The Most Dangerous Man in Publishing

"It was a very exciting, febrile time," said Richard Seaver, who joined Grove as an editor just before the "Chatterley" court case. "Lady Chatterley's Lover" was a bestseller, and Rosset was already preparing to publish "Tropic." But first he had to convince Henry Miller, who feared that the attention would compromise his outsider status. "I said, 'No! That's ridiculous'," Rosset said. "I believed it at the time. I couldn't quite see that we ourselves would push, push, push to get it to be a textbook—and succeed." Miller only agreed to sell the rights after his Parisian and German publishers interceded.

When "Tropic" was finally published, the lawsuits crashed down in waves. Rosset and Miller themselves were charged in Brooklyn for selling and conspiring to sell an "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent, sadistic, masochistic, and disgusting book." In Chicago, when a prosecutor accused Rosset of being motivated only by greed, Rosset pulled out a college term paper he'd written on Miller and began to read it aloud. Finally, in 1964, the Supreme Court ruled—without briefs or arguments—that "Tropic of Cancer" was not obscene because it had social value.

As usual, Rosset was already charging ahead. Burroughs's "Naked Lunch," with incendiary portrayals of homosexuality and drug use, came next. The assault on conventional morals continued with books by John Rechy, Hubert Selby Jr., Jean Genet, and Pauline Réage, whose sadomasochistic "Story of O" had scandalized even Paris. "We did almost a yearly bombshell," said Seaver. "Barney loved— I won't say he loved the litigation, but he loved everything that went with it." The trials were expensive, but the books were selling. By the mid-'60s Grove found that it could—by virtue of its own success, as well as shifting mores—be profitable and still be disreputably renegade. The new cool was democratic and expansive. It was anticapitalist, but it liked the things money could buy. The books mattered more than the parties, but the parties mattered too—and Rosset threw some good ones. Lennon partied with Mailer; painters mingled with poets. Beckett was baffled by Burroughs when Barney introduced them, but on the Grove list they coexisted easily. Prudery and repression were alive and well—rebellion needs its enemy—but there seemed to be a widening sphere in which experimentation was possible and even lucrative. Rosset took advantage.

Grove was picking up writers from around the world. The Evergreen Review, which began as a quarterly in a trade-paperback format, expanded its reach. Edward Albee published his first play in its pages. Susan Sontag's "Against Interpretation" appeared there. Frank O'Hara, Franz Kline, Tom Stoppard, and scores of other writers and artists contributed, many of them early in their careers. Meanwhile, Grove was becoming more political—not just in its defense of freedom of expression. After Malcolm X was assassinated and Doubleday scuttled his autobiography, Grove snatched it up. When Che Guevara died, Rosset entered the hunt for Che's diaries—prompting anti-Castro militants to bomb the Grove offices with a fragmentation grenade. (In the movie "Obscene," Rosset tells the story with obvious delight.) This wasn't the only time Grove or Rosset was a target for violence. Around the time Valerie Solanas shot Andy Warhol, she was spotted lurking near Rosset's office with an ice pick.

The dangers were real, but they increased the sense of adventure. "It made the work more exciting to know that you were pissing off a lot people," said Nat Sobel, a Grove executive. It was the '60s, and politics and culture were interrelated as never before. Experimentation was the watchword—and not just on the page. Rosset was in the scene but not entirely of it. He invited writers to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, but he "got scared" and didn't go himself. ("Jean Genet, he was there. He wasn't scared of nothing!" Rosset said, pointing to the poster of Genet, Burroughs and Ginsberg, which had been an Evergreen cover.) Rosset took amphetamines but freaked out when Timothy Leary gave him LSD, hallucinating that one of his ex-wife's paintings was attacking him. He was trying to reconcile the romance of the desperado with the imperatives of his job. "We were not totally deaf to commerce," said Seaver.

Inevitably, with commercial success came increased commercialism. Evergreen Review became a glossy (called Evergreen), and in 1968 Grove launched an ad campaign in the subway, urging riders to "Join the Underground." Circulation of the magazine rose from 7,500 in 1957 to 125,000 in 1968 and continued to rise. But Rosset ran his business by instinct, not budgets. He succeeded because he had a sense for both the establishment and anti-establishment, and he was able to make one interesting to the other. "Grove in some ways was a master of achieving attention for their publications," said Peter Mayer, "both outside and then finally inside the main channels." William O. Douglas, the Supreme Court justice, excerpted his memoirs in the April 1970 issue—and so had to recuse himself when Grove went to court to fight a ban on a Swedish film called "I Am Curious (Yellow)." The film—today considered unremarkable soft porn—made millions. Newly flush, Grove bought a six-story building and installed air conditioning, an executive elevator and a front door in the shape of a "G."