Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship

by Barney Rosset

  In June we mounted a $7 million lawsuit against Weidenfeld and Getty. Two months later they countersued, delaying things as much as possible. It was obvious they were preparing for a long drawn-out battle. They had a bevy of high-powered lawyers who could spend months or years on such a case. We had spent about $35,000 in court costs and legal fees to defend Lady Chatterley’s Lover. When we defended Henry Miller we were faced with 60 separate court actions because I had offered to defend anyone prosecuted for selling Tropic of Cancer. We ended up spending $250,000 before the US Supreme Court ruled in our favor. The Miller battle nearly bankrupted Grove and forced me to seriously consider selling the company. This time around could be even more ruinous. I couldn’t afford to pay lawyers for a protracted suit. It would cost millions and eat up my life, and Weidenfeld and Getty knew it.

  A few months later, Weidenfeld appointed Aaron Asher as Grove’s new publisher, infuriating Fred Jordan who was shoved aside with no excuse. Cold, efficient, professional, and full of himself, Asher had worked for a wide variety of publishers and soon took charge of things, with weekly editorial meetings, strict procedures, and no bullshit.

  The Getty team was afraid of alienating the famous Grove writers— understandably so, since they were the lifeblood of the firm. Asher even flew to Paris to meet with Beckett and returned with a full account of their meeting. According to Fred, Asher referred to Beckett as “Sam,” and described in detail their conversation, during which Beckett told him, “I can’t write anymore for you.” Asher thought he meant he was finished with writing, but what he actually meant was that he couldn’t write anymore for Grove Press. Asher hadn’t the slightest idea that Beckett and I were friends of long standing.

  I was promised that if the Gettys came in there would be a great deal of money made available to buy new manuscripts, books, and so on, and I would have a contract to stay there and it all seemed very appealing. But I was wrong. And when I left they started pouring money into Grove. Weidenfeld and Getty had won a victory of sorts, but eventually it would become evident that Grove Press was foundering, buoyed solely by its backlist, which they could hardly depend on forever.

  Publishing in the US had suddenly evolved into an industry of huge conglomerates. The Germans especially entered the field with an eye on genre-based books with an assured market, avoiding anything “marginal”—the radical, the controversial, or stylistically original—and pouring money into backing established writers whose sales were guaranteed, while taking a portion of blockbuster profits to produce a few quality books, poorly advertised, as a kind of sop to culture. It became harder and harder for smaller houses, including Grove, to compete. This represented a different kind of censorship, one based on money, more than the censorship and repression of the so-called obscene. Most outstanding writers, and still more second-rate writers, entered academia. Even the craft of writing had become industrialized.

  The turn of events at Grove certainly did not change my feelings about the books themselves. I liked the Grove books as much as ever, but I still felt terribly disappointed. Beckett wrote in Stirrings Still, “Head on hands half hoping when he disappeared again that he would not reappear again and half fearing that he would not.”102 Perhaps Sam was speaking both for himself and for me. In any case, I was not about to give up, let alone disappear.

  It was essential to start again. In 1986 I took a deep breath and started Rosset & Co. and on March 10, 1987, Blue Moon Books began business. Blue Moon would publish an array of generally erotic novels in a classic small format, but also works of astounding literary merit. It flourished for years. I felt that I was moving into a distinguished niche, one of the survivors of an era that was fast becoming part of the history of American publishing—the struggles finished, the names fading.

  In 1990, the Getty/Weidenfeld venture into American publishing would peter out and Grove Press was put on the auction block. As far as I know, we—a conglomeration of other small publishers I trusted along with a foreign investor—made an offer that was three times more than anyone else. Grove was worth, let’s say, $2 million. We offered eleven. Simon and Schuster was the only other company that made a big offer. I think they offered eight but, quite properly, wanted to see Grove’s financial details. I knew then that Simon and Schuster would ultimately withdraw, and they did. So, there was no other bid but my own—which was five times more than the company was worth—and it was still rejected. There would be no buyer. Allowing me to take over my old company would have been too much for them to stomach.

  On October 30, 1991, Joan died in Paris, after a long period of illness and depression. Now that both Sam Beckett and Joan were gone, I felt once more that an epoch had passed, heightened by my divorce from Lisa who had gone through so much with me and Grove Press. But there would be some compensation for personal sadness and reduced professional activity. My close and caring relationship with Kenzaburō Ōe was a bright spot, and a fight was looming over the rights to Beckett’s Eleuthéria.

  17

  My Tom Sawyer: Kenzaburō Ōe

  At Francis Parker, we students read The Good Earth and other books by the already famous Pearl S. Buck, the American author who had been raised in China, and who had been one of the first literary figures to introduce Americans to Asian literature and culture. We also read translations by Arthur Waley, the greatest translator of Chinese poetry of his time, possibly ever. Also at Francis Parker our eighth-grade teacher, Sarah Greenebaum, introduced us to Chinese history, telling us about the Ming dynasty, among others. The reading of André Malraux’s Man’s Fate and Edgar Snow’s Red Star Over China in the next few years only helped to cement my interest in and fascination with Asian literature and culture.

  Back in the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, the Emperor of Japan contributed a stunning Japanese Pavilion. In the 1940s, after many of the other structures from 1893 no longer stood, my Francis Parker friend Teru Osato and her mother helped take care of the Pavilion, making sure it didn’t fall into ruins, while at the same time Teru’s father was jailed in a sort of internment camp in Chicago.

  There wasn’t much translation of Asian literature between the two World Wars, not until the Japanese became our enemies during World War II. Then as an important part of wartime intelligence, the US Armed Forces undertook a big translation program and that effort, among other things, eventually brought to light post–Word War II authors. At that time, Alfred A. Knopf was the biggest publisher of Asian literature in this country.

  Donald Allen introduced me to Donald Keene, a friend he had met while they were both studying in a US Navy program, and a man who became the foremost Western authority on Japanese literature. In 1955, we published his small book, Japanese Literature: An Introduction for Western Readers, which had originally been published in Great Britain by John Murray in their Wisdom of the East series.

  We commissioned Keene to edit a collection of Japanese literature, which ended up being published as two volumes: Anthology of Japanese Literature: From the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (1955), dedicated to Arthur Waley, and Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to Present Day (1956). UNESCO was a sponsor, which was very helpful, as it lent its reputation to our books, and we also received help through a Ford grant.

  It was not until 1965, though, that the well known translator Thomas Fitzsimmons approached me about the young poet and author, Kenzaburō Ōe, who would become one of Grove’s most influential authors and, equally important, a close friend of mine. Fitzsimmons suggested that I get in touch with John Nathan, who he thought was the translator for the job. Nathan lived in Japan as a student from Harvard on a scholarship and would go on to become one of the greatest scholars of Japanese modern writing.

  I wrote to Nathan and he was not long in responding to my letter. On May 7, 1965, he wrote:

  I would very much like to translate into English a novel by Kenzaburō Ōe, the author of Lavish Are the Dead, which you apparently received in the mail. To my mind, Ōe is the most exciting
novelist in Japan today, and his latest and best novel, Kojinteki na Taiken, would certainly be well received in America. Would Grove Press be interested in such a venture? If you are in any way interested, I shall be glad to furnish you with more information about Ōe and his novels.

  I certainly was interested, and asked him to contact Ōe to see if he would be agreeable to Grove’s publishing the translation, pending agreement on the actual terms. It took some back and forth before the thing was settled.

  June 15, 1965

  Dear Mr. Rosset:

  … You may know that I completed in January a translation of a Mishima Yukio novel that Knopf will publish in September [The Sailor Who Fell from Grace from the Sea]. Harold Strauss had been pressuring me for months to do the next Mishima book and I had been hedging. The book fails to excite me but my personal relationship with Mishima made it very difficult for me to refuse. In several of my letters I had asked why Knopf continued to ignore Ōe Kenzaburō and I had received various unsatisfactory answers. After several months of fencing with Harold Strauss about Mishima I got annoyed and asked you if Grove Press would be interested in Kojinteki Na Taiken. It seemed like a long shot at the time, and I was surprised and very pleased when you wrote that you wanted to do the book. Then, in a letter dated May 14, Harold Strauss suggested, to my amazement, that Knopf would take on Ōe if I opted for him rather than Mishima. …

  I had now received two favorable replies in two days; the situation called for a choice and it seemed obvious that Ōe himself was the person to make it. I assured him that I would go along with whatever he decided. Finally, Ōe chose Knopf; primarily, I think, because other Japanese writers such as Abe Kobo had reminded him that Knopf has been more receptive to Japanese writers than any other American publisher. But Ōe insisted that Kojinteki Na Taiken should be the first book, and I agreed. I wrote Knopf what Ōe had decided, mentioning that Grove Press was also interested in Kojinteki Na Taiken. Harold Strauss replied by return mail that Ōe’s terms were acceptable. I informed you of our decision and the matter seemed closed.

  Then, on June 9, Ōe appeared with your cable and announced that he had changed his mind. Again I agreed. Frankly, I more than agreed; I was pleased. At any rate, you will by now have received Ōe’s cable accepting your offer; and I will assume, unless I hear otherwise from you, that Grove Press plans to publish my translation of Kojinteki Na Taiken. I am tremendously enthusiastic about this book and hope you begin work on it toward the end of this month.

  I look forward to your reply.

  Sincerely,

  John Nathan

  Ōe’s own letter came shortly after Nathan’s:

  22 June [1965]

  Mr. Barney Rosset,

  Today I received your second telegram. I accept your offer with great pleasure. As an admirer of your Evergreen books splendid “Doctor Sax” it is a genuine honor to accept your offer.

  When I received your first telegram, I answered “Agreed” by return of telegram. I think there was some trouble in the way of telegram delivery. This summer I am invited as a participant of Harvard University Summer Seminar. I will spend four months in the U.S. … I leave Japan at 5th July.

  Sincerely yours,

  Kenzaburō Ōe

  Doctor Sax is, of course, the novel by Jack Kerouac that we published in 1959.

  I was totally surprised when Kenzaburō Ōe chose Grove over Knopf in the end. I had thought it was a done deal, an upsetting one, but I’d been ready to move on. Soon after signing Ōe, I knew we had added a great author to the Grove list. Little did I know then how important a writer he would become to me personally, second only to Samuel Beckett.

  In 1965, Ōe was invited to the United States to study with Henry Kissinger, who was at that time the director of the Harvard International Seminar. This was the seminar he mentioned in his letter of June 22. In Ōe’s words, from an interview he gave in 1999 at the University of California at Berkeley, “I was in a seminar with Mr. Kissinger. Mr. Kissinger said in the goodbye party, with a very malicious smile, ‘The very wicked rabbit makes a smile in the cartoons, Mr. Ōe’s wicked smile.’ … I am not a wicked person. Against the policymaker, sometimes I make a wicked smile.”103

  He wrote to me several times during the course of the seminar:

  [1965]

  Mr. Barney Rosset,

  I arrived at Cambridge Monday. Before my departure I spended some pleasant nights with Neitham [i.e., John Nathan] and Mr. Donald Keene. Especially Mr. Donald Keene was very pleased to know my acceptance of your offer. I am so much encouraged by him. Now in Japan the ouvres complets of Henry Miller is very impressive. I am always under the influence of him. I believe Henry Miller is the best prosaist of our times like many admirers of him in Japan.

  I am very impressed by what you have done against the censorship. In Japan we are tortured by the censorship and the self- censorship of publishers especially about Sex and Emperor.

  From now I will stay here two months in Harvard. And from the beginning of September I intend to spend a few weeks in New York, then I hope to visit you. That is [a] very exciting plan for me . …

  Sincerely,

  Kenzaburō Ōe

  July 18, ’65

  Mr. Barney Rosset,

  … In this Harvard International Seminar with 40 participants from East and West I am reading “Huckleberry Finn” and “Invisible Man” and others. And we are discussing about “the roles of novels in the age of tension” and “the tension” itself. But I am always silent or independent because of my poorest English.

  Sincerely,

  Kenzaburō Ōe

  After the Harvard seminar was over, Ōe came to New York City. I told him I wanted to videotape him—videotapes were a brand-new phenomenon—and the next thing I knew, I saw Akio Morita, the co-founder and chief executive of Sony, walking to our office on Broadway between Ninth and Tenth Streets, carrying in his arms this very heavy hunk of equipment. It was a videotape prototype, and he carried it up the stairs personally. Unbelievable! As it turned out, Ōe said they did it because they were afraid of him. Sony was a very anti-union company, and Ōe was known as a great organizer in Japan. He told his wife, Yukari Itami, the younger sister of Juzo Itami, the acclaimed director of such films as Tampopo, The Funeral, and A Taxing Woman, to call Sony and get after them to get me the machine. I guess you can say they thought it was best to just give Ōe that machine.

  In the 1999 interview he did at the University of California at Berkeley, Ōe said:

  I was born in 1935 in a small island of the Japanese archipelago. I must emphasize that the war between U.S.A. and Japan began when I was six years old. And then at ten years old, I saw the war finished. So my childhood was during the wartime. That is a very important thing. … I didn’t read many books before nine years old. … But one day, there was some discussion between my grandmother and my mother. And my mother got up very early in the morning … and she went to the small city of our island through the forest. Very late at night she returned. She gave a small doll to my sister, and some cakes for my younger brother, and she took out two pocket books. … I found Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t know the name of Mark Twain, the name Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn, but my mother said—and this was the first talk between my mother and I about literature, and almost the last talk. She said, “This is the best novel for a child or for an adult. Thus your father said. … I brought this book for you, but the woman who made the barter with the rice between us said, “Be careful. The author is American. Now the war between U.S. and Japan is going on. The teacher will take the book from your son. [Tell him] that if your teacher asks you who is the author, you must answer that Mark Twain is the pseudonym of a German writer.”104

  I was very pleased when, in a letter, Kenzaburō called me his “Huckleberry Finn,” and did so repeatedly thereafter. I could love him forever for that statement alone.

  December 18, 1965

  Dear Barney,

  I remember of you
and your splendid family and something very warm is stirred within me. I can not imagine in the future I can find out the other publisher who is genuinely kind and understanding like you. In Japan I am a rather flattered writer, but always I find out a kind of hostility against my publishers. So it was a surprise for me that I could experience true being at ease and delight in your family and office. I can’t look at the picture of Peter, Christine [i.e., Cristina] and you (also of Suki [our dog]) without feeling a kind of sorrow which I often felt when the best part of my youth passed. The summer was one of my best summer. I thank you very deeply and thank your splendid family. Also I remember a strong feeling of pride that my publisher provides very good staff like Mr. Jordan and Mr. Seaver.

  Returning to Japan, I began to continue an activity against the Japan–Korea treaty and I published a long essay about this problem, but as usual, we Japanese leftists were defeated. I am very much anxious about the future of us and Koreans and also I did a pleasant (of my feeling) work. I published a short essay about the censorship which I mentioned about your activity against the censorship. I try to translate some parts of that.

  “Grove Press began entirely alone the dubious war, and Grove Press has fought the lonesome war surely authentically and continued it. Mr. Barney Rosset and his staff have a sure opinion and a strong attitude about ‘dangerous books.’ I am very proud of myself because they are going to publish my book.”