How Norman Mailer Saved Barney Rosset and Grove Press

Abstract

Justin Bozung reviews Barney Rosset’s memoir Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship (O/R Books). Bozung faults Rosset for reducing Mailer to a footnote, although Mailer was Grove Press’s star witness in the obscenity trials of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch in Boston and Vilgot Sjöman’s film I Am Curious (Yellow) in New York, and he reprints extended excerpts of that courtroom testimony. He notes other omissions concerning Grove authors but praises the memoir’s chapters on Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, and Burroughs, especially Rosset’s recollections of Beckett’s final years.