44, 142; The Story of O/Histoire d’O, 21; Two Novels from the Victorian Underground, 142
anonymous translators, 198, 239n13
Antonioni, Michelangelo, L’avventura, 175, 185
Apollinaire, Guillaume, 132, 135
Arendt, Hannah, 93, 138
Artaud, Antonin: experimental theater and, 20–21, 22–23, 65–66, 90; “No More Masterpieces,” 22; performance and print interplay and, 66; The Theater and Its Double, 29, 66
Asian literature, 47–52, 49
Auden, W. H., 29, 106, 112
Aury, Dominique (Anne Desclos or Pauline Réage). See Desclos, Anne (Dominique Aury or Pauline Réage)
Auster, Paul, 43–44
authorship and authority, in films and film books, 181–84, 183
avantgarde aesthetics: collegestudent circuit and, 12, 29–31, 37; counterculture in context of, 12; cover designs and, 10, 11; criminality as stylization of, 46, 78–79, 123–24, 127–28, 233n72; democratization of, 12; description of, 220n30; Evergreen and, 22–23; films and, 173–75, 233n71; Grove and, 3–4, 10, 12, 15, 22–23, 29–31; incorporation of, 3–4, 12; Kuhlman’s covers and, 10, 11, 37, 53, 54; literature and, 12, 15–17, 24–25; New Left and, 117; New York’s role in art market for, 9–10; Paris’s role in literary, 9, 10; plays as printed text and, 66–69, 97, 99; politicization of, 12, 22; sexual, and political convergence with, 45–46, 120, 189–90; theater and, 6, 20–21, 66–69, 97; US indigenous, 10–11
Baldwin, James, 82, 114, 155
Bantam and Bantam Modern Classic, 47, 124
Barker, R. E., 35
Barnes, Clive, 96–97
Barthes, Roland, 38, 44, 45, 177–78, 238n9
Barzun, Jacques, 29, 105, 112
Bashlow, Robert, 1001 Ways to Beat the Draft (Kupfergerg and Bashlow), 167–68, 169
Baudelaire, Charles, 128, 132–35
Beach, Sylvia, 17
Beats and Beat publications, 10, 23–24, 51–52, 123, 125, 128
Beauvoir, Simone de, 132, 135, 160
Beck, Julian, 90
Beckett, Samuel: collegestudent circuit and, 73–75; cover designs and, 41–43, 42, 72, 183; Endgame, 71, 73, 75; European male modernists and, 39–41, 42, 44, 47, 62–63; Evergreen’s relationship with, 22; Film, 174, 175, 181–84, 183; Grove’s relationship with, 17–18; International Publisher’s Prize and, 56; Krapp’s Last Tape, 66–67, 68; Malone Dies/Malone meurt, 18, 43; Molloy, 18, 41, 42, 43, 203; Nobel Prize winners and, 40; personality description of, 39; photographs of, 39, 41, 42, 43, 71; plays as printed text and, 69–71, 72, 73–75; Rosset’s relationship with, 17; schoolmasters as legislators of classroom and, 41, 42, 43; as selftranslator, 39, 43–44, 62, 74; “Three Dialogues on Painting,” 41, 224n32; Three Novels by Samuel Beckett, 43, 62; as translator, 39, 43–44; The Unnamable/L’innomable, 26, 27, 39, 43; views of playwrights and, 40, 74; Waiting for Godot/En attendant Godot, 17, 40, 43, 65, 67, 69–71, 72
Begley, Varun, 84
Beidler, Philip, 31, 222n75
Belitt, Ben, 58–61
Bentley, Eric, 68, 90–95, 229n77
Bersani, Leo, 40
Best, Marshall, 29
Betz, Mark, 175, 187
Big Table (journal), 117
Blackburn, Paul, 36–37, 61
Black Cat: collegestudent circuit and, 74; colophonic branding and, 9; European male modernists’ literature and, 43, 44–45; film books and, 178, 184–87, 189–90, 238n9; plays as printed text and, 83, 92, 95, 96, 214,228n71, 229n77; quality paperbacks and, 31; radical literature and, 145, 149, 152–53, 157, 160–62, 164, 168–71; underground literature and, 116, 119, 138, 140
Black Power movement, 79–80, 83, 151, 155–57, 158, 159, 212–13
Blanchot, Maurice, 62, 134, 135
Blin, Roger, 65, 71
book clubs, 29, 106, 222n65. See also specific clubs
bookstores, 13, 24–
26, 26, 121, 156, 160
Borchardt, Georges, 44
Borges, Jorge Luis, 56–58, 194
Bosquet, Michael, 160–62
branding. See colophonic branding
Braverman, Harry, 15, 130, 152, 195, 204, 236n17
Braziller, George, 46, 123
Brecht, Bertolt, 90–95, 229n77
Breit, Harvey, 105
Brown, Turner, Jr., Black Is, 157, 158
Buitenhuis, Peter, 126
Burger, Peter, 220n30
Burroughs, William: Attorney General v. A Book Named “Naked Lunch” (1966) and, 117–20, 231n58; collegestudent circuit and, 213; homosexual writers and, 123; Naked Lunch, 1, 117–20, 231n58; as reporter, 166
Carroll, Kent, 174, 188, 214
Carter, David, 127
Casanova, Pascale, 9, 34, 36, 39, 186
Casavini, Pieralessandro (Austryn Wainhouse), 18–19, 133, 135–37
Casey, Michael, Che’s Afterlife, 160
Castro, Fidel, 13, 146, 160–61, 164–66, 170–71, 204
censorship. See obscenity law trials; underground literature; vulgar modernism
Cerf, Bennett, 15, 103–4, 106, 213, 231n17
charismatic communities, and Grove, 6–7, 184–85, 204–5
Ciardi, John, 117–18
Cleland, John, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, 106, 128–29
Cody, Fred, 24–26, 26
Coe, Richard, 68, 73–74, 77
Cohn, Deborah, 226n97
Cohn, Ruby, 68, 73–74
Cold War consensus, 6, 12, 21–22
Collector’s Publications, 139–40
collegestudent circuit: experimental literature and, 12, 29–31, 37, 213; films and film books and, 187–88; modern classics and, 208–9; modernism and, 30, 33; obscenity law trials and, 101, 116–17; plays as printed text and, 70, 73–75, 79, 95, 96–97; radical literature and, 154, 168, 170, 170–71, 212–13, 236n17
colophonic branding: Black Cat and, 9; Evergreen and, 9, 25, 25–27, 28, 121; Evergreen Books and, 24–26, 25, 26, 27; Grove and, 9–10, 11, 25–26, 26, 27; New York City and, 9–10, 12–16, 201; Parisian network and, 9, 10, 16–22, 199; publishing and, 8–9, 219n23; world literature and, 37
Committee for the Survival of Grove, 204–5, 208. See also feminist takeover of Grove
community standards, and obscenity law trials, 102, 108, 113–14, 115–16. See also literary value