The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing (Grove's Barney Rosset)
On a nondescript block south of New York's Union Square, up a dreary staircase and through a black-barred gate, there is a long, narrow room that might be mistaken for a very small museum of literary counterculture. On one wall hangs two rows of iconic posters: Paul Davis's print of Che Guevara's proud head; a photograph of the authors Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg marching at the 1968 Democratic National Convention; a portrait of Bobby Kennedy. Loose-leaf binders of correspondence with groundbreaking authors line floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Beside the bookcases, Samuel Beckett peers out of a black-and-white photograph with a fierce crow's gaze. Next to him in the picture stands a shorter, milder-looking man named Barney Rosset.
Rosset's publishing house, Grove Press, was a tiny company operating out of the ground floor of Rosset's brownstone when it published an obscure play called "Waiting for Godot" in 1954. By the time Beckett had won the Nobel Prize in 1969, Grove had become a force that challenged and changed literature and American culture in deep and lasting ways. Its impact is still evident—from the Che Guevara posters adorning college dorms to the canonical status of the house's once controversial authors. Rosset is less well known—but late in his life he is achieving some wider recognition. Last month, a black-tie crowd gave Rosset a standing ovation when the National Book Foundation awarded him the Literarian Award for "outstanding service" to American letters. This fall, Rosset was also the subject of a documentary, "Obscene," directed by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor, which featured a host of literary luminaries, former colleagues and footage from a particularly hilarious interview with Al Goldstein, the porn king. High literature and low—Rosset pushed and published it all.
On a recent afternoon, Rosset sat on a worn leather couch with a book of Beckett's and a binder of his letters with the Nobel laureate. He was working on his autobiography, "The Subject Is Left-Handed"—a title taken from his FBI file, which his wife, Astrid Myers, was paging through at a small table nearby. Rosset has been working on the book for years. "I don't know what the publisher wants," he said. "No idea. Been in the same job for many years—I think I would have known better."..
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Rosset's publishing house, Grove Press, was a tiny company operating out of the ground floor of Rosset's brownstone when it published an obscure play called "Waiting for Godot" in 1954. By the time Beckett had won the Nobel Prize in 1969, Grove had become a force that challenged and changed literature and American culture in deep and lasting ways. Its impact is still evident—from the Che Guevara posters adorning college dorms to the canonical status of the house's once controversial authors. Rosset is less well known—but late in his life he is achieving some wider recognition. Last month, a black-tie crowd gave Rosset a standing ovation when the National Book Foundation awarded him the Literarian Award for "outstanding service" to American letters. This fall, Rosset was also the subject of a documentary, "Obscene," directed by Neil Ortenberg and Daniel O'Connor, which featured a host of literary luminaries, former colleagues and footage from a particularly hilarious interview with Al Goldstein, the porn king. High literature and low—Rosset pushed and published it all.
On a recent afternoon, Rosset sat on a worn leather couch with a book of Beckett's and a binder of his letters with the Nobel laureate. He was working on his autobiography, "The Subject Is Left-Handed"—a title taken from his FBI file, which his wife, Astrid Myers, was paging through at a small table nearby. Rosset has been working on the book for years. "I don't know what the publisher wants," he said. "No idea. Been in the same job for many years—I think I would have known better."..