NEW YORK, January 18: At age 75, Barney Rosset is ready to sit down and write the story of his own incredible life, of the battles to publish Tropic Of Cancer and Lady Chatterley's Lover, of playing ping-pong with Henry Miller and sharing a bed (platonically) with Samuel Beckett. But life remains a little too incredible. Rosset, who in the '50s and '60s successfully fought to get Lady Chatterley and other controversial literature past US censors, now faces financial ruin. His publishing house has gone bust. He receives no royalties. He hasn't paid the rent on the downtown loft where he lives and works."I have nothing," he says. "I don't have a bank account. All I have is a bankrupt company." The crisis was brought on by a lawsuit involving a book he had nothing to do with - a terrible irony for a man who sacrificed a great deal of money to publish what he thought everyone had the right to read. Last summer, a Las Vegas jury awarded casino operator Steve Wynn $3.1 million in a libel
case against Barricade Books, which had published Wynn's unauthorised biography. The small imprint was distributed by Rosset's Blue Moon. Wynn's suit wasn't even based on the biography but on a sentence in the Barricade catalogue that linked Wynn with the Genovese crime family. Wynn said the information was false.
Barricade publisher Lyle Stuart has no libel insurance and has filed for bankruptcy, forcing Rosset to do likewise. An appeal against the libel judgment would take years too long to help Rosset now. But fighting back is nothing new for Rosset. He is already working on a plan to unload Blue Moon, straighten out his finances, and start a nonprofit publishing company. He also hopes to make good on an offer to write his autobiography.
It was in 1952 that Rosset bought Grovepress, a publishing house with only three titles to its credit. Rosset knew what he liked and no one would stop him. There were two erotic books he wanted to publish that had never been distributed unexpurgated in the United
States: D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Miller's Tropic Of Cancer. In 1954 a copy of Chatterley was mailed from Paris to New York. Officials seized it and charged Rosset with promoting "indecent and lascivious thoughts." After losing the first round in court, Rosset won on appeal. It was over a game of ping-pong, Rosset and Miller agreed to let Grovepress distribute Tropic Of Cancer in the United States. Between Grove and the magazine Evergreen Review, Rosset became one of the leading postwar political and avant-garde publishers. Authors included Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Jean-Paul Sartre and Eugene Ionesco. Rosset brought Beckett's Waiting for Godot to American readers, and became so close to the Irish playwright that during a blackout in Paris, with no other place to go, they shared a hotel bed.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
