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Barney
Rosset: A List
by
Mike Topp
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Soon
after Barney Rosset's seventy-fifth birthday party in 1997, his
companion Astrid Meyers made a list of some of the things he "likes
extremely." It is a curious list, yet a revealing one: playing
pool, Korean women, tennis, rum and Coke, spanking, Victorian erotica,
dogs, Man's Fate (Malraux), photography, Thailand, fried chicken,
and three-bean salad. He also likes rearranging furniture, strippers,
bars at three in the morning, primitive and naive art, and Samuel
Beckett. A catalog of the things he heartily dislikes would be even
longer. Astrid names only a few: rudeness, zaftig women, Rudy Giuliani,
spicy foods, and Chicago. The list should be extended, for he very
definitely dislikes certain whole sections of civilization (as an
eighth-grader he published a newsletter called Anti-Everything)
and in particular, any form of oppression: instruction manuals,
Don't Walk signs, automatic transmissions, smoke and dust, the religious
right, politicians, and practically everyone with whom he has been
forced to have business relations. Rosset is shy, daunting, imposing,
quick-tempered, courageous, and morbidly sensitive. He has a talent
for adapting himself to uncongenial surroundings, and much of his
life has been spent in passionate rebellion against censorship laws
that people of milder temperament learned to endure and to eventually
ignore. At seventy-seven he has a few loyal friends, a somewhat
longer list of bitter enemies, and has published more than a dozen
authors of such quality as to assure him a permanent place in the
history of publishing.
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