Evergreen Review
Encyclopedia
Barney Rosset
Barnet Lee Rosset, Jr. is the former owner of the publishing house Grove Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Evergreen Review. He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and later was the American...
, publisher of Grove Press
Grove Press
Grove Press is an American publishing imprint that was founded in 1951. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it into an alternative book press in the United States. The Atlantic Monthly Press, under the aegis of its...
. It existed in print from 1957 through 1973, and was re-launched online in 1998. Its diversity can be seen in the March-April 1960 issue, which included work by Albert Camus
Albert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
, Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers...
, Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
and LeRoi Jones, as well as Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
's first play, The Zoo Story
The Zoo Story
Not to be confused with Zoo Story: Life in the Garden of Captives the book about Lowry Park ZooThe Zoo Story is American playwright Edward Albee's first play; written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks...
. The Camus piece was a reprint of "Reflections on the Guillotine", first published in English in the Review in 1957 and reprinted on this occasion as the magazine's "contribution to the world-wide debate on the problem of capital punishment
Capital punishment
Capital punishment, the death penalty, or execution is the sentence of death upon a person by the state as a punishment for an offence. Crimes that can result in a death penalty are known as capital crimes or capital offences. The term capital originates from the Latin capitalis, literally...
and, more specifically, the case of Caryl Whittier Chessman
Caryl Chessman
Caryl Whittier Chessman was a convicted robber and rapist who gained fame as a death row inmate in California. Chessman's case attracted worldwide attention, and as a result he became a cause célèbre for the movement to ban capital punishment.-Crime and conviction:Born in St...
."
Writers
Evergreen Review debuted pivotal works by Samuel BeckettSamuel Beckett
Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
, Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski
Henry Charles Bukowski was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles...
, William S. Burroughs
William S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Duras
Marguerite Donnadieu, better known as Marguerite Duras was a French writer and film director.-Background:...
, Jean Genet
Jean Genet
Jean Genet was a prominent and controversial French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but later took to writing...
, Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...
, Günter Grass
Günter Grass
Günter Wilhelm Grass is a Nobel Prize-winning German author, poet, playwright, sculptor and artist.He was born in the Free City of Danzig...
, Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...
, Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
Norman Kingsley Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, poet, playwright, screenwriter, and film director.Along with Truman Capote, Joan Didion, Hunter S...
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
, Frank O’Hara, Kenzaburo Oe
Kenzaburo Oe
is a Japanese author and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.Ōe was awarded...
, Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz
Octavio Paz Lozano was a Mexican writer, poet, and diplomat, and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature.-Early life and writings:...
, Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter, CH, CBE was a Nobel Prize–winning English playwright and screenwriter. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party , The Homecoming , and Betrayal , each of which he adapted to...
, Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
, Tom Stoppard
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard OM, CBE, FRSL is a British playwright, knighted in 1997. He has written prolifically for TV, radio, film and stage, finding prominence with plays such as Arcadia, The Coast of Utopia, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, Professional Foul, The Real Thing, and Rosencrantz and...
, Derek Walcott
Derek Walcott
Derek Alton Walcott, OBE OCC is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright, writer and visual artist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1992 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2011 for White Egrets. His works include the Homeric epic Omeros...
and Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
. United States Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
William O. Douglas
William Orville Douglas was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. With a term lasting 36 years and 209 days, he is the longest-serving justice in the history of the Supreme Court...
wrote a controversial piece for the magazine in 1969. Kerouac and Ginsberg regularly had their writing published in the magazine.
Illustrators
Although primarily a literary magazine, Evergreen Review always contained numerous illustrations. In its early years, these included a small number of cartoonCartoon
A cartoon is a form of two-dimensional illustrated visual art. While the specific definition has changed over time, modern usage refers to a typically non-realistic or semi-realistic drawing or painting intended for satire, caricature, or humor, or to the artistic style of such works...
s. By the mid-1960s, many illustrations and photographs were of an erotic
Erotica
Erotica are works of art, including literature, photography, film, sculpture and painting, that deal substantively with erotically stimulating or sexually arousing descriptions...
nature, including a serialized graphic novel, The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist
The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist
"The Adventures of Phoebe Zeit-Geist" was an American comic strip, written by Michael O'Donoghue and drawn by Frank Springer. It was published as a serial in the magazine Evergreen Review and later in book form as a Grove Press hardcover in 1968 and trade paperback in 1969. It was reissued as a...
by writer Michael O'Donoghue
Michael O'Donoghue
Michael O'Donoghue was a writer and performer. He was known for his dark and destructive style of comedy and humor, was a major contributor to National Lampoon magazine, and was the first head writer of Saturday Night Live.-Childhood:O'Donoghue was born Michael Henry Donohue in Sauquoit, New York...
and artist Frank Springer
Frank Springer
Frank Springer was an American comic book and comic strip artist best known for Marvel Comics' Dazzler and Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D....
. It was later published as a trade paperback.
Evergreen evolution
Ken Jordan, writing in the introduction to Evergreen Review Reader, 1957-1996, described the counter-cultural contents and the impact of the publication on readers:
- The first issue featured an essay by Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and an interview with the great New Orleans jazz drummer Baby DoddsBaby DoddsWarren "Baby" Dodds was a jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana."Baby" Dodds was the younger brother of clarinetist Johnny Dodds. He is regarded as one of the very best jazz drummers of the pre-big band era, and one of the most important early jazz drummers...
. It also included a story of Samuel BeckettSamuel BeckettSamuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...
's Dante and the Lobster, the first of his many appearances in Evergreen's pages; these continued through the last issue published.
- The second issue was a landmark. A banner across the cover declared "San Francisco Scene," and inside held the first collection of work by the new Beat writers - including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gary SnyderGary SnyderGary Snyder is an American poet , as well as an essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist . Snyder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry...
, Michael McClureMichael McClureMichael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...
, Philip WhalenPhilip WhalenPhilip Glenn Whalen was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation.-Biography:...
, Jack Kerouac (before the publication of On The RoadOn the RoadOn the Road is a novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, written in April 1951, and published by Viking Press in 1957. It is a largely autobiographical work that was based on the spontaneous road trips of Kerouac and his friends across mid-century America. It is often considered a defining work of...
) and Allen Ginsberg, whose Howl had already been published as a pamphlet by Ferlinghetti's press, City LightsCity LightsCity Lights is a 1931 American silent film and romantic comedy-drama written by, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. It also has the leads Virginia Cherrill and Harry Myers. Although "talking" pictures were on the rise since 1928, City Lights was immediately popular. Today, it is thought of...
, and was confiscated by customs officials and faced trial for obscenity in San Francisco. The issue brought the Beats and Evergreen Review to the forefront of the American stage...
- Evergreen published writing that was literally counter to the culture, and if it was sexy, so much the better. In the context of the time, sex was politics, and the powers-that-be made the suppression of sexuality a political issue. The court battles that Grove Press fought for the legal publication of Lady Chatterly's LoverLady Chatterley's LoverLady Chatterley's Lover is a novel by D. H. Lawrence, first published in 1928. The first edition was printed privately in Florence, Italy with assistance from Pino Orioli; it could not be published openly in the United Kingdom until 1960...
, Tropic of CancerTropic of Cancer (novel)Tropic of Cancer is a novel by Henry Miller which has been described as "notorious for its candid sexuality" and as responsible for the "free speech that we now take for granted in literature." It was first published in 1934 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France, but this edition was banned in the...
, and Naked LunchNaked LunchNaked Lunch is a novel by William S. Burroughs originally published in 1959. The book is structured as a series of loosely-connected vignettes. Burroughs stated that the chapters are intended to be read in any order...
, and for the legal distribution of the film I Am Curious: YellowI Am Curious (Yellow)I Am Curious is a 1967 Swedish drama film written and directed by Vilgot Sjöman and starring Sjöman and Lena Nyman. It is a companion film to 1968's I Am Curious ; the two were initially intended to be one 3½ hour film...
, spilled onto the pages of Evergreen Review, and in 1964, an issue of Evergreen itself was confiscated in New York State by the Nassau CountyNassau County, New YorkNassau County is a suburban county on Long Island, east of New York City in the U.S. state of New York, within the New York Metropolitan Area. As of the 2010 census, the population was 1,339,532...
District Attorney on obscenity charges...
- All of this was done on a shoestring budget by a tiny staff. Barney Rosset started the magazine with editor Don AllenDon AllenDonald Ray "Don" Allen is a former professional American football fullback in the American Football League. He played college football at the University of Texas, and played professionally for the Denver Broncos in 1960.-References:...
and Fred Jordan, who was nominally the business manager in its early days. Richard SeaverRichard SeaverRichard Woodward Seaver was an American translator, editor and publisher. Seaver was instrumental in defying censorship, to bring to light works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Eugene Ionesco, E.M. Cioran, D.H. Lawrence, Jack...
joined the editorial team with the ninth issue, and Don Allen stepped back to become a contributing editor. Publication increased from quarterly to bimonthly to, in the late sixties, monthly, and the format changed from trade paperback to a full-sized, glossy magazine attaining a subscription base of some 40,000 copies and a newsstand circulation of 1000,000. The final issue, number 96, came out in 1973.
Online
The original Evergreen Review ceased publication in 1973, but the magazine was revived in 1998 in an online edition edited by founder Barney RossetBarney Rosset
Barnet Lee Rosset, Jr. is the former owner of the publishing house Grove Press, and publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Evergreen Review. He led a successful legal battle to publish the uncensored version of D. H. Lawrence's novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, and later was the American...
and his wife Astrid Myers. The online edition features flashbacks to previous Evergreen Review editions, as well as debuts by contemporary writers such as Dennis Nurkse
Dennis Nurkse
-Life:Nurkse is the son of the eminent economist Ragnar Nurkse. He has taught workshops at Rikers Island, and his poems about prison life appeared in The American Poetry Review, Evergreen Review, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, TriQuarterly, The Kenyon Review, and other magazines...
and Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican writer. She is credited with writing the first Spanglish novel YO-YO BOING! and the poetry trilogy Empire of Dreams , which chronicles the Latin American immigrant's experiences in the United States...
. Many issues are currently available online.
Other notable contributors to the new issues include Richard Cummings
Richard Cummings (writer)
Richard Cummings is an author, playwright, theorist and critic. He is the author of the comedy Soccer Moms From Hell and the biography of Allard Lowenstein, The Pied Piper - Allard Lowenstein and the Liberal Dream, which discloses Lowenstein's work for the CIA...
, Karl Taro Greenfeld
Karl Taro Greenfeld
Karl Taro Greenfeld is a journalist and author known primarily for his articles on life in modern Asia and both his fiction and non-fiction in The Paris Review....
, Valery Oişteanu
Valery Oisteanu
Valery Oişteanu is a Soviet-born Romanian and American poet, art critic, essayist, photographer and performance artist, whose style reflects the influence of Dada and Surrealism. Oişteanu is the author of more than a dozen published books of poetry, a book of short fiction, and a book of essays...
, Carmen Firan
Carmen Firan
Carmen Firan is a Romanian poet, novelist, short story writer, journalist, and playwright, resident in New York.She has published fifteen books of poetry, novels, essays and short stories...
, Andrew Huebner
Andrew Huebner
Andrew Huebner is an American author who lives in New York City. He is the author of American by Blood and We Pierce.-References:...
, Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, Alan Kaufman
Alan Kaufman
Alan Kaufman is an American novelist, memoirist and poet who was instrumental in the development of the Spoken Word movement in literature. He is the author of the memoir Jew Boy, the novel Matches, and is listed as editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry.He is also listed as co-editor of The...
, and Richard Milazzo
Richard Milazzo
Richard Milazzo was the editor and co-publisher of Out of London Press in the 1970s. Among the books he edited were The Syntactic Revolution: Collected Writings of Abraham Lincoln Gillespie and the first English facsimile edition of Pontormo’s Diary...
, among others.
See also
- New World WritingNew World WritingNew World Writing was a paperback magazine, a literary anthology series published by New American Library's Mentor imprint from 1951 until 1964....
- Moody Street IrregularsMoody Street IrregularsMoody Street Irregulars was an American publication dedicated to the history and the cultural influences of Jack Kerouac and the Beat Generation. Edited and published by Joy Walsh, it featured articles, memoirs, reviews and poetry. Published from Clarence Center, New York, it had a run of 28...
- Donald D. Lorenzen (1920–80), Los Angeles City Council member, 1969–77, had Evergreen Review removed from library shelves