The Lives of Barney Rosset, In a 'Disorienting' New Memoir

“The book is a metaphor for Barney himself,” said John Oakes, co-publisher of OR Books, which is putting out Barney Rosset’s memoir, My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship, this week, 30 years after Rosset started it. That’s a long lead time for any book, even a “conflicted enterprise,” as Oakes called it. He added, “I admired the guy. He was a really conflicted guy in all sorts of ways: his wealth, about the idea of selling books and trying to have books that were popular and not popular. The life of his biography reflects it.” Then, speaking over Skype in November, he turned even more philosophical, almost apologetic: The book might “have been cleaner but it would not have been Rosset.” He explained: “We were careful not to fill in any gaps.”

But that’s not the only unusual thing about the memoir, he went on to say. Over the years, as 20 people worked on the book. “I had a huge advantage over every other editor,” said Oakes, who worked for Grove in the 1980s. “Barney was dead.” In an unusual move, Oakes is now bringing out the hardcover two months after it came out in paperback. (The press sells direct to consumers over the internet, but this hardcover is a co-production with Counterpoint.)

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