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Barney Rosset Created Safe Haven for Underground Literary Lions
New biopic documents life of the man behind the men who changed the face of American culture
Barney Rosset (1967) in Obscene, a 2008 Arthouse Films release (Photo: Arthouse Films)
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If you’ve ever taken for granted how easy it is to lay your hands on a copy of Naked Lunch, Tropic of Cancer or even Lady Chatterley’s Lover, the story of Barney Rosset and Grove Press—the man, and his publishing house, who went broke fighting in court to bring you these and other now accepted yet once taboo staples of literary culture—is essential viewing.
Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press is not just a stirring biopic about the publisher whose oppositional nature changed the cultural landscape of the last 50 years, it’s also a film that encourages its audience to look at society today and ask: Which authors could “wake people up” now? Rosset’s history reads like a who’s who of modern literary and political icons: He introduced Samuel Beckett to America, published Beat heroes Kerouac and Ginsberg and tackled the writing of Malcolm X and Che Guevara. Grove Press and Rosset’s journal, The Evergreen Review, were some of twentieth-century counterculture’s brightest jewels.
These days it seems unthinkable that we wouldn’t have access to such authors. But, then again, Rosset fought hard, was repeatedly harassed and, of course, spied on by US intelligence. This begs the question: Who is being watched now? And, if Sarah Palin became president, who would be scrutinized next?