Fighting the Good Fight: Freedom of Expression in America
The most recent issue of "Newsweek" includes a long essay titled "The Most Dangerous
Man in Publishing." It is an article about Barney Rosset, the contentious and
transformative publisher of Grove Press and "Evergreen Review." He purchased Grove in
1953 for $3000 and set out issuing controversial literary work right from the start.
When he published Jean Genet's "Waiting for Godot," the first year's sales were 400
copies for a play that has now sold 2 million copies. A forceful and inspired man who
always took chances and loved going to court to take on puritanical censorship in any
form, he is not as well known in America as he should be.
He fought for the freedom to publish Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" which had been
banned in this country. To pave the way for winning that case, he published D. H.
Lawrence's "Lady Chatterly's Lover." Other literary giants whose work he brought to the
fore over four decades of publishing are Mailer, Ginsberg, and Burroughs. His literary
and political quarterly "Evergreen Review," which eventually claimed a readership of
more than 125,000 people, published Albee, Sontag, Kline, Stoppard, and Supreme Court
Justice William O. Douglas. Rosset snatched up the "Autobiography of Malcolm X" after
the Black Muslim's assassination when bigger houses were afraid to publish it and
collected and published the diaries of Che Guevara.
I highly recommend this significant and probing essay written by Louisa Thomas which
appears in the December 15 issue of "Newsweek" and is available online at
newsweek.com as important reading for anyone interested in our hard fought freedom of
expression and the pioneers who helped us find our way.
Risk and being outside the box seems to reap rewards not just social justice for those representated by leaders and dissenting voices.
Personally I have been attacked for a poem on the hypocrisy of the established Anglican church, but I don't care.
Alllen J. Davies
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Of course I admire Barney Russett and the authors he championed. And your articles, as always, is well done and informative.
Still, because I believe so strongly in Freedom of Speech, I would like to say that the battle fought by Mr. Russett was half a century ago. We certainly won the right to be vulgar and aberant and violent in our books, if such is our way of expressing ourselves.
HOWEVER, there is now a new battle to be fought and won: the right of writers to express and publish ideas/events that do not toe the political line.
I especially admire the German Jewish writer Edgar Hilsenrath, who in his works portrays his fellow Jews who were incarcerated or forced into ghettos -- as human beings instead of all Saints. Hilsenrath, himself a concentration camp victim in WWII, writes about those prisoners who took advantage of others while they were weak. Yes, there were murderers, con-men, thieves, traitors and even conniving women among the populations of those camps. They weren't ALL pious, courageous, perfect victims.
Say that courage these days, especially in the USA. Of course, Hilsenrath has been savaged by critics. He was even jailed in, I think, France. He broke a stereotype and that is absolutely verboten these days when writing about certain minorities.
There ARE some vicious and violent women/blacks/Native Americans/third-world immigrants/homosexuals in our society. But if you write about them in your book, because you want to be honest and truly color-blind -- then you will not be published by traditional publishers. They are terrified of public opinion and of our rather single-minded liberal government (who has demonized writers like me -- heterosexual white middle-class males).
I am a perfect example of the oppressed writer in the USA. My most powerful book (IMO) is about a Southern soldier during the Civil War. The Politically Correct tyrants in publishing INSIST a Confederate character be an ignorant, red-neck bigot.
My Southern soldier is a fairly well-educated person consumed by the questions of good and evil in the horrific battles he witnesses -- and in which he participates. He is in no way a racist. He is fighting because Northern troops are invading his home.
So I am black-balled by the big publishers because I insist on the truth. I know my story is true because it is day-by-day based on the actual diary of a Confederate soldier -- one Johnny Hess, Pvt., Co. G, 29th Virginia Infantry, Pickett's Division, Longstreet's Corps.
This book was read and fully endorsed by the late author Norman Mailer. Nevertheless, I broke a stereotype. Nor is my main character a woman, a disfigured person, a minority or even a homosexual. He is just like you or me. He could have easily been a woman, as they fought in that war as soldiers. But I insisted on veracity.
Whitmore Press had the courage and foresight to publish the book. It is selling very slowly but steadily. 'Nuff said!
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