Rosset, at Ease in the Underground

Lately it seems anniversaries have people talking. There’s the moon landing, of course, and Woodstock. This July also marks the thirtieth anniversary of Disco Demolition Night at Cominsky Park, as well as the year Saddam Husein became the President of Iraq. 200 hundred years ago Napoleon made mince meat of the Teutonic Knights, and not so long ago, in 1999, Microsoft sent its first public message via MSN. All well and good. These events duly deserve our reflection. But the one we really want to talk about took place in 1959, the year in which the United States Post Office deemed Lady Chatterly’s Lover a pornographic offense, and spurred a trial that would ultimately shape the future of American publishing. The publisher was Barny Rosset of Grove Press, the author, D.H. Lawrence; the issue at hand: the First Amendment.

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Watch Your Step, Son

It’s a bodacious Tuesday. 40 years after the moon landing, Buzz Aldrin waxes poetic:  “I, along with mankind, achieved a pinnacle of magnificence of advancement of humanity to come down from the trees. We came down from the trees. We came out of the caves. We rubbed two sticks together. We made wheels. We had an automobile. Then we decided that we could fly like a bird. We dreamed of things up in the sky that were mysterious, mythical things, and we challenged ourselves to put a human on the moon. What a bodacious challenge confronting people on the surface of the Earth. And as a result of that challenge, two guys managed to walk on the surface. That’s magnificent.” Sci-fi writers and readers weren’t so thrilled. Tom Wolfe hasn’t seen the feat matched. Another pioneer was the first female Pulitzer Prize winner, Marguerite Higgins. Her novel, War in Korea, has just been published for the first time in Korean. Neil Young may be the fourteenth greatest Canadian, but Alexandra Molotkow would rather America keep him. In case you missed it, explore the relevance of God in the Atlantic. A bit of advice – keep the moon landing in mind. – Andrew Geer

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Despite our best efforts to evoke the Monday sun, we are met with the lingering gloom of the weekend.  Said gloom arrives in the form of death: Mr. McCourt, you are charged. Of course you were not a seminal American author, nor an Irish one. Of course your efforts were described as part Hallmark, part Proust. Nonetheless, we swing our sword through the misty thicket and salute you. Frank, we put back a slug of Jamesons for you. Today we honor your writing, legacy, and mind a bit all the delineations that come what may shiver past the bone of life and gnaw into a dead man’s grave with brutal hunger. Got that? Nah, you don’t. That’s called spontaneity. A practice pressed in today’s virtual paper. Anyway, once we were privileged by Mike McCourt — Frank’s bro — in a San Francisco bar. From our conversation now one thing rings in 0ur weepy ears. Tale-wise, Mike was hirsute: “Frank is a great storyteller, and our story has to be told. But he has forgotten things in his attempt to remember.” Ah, me. Shall do we all. Down the hatch, Frank. And to you all we bid brief Mondays and rowdy, roundabout brawls. — Kevin Murphy

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It’s Friday afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. So up we wrap this week’s posting with something that’s interesting, easy to digest and generally just good to know. It’s the novelist John Irving, talking shop. There’s plenty to glean from his conversation with Book Lounge. So listen up and get your learn on. It’s not the weekend yet. – Kevin Murphy