Barney Rosset, RIP

I was surfing the net Thursday when I read about the death of Barney Rosset, former publisher of Grove Press.
who died Tuesday at the age of 89.

He, of all the men alive during my life, was the most important and influential in expanding what the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution would and could cover in this country.

I didn't get a link to his obituary, but The New York Times called him "the flamboyant, provocative publisher who helped change the course of publishing in the United states" and the winner of "ceebrated First Amendment slugfests against censorship."

He had defied censors in the early 1960s by publishing Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H. Lawrence and Tropic of Cancer byHenry Miller. He went to court to fight censorship and won both of those cases.

He also published The Autobiography of Malcolm X, a controversial book about a controversial man. It also has been one of my favorite books.

However, Barnet didn't just publish controversial books. He also published books of avant-garde literature, such as Samuel Beckett's plays and novels, as well as the plays of European dramatists like Bertolt Brecht, Eugene Ionesco, and Harold Pinter,

(The pic above is of Beckett, on the left, and Rosset. It's been shamelessly lifted from The New York Times website.)

Say what you want about Waiting for Godot or Endgame, but they aren't obscene and were never labeled as such. But they were definitely labeled obscure, and far from plays like...say...

The Man Who Came To Dinner or You Can't Take It With You by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart...Broadway productions of the 1930s and definitely in the mainstream of their time. And they still stayed mainstream; when I was in high school, the drama department put on a performance of The Man Who Came To Dinner.

But Grove Press is the U.S. publisher for both plays. And I get pleasure from that because it showed a wide range of taste.

Rosset and Grove Press also published French surrealists, American Beat poets, German expressionists, and Games People Play: The Basic Handbook of Transactional Analysis, by Eric C. Berne.

I used to own older, used Grove Press editions of Tropic Of Cancer, The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, and Waiting for Godot. I took pride on owning those editions of those books because they were published by Grove Press, and also were excellent examples of and for the company.

But books, like cars, often get so old that they must be replaced. I bought a new edition of Tropic Of Cancer published by the New American Library and The Autobiography Of Malcolm X with an edition published by Ballentine Books. Both companies, I assure you, would not have published those books during the 1960s.

But I sill have that old Grove Press copy of Waiting For Godot with me. If it's not in good shape, it's in good-enough-for-me shape.

Happy Groundhog Day

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and razor lay crossed...


...at first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes

First published 90 years ago today in Paris: Ulysses, by James Joyce.

So noted.

Above is a picture of the author, stylin' and profilin'.

Kid-Glove Evil

While I was going through my books, because I brought most of mine to my new apartment and found out I don't have enough room for all of them: Or possibly three-quarters of them.

One of them I plan to sell or donate is One Half of Robertson Davies, a selection of essays by the Canadian author. It has one quote I want to put here so it's on the record and easy for me to retrieve.

It's from the essay "Phantasmagoria and Dream Grotto," which was one ofthe lectureshe gave in November 1976 at Trinity College, Toronto, on the theme Evil in Literature.

He mentions the 19thcentury English novelist T Atnohny Trollope, which he said some people read "in search of a special quality of well-bred nullity, relieved by intrigue."

However, he mentions Trollope's seriousness of intent:

The Trollopian world is a disquieting place, when you really explore it. I never cease to be surprised that Victorian fathers and the fussy Puritans who controlled Victorian circulating libraries allowed Trollope to fall into the hands of innocent young women;a girl with her head on straight could learn more about the kid-glove evil of the world -- about selfishness, money madness, sexual manipulation and cold-hearted social climbing -- from Trollope than from any other Victorian, and it was all presented with a manner which seemed to say: this is how it is; what do you make of it?

And I have seen the kid-glove evils that Davies mentioned among the middle class of central Indiana, especially those who tend to vote Republican and set the moral tone here. And this is why I despise them.

I have also been reviewing some books about Nazi Germany. Now, the sins committed by the kid-glove wearers is nowhere near what the Nazis did. But those folks are rarely blameless.

And I am sure that many Germans of the time practiced these kid-glove evils while looking away at the greater evils.

A Suprise Christmas Gift

Sometimes, the best Christmas gifts are things that you didn't want, but are very glad to get anyway.

Such a gift came to me a little more than two weeks ago.

Between 2:30-3 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 23, in a parking lot on West 86th Street in Indianapolis, I was unloading some paper grocery sacks full of books from my car.

I was planning to sell them at Half Price Books to see what money I could get for them instead of just donating them to charity. I did it as part of my move from my old apartment to my new apartment.

As I was putting the bags on a cart the store lent me, an overweight woman came up and said, "Are you planning to sell those books?"

I was tired because I woke early that day to do several chores related to my move. And when I get tired, I often get angry.

I thought No bitch, I'm fucking putting these book on a fucking cart for my own fucking health. Why the fuck do you want to know?

But I held my tongue. I wasn't that angry. Besides, it was still the Christmas season; peace on Earth and good will toward men would still apply at least for me.

"Would you take $80 for your books?" she asked.

"Hell yes!" I said, taking the assured money, because the price I had received before for books I've taken to Half Price Books has varied greatly. One time I had taken six grocery sacks full of books and only got $40 for them.

(Note: Recently I took four grocery sacks full of books and a half-full sack to Half Price for sale. I received a bid of $37 for them.)

I helped the woman put the books into the trunk of her car. She said her company, a radiology business on the northwest side of Indianapolis, donated books for U.S. military personnel overseas.

So that was my Christmas present for the season. My brothers, their families, and I don't exchange gifts. And my parents, in the last few years before they died, gave us money instead of gifts.

Sad Picture From These Times

That's a picture I found on the internet. It was taken the next-to last day of a Borders, in a location I forgot to note.

As you might know. Borders declared Chapter 7 bankruptcy and decided to close all its stoies. I had written about the bankruptcy earlier this year; one of my posts is here.

I remember when the first Borders opened in Indianapolis just before Thanksgiving 1986: Almost 25 years ago. Before it opened, Indy was not well served by its bookstores; most of the new books were sold at BDalton or Waldenbooks in the malls, and the selection was primarily best sellers and paperbacks.

I remember going into the new Borders and finding books from the Loeb Classical Library of the Harvard University Press. That was a pleasant surprise because it was something you'd never see in the mall bookstores. Although I never bought a book from the series, I was happy to know that they were easily available.

During the week before Labor Day, I made a couple of trips to two of the Borders in the Indianapolis area that were still open. Among my purchases were, in alphabetical order:

• Bright Star, a collection of poems and love letters by John Keats, inspired by his love for Fanny Brawne;
• Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov in a new translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky;
• The Informant, by Kurt Eichenwald, about price fixing by Archer Daniels Midland;
• Laugh Lines, a collection of short comic plays;
• The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov;
• The Secret Lives of Hoarders by Matt Paxton;
• Red to Black, a espionage novel by Alex Dryden;
• Snow, by the Turkish novelist and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk.
• And Spies of the Balkans, another espionage novel, by Alan Furst.

I'd like to think that my purchases helped, in their small way, to settle Borders' debts.

ADDENUM: The last 31 stores of the chain, located in 18 states, will close tomorrow, according to a story in The Huffington Post.

Borders Bankruptcy

Borders, where I worked one Christmas season and where many of my friends had worked, has filed for bankruptcy.

I had read about a possible bankruptcy on the net and had noted it in my journal, but now it's official.

Here's the story, as reported by Reuters:

NEW YORK – Borders Group Inc., the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain, filed for bankruptcy protection, after years of sharp sales declines that made it impossible to manage its crushing debt load, and it plans to close nearly one-third of its stores.

Its inability to garner significant online business and its near absence from the growing digital books market have made it difficult for Borders to compete with larger rival Barnes & Noble Inc. and online retailer Amazon.com Inc.

Borders had liabilities of $1.29 billion and assets of $1.28 billion as of December 25, 2010, according to documents filed on Wednesday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan.

Borders Group President Mike Edward said in a statement that the chain "does not have the capital resources it needs to be a viable competitor."

Borders said in January it might have to file for bankruptcy if it could not meet certain conditions for securing a $550 million credit facility from GE Capital, a unit of General Electric Co.

It failed to meet those conditions, which included arranging financings with other lenders, vendors and landlords.

In bankruptcy, GE Capital will provide Borders with $505 million in debtor-in-possession financing to allow it to continue operating, contingent on court approval.

Borders, whose second largest shareholder William Ackman has said it was his worst investment ever, had been preserving its cash by delaying payments to suppliers, such as publishers and landlords.

Sales at Borders declined by double-digit percentage rates in 2008, 2009 and in each quarter in 2010 it has reported.

Borders, which has 6,100 full time staff, operates 508 namesake superstores as well as a chain of smaller Waldenbooks stores.

The company said it would close about 30 percent of its stores in the next several weeks and plans to continue to pay its employees.

Borders' largest unsecured creditors include major publishers that provide the books it sells. Borders owes Pearson PLC's Penguin $41.2 million, Hachette Book Group USA $36.9 million, and CBS's Simon & Schuster $33.8 million, according to court documents.

The case is In re: Borders Group Inc, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No: 11-10614.

ADDENUM, FEBUARY 17: Borders has announced that it will close two of seven stores it runs in the Indianapolis area. One is in downtown Indianapolis. The other is in Carmel.

I wrote in this post that Borders has five stores in the metropolitan Indianapolis area. Besides the one in Carmel, it has one is Noblesville, two in northeast Indianapolis and one in Greenwood right across the Marion County line. I had forgotten about the store downtown. Also, I didn't know of a store it had at the Indianapolis International Airport.

But now, you have the correct information before you.

Happy Birthday...

to Ulysses by James Joyce, published on this date back in 1922.

Seen with one of its most well-known readers.

Among its lesser-known readers...yours truly.

So noted.

Also, some wag put this picture on a web site:

Someone's Dream

...or someone's nightmare, but not mine.

Unusual and striking, nevertheless.

When I first saw the picture, I thought of three references in literature, drama and film:

• The quote "Tell me about the rabbits, George," from John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men;
• The 6 foot, 3.5 inch tall pooka seen only by Elwood P. Dowd in the play and movie Harvey, by Mary Chase.
• Frank, the spirit seen only by Donnie Darko in the movie of the same name.
  

NOTE: Photograph from pictureisunrelated.com.

Literary Connections

Recently, I read this quote, which is the opening sentence from the novel Neuromancer, by William Gibson:

The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.

Immediately, I was reminded of the opening lines of poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot:

Let us go then, you and I
When the evening is spread against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.

And in some parallels, Neuromancer was one of the first and among the most influential cyberpunk novels. The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was one of the first and among the most influential modernist poems.

The Good Brother

Recently I read The Good Brother, a novel by Chris Offutt, a native of eastern Kentucky who often writes about Appalachia and its people. I had read Kentucky Straight, a book of his short stories, and The Same River Twice, a memoir, and had enjoyed them.

In the book, Virgil Caudell, a resident of eastern Kentucky, kills a man who had killed his brother. He flees so he won't be killed, which would continue the blood feud, and changes his name to Joe Tiller.

(By the way, that also happens to be the name of the former head football coach at Purdue Univerity. I don't know if Offutt knew that; someday I might ask him through an email.)

He ends up in the mountains of Montana and meets some hardcore antigovernment survivalists. But he doesn't share their beliefs about the feds:

Joe didn't consider the government an enemy. It was more of an entity to manipulate if you wanted fresh gravel on your road, or a family member out of jail. People at home didn't worry about the government; they ignored it. Men hunted out of season to feed their children. Families made moonshine for export, and when demand changed they grew marijuana. Laws didn't have much bearing in the hills, especially when the sheriff was an elected official.

And that's an interesting point.

Man And Basement: A Book Review

Recently I've been reading a lot more books than usual. I'm doing that to decide which ones I want to sell or donate.

A book I read was The Man In My Basement, by Walter Mosley, probably better known as the author of the Easy Rawlins mystery series. In the book, a man named Anniston Bennet imprisons himself in the basement of a home owned by Charles Dodd-Blakey, who lives in the Sag Harbor area, which is near the Hamptons in eastern Long Island. Bennet did it as a form of penance. He was a player in international political economy, for lack of a better term, and he committed many, many evil deeds.

I will donate the book. It was interesting enough to read once to pass the time, but not for another possible read in the future.

However, Mosley had several passages that caught my attention and gave me new angles on and explanations about life. So I'll post them here.

Here's the first. In it, Dodd-Blakey meets a neighbor, a young white woman:

She was from a local family and therefore accepted me as part of the community. Being a Negro, I was different. We would never be real friends. But neither of us really wanted that, nor did we feel left out of something. And so it was pleasant when we did cross paths. Good morning meant just that.

Here's one where Dodd-Blakey is watching some deer:

I loved to watch deer watching me. They were so timid and ignorant of everything but the possible threat. People think that they're cowardly, but I've been charged by a male or two. I respected them, because with no defense except for their quick feet they lived out in the wild with no law or protection. I once saw a group of 15 or more of them swimming out to Shelter Island. Their heads were just above the water, they looked frightened and desperate out there. Cowards don't face terror. Cowards live on back roads, behind closed doors, with the TVs blasting out anything to keep the silence and darkeness from intruding.

A third one is when Bennet explains love to Dodd-Blakey:

"Love, as the poet says, is like the spring. It grows on you and seduces you slowly and gently, but it holds tight like the roots of a tree. You know until you're ready to go that you can't move, that you would have to mutilate yourself in order to be free. That's the feeling. It doesn't last, at least it doesn't have to. But it holds on like a steel claw in your chest. Even if the tree dies, trhe roots cling to you. I've been men and women give up everything for love that once was."

In this one, Bennet explains how people are motivated:

"My actions were ... evil, criminal. But it was not me; it was the world around me. Not me but the commerce and the language of our world ... Death and starvation are integral parts of our language system, our form of communication. Do what I say or else. Do your job or you're fired. These words carry consequence. To avoid pain we comply. Or we don't and then we die, Our logic is evil, so the the smartest and most successful are devils. Like me, I am a good citizen ande the worst demon."

And the last quote is Dodd-Blakey's casual thought while reading a science fiction book:

Why was I alive and seeing and thinking and dreaming if everything was just stoplights and television, test and failures, red wine and death?

I've wondered something like that many times and found that quote was an elegant way to say it.