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THE GARDEN OF EROS
The Stor
tory of the Paris Expatriates and the Post-W
ost-War Literary Scene
John Calder
(Alma)
John Calder. The enduring English
publisher. Who took chances,
Burroughs, Beckett and others.
Morphed into Calder and Boyars
at one point. Apparently that
fusion ended in acrimony. He’s
been around the block a few times,
paid his dues, has stories to tell
and was in on so many events
important in the alternative
English publishing scene post war.
So there are few better equipped
to relate that ‘underground’
publishing story that takes in Paris,
New York, Spain, London, and
involves Grove Press, Maurice
Girodias, the Olympia Press,
Evergreen Review, Henry Miller,
censorship battles, Alexander
Trocchi and so much more
besides.
Nothing happens without a
precedent and Calder outlines the
stories and history that came
before the turbulent 1950s and
1960s. The factions at work in war
torn Paris during the Second
World War, the politics that
divided the literary world, the
resistors and the Nazi
collaborators. The internecine
struggles for cultural ascendancy.
Calder paints a lively, stressful
landscape. And then Paris is
liberated and the city swings back
into its previous life. Hemingway
propping up a bar. Henry Miller
like a deer frozen in the headlights
at a court hearing to determine if
he was an obscene writer or not.
The French were forgiving and
lenient and sometimes persistently
draconian.
George Plimpton and The
Paris Review journal that emerged
from the wreckage of the war and
in influx of Americans into Paris –
this gets the full spotlight from
Calder. Naturally there is a
revolving door of writers, editors,
chancers, lovely young girls who
worked at the Review, writers. Of
course Calder speculates on the
probability of The Paris Review
being financed by the CIA. How
else would it have survived so long?
One figure stands out like a
colossus in Calder’s book, that of
Maurice Girodias. A renegade
publisher if ever there was one.
His Olympia Press a curious
mixture of the avant-garde and the
pornographic. For every Burroughs
or Beckett there was a ‘db’ – a
dirty book. Girodias published
them endlessly and was chased
through the courts incessantly for
his brash nerve and cheek. The
Calder portrait of Girodias, as he
tracks and remembers him
through the decades, is
surprisingly affectionate, when you
consider Girodias was a rogue,
who was a slippery customer when
it came to paying his bills.
If you need to discover Maurice
Girodias, you need look no further
than Calder. Alexander Trocchi,
another ‘character’ who charmed
and conned his way through life
and who ultimately succumbed to
his drug addiction, he too receives
the Calder spotlight.
Grove Press, Barney Rosset,
they went together like hand and
glove. Calder, again, draws a
picture of a shy, yet brash Rosset.
A man who would not entertain
any view other than his own, an
individualist, risk taker. A man
who – as is well documented –
took on the censorship police and
won. Calder does a good job.
John Calder was there, an
insider, consequently his
recollections and thoughts are
invaluable. He has an easy style, a
little ‘old school.’ A rewarding
book.
Paperback by Alma Press
ISBN 978-09574522-1-3
Brian Dalton
NEELI CHERKOVSKI
Falling Light
(Edition Baes)
Back last year Edition Baes, the
publishing house founded by Elias
Schneitter, issued a lovingly presented
hardcover containing the poetry of
Neeli Cherkovski. Now Cherkovski has
been something of an enduring
presence on the San Francisco poetry
landscape for a decade or two. Mostly
published in small editions, firmly
rooted in that old North Beach and
Beat tradition of the 1950s. Sometimes
I feel about him that he was born too
late, instead he should have been part
of that San Francisco poetry renaissance
of the 1950s and mixed with Whalen,
Welch, McClure, Snyder, Rexroth and
all the others who made up that scene.
Instead he has positioned himself in a
place totally his own. He was a close
friend of Charles Bukowski, which
shows he has allegiance to no one, heck,
they even started a short lived magazine
together. Cherkovski also produced the
first biography of Bukowski. Plus
another biography of Lawrence
Ferlinghetti. And he’s responsible for
the excellent Whitman’s Wild Children, I
fear that one is out of print. That’s a
crime.
Here in this new book are contemporary
poems and some older ones. Poetry
recalling Harold Norse, times in East
Hollywood with Bukowski, for Ezra
Pound, Coit Tower, of course an SF
landmark. There is a melancholy that
bathes everything he writes.
Published in English with a German
language text alongside.
ISBN 9-78-3950-355970
Hardcover
Edition Baes www.edition-baes.at
Dawn Swoop
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