Pornologist On Olympus

I was Nine Years of Age when I founded a Secret Society which created a certain commotion among the pupils of the College Georges Courteline -- an ancient boarding school situated in a quiet provincial town not far from Paris. The Society's purpose was to fight against war.

In the years following the 1914-1918 conflict, French children of my age consumed enormous quantities of cheap magazines roughly equivalent to our contemporary comics, but all devoted to military themes. War was depicted as a natural component of human life, and glorified in a hundred different ways; at worst it was presented as a virile adventure in which good boys could prove their courage and chivalry. In this bloody pulp literature, the history of the World War was shamelessly misrepresented: France's victories were inflated out of all proportion, her defeats ignored; and the absurd cliché of the valiant little French soldier triumphant over his treacherous German opponent -- the sale boche (dirty German)--was repeated in a thousand different versions. Even our textbooks publicized those themes.

I had come to the conclusion that such stories constituted the worst possible war propaganda; they were bound to perpetuate national prejudices and would thus prepare the way for another war. The next deduction was that the best way to eliminate the danger of war was to suppress the propaganda. Yes, I must humbly admit that I began my career as a censor.

The Society (that is, two boys and myself) planned its campaigns efficiently. We were to raid lockers, trunks, bedclothes in order to bring to light every bit of militarist literature in the school. Each item was to be confiscated and destroyed. In keeping with our exalted ethics, however, reparation was made: in place of the confiscated work, we left a sum of money equivalent to the purchase price. Far from crying scandal, our victims were soon leaving such an abundance of bellicose literature lying about that the Secret Society went bankrupt and I started writing poetry.

Our methods may have been harsh, and my ideas were of course childish. They are quite as childish today, and will certainly remain thus to the very end. I still cannot bear ready-made beliefs, borrowed creeds, social prejudice. I distrust this era of specialized knowledge which has destroyed common culture. I have no faith in contemporary ethics -- part Bible, part Robespierre, with a dash of Karl Marx and Charles Dickens thrown in. I am an anarchist. I believe in the mens rasa, which I hold to be the preliminary condition of any valid thought or action.

• • •

Seven years ago, finding myself penniless, I decided to make a little quick money and so founded the Olympia Press which was to publish in English, in Paris, every book rejected by Anglo-American censorship which would come my way. I deliberately chose to be indiscriminate, to bring out good books as well as bad ones: the only standard was the ostracism to which they would have been subjected. My father, Jack Kahane, had in fact been the chief protagonist of that form of publishing in the Thirties, when he launched Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn side by side with censorable works of varying merit. These Obelisk Press productions all had in common a certain genteel air (even, to a certain extent, Henry Miller's books, if we judge them according to present-day standards). Olympia Press was to go a good deal further; indeed, I accepted or imposed no restraints whatever.

So, on credit, I printed the first Olympia Press books: de Sade's Bedroom Philosophers, Miller's Plexus, and a wild little novelette by Guillaume Apollinaire, known in French under the title of Les Exploits d'un Jeune Don Juan.

Through my friends in the Merlin group (Merlin was a literary quarterly in English then being published in Paris by Alexander Trocchi, Christopher Logue, Austryn Wainhouse and others), I met Samuel Beckett. An Irishman who had been James Joyce's secretary, he was then teaching school near Paris and writing in French, presumably because English editors had convinced him that he was wasting (continued on page 68)Pornologist(continued from page 56) his time writing in his mother tongue. I first published his early novel, Watt, which had been written in English, and shortly after that a translation from the original French of Molloy. Even before his play Waiting for Godot made him famous, these two novels seem to have acted as an important ferment upon the postwar literary generation -- English, and even French: the "nouveau roman" certainly owes much to him.

Next, Jean Genet was brought my way by Bernard Frechtman, who had translated two of his major novels, The Thief's Journal and Our Lady of the Flowers, both of which I published. Genet was being hunted by the authorities in those days and had only just escaped a life sentence thanks to the campaign organized in his behalf by a group of prominent literary personages. But his years in the reformatory and prison, his discreditable adventures, had left intact one of the clearest and most generous personalities I have come across. "Saint Genet," Jean-Paul Sartre calls him, who knows him well.

The Olympia Press, in those days, was still a very shaky venture. In lieu of offices, I occupied the back room of a bookshop in the Rue Jacob, lent to me by the bookseller, a friend, himself rather down-at-heel. My staff included an ex-sailor with a bicycle, TV, and a gift for picturesque swearwords, who effected deliveries, and a very small secretary who had for chair the back seat of an old Delahaye automobile. We used the same rickety table, behind which I sat on a couch which my friend the bookseller also used as a bed; unidentified friends of his would occasionally flop on the other side of the couch for a brief siesta while I was proofreading, say, the Marquis de Sade's lifework.

In this humble setting I had the surprise of seeing six or seven burly men make their entrance one morning; the first brush of the Olympia Press with the Authorities. They were tough, these men, mentioned the third degree and began rifling my papers. Finally they discovered an object which seemed to justify their mission: it was a photogravure block which had served to print a song appearing in Beckett's Watt which goes:

Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack,quack,

Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack,quack,

Quack, quack, quack, quack, quack,quack,

and so on. A photogravure block is made of metal, mounted on wood, and the musical notations in relief must have had an exotic look. I have not figured out to this day what use the police thought the object had, but at the time it was clear to me that I had to take my cue from them, and so I pretended to be quite terrified at their discovery. For a good half hour I refused to answer their questions. Then I gave in, and proceeded to give them voluble explanations about the use and technical characteristics of a photogravure block. They looked a little sheepish but announced they would have to take me to police headquarters. I was pushed into their car in standard fashion and we should have roared off. But the engine wouldn't start. I offered to drive them in my own jalopy. There was some hesitation and then they accepted, realizing that their raid was losing all punch. When we parted a few hours later, not only had we become the best of friends, but I had even been offered an apologetic explanation of the whole enterprise: "What can we do? The English are always bothering us about you. We have to do something from time to time!"

This first skirmish with the law somehow encouraged me to go ahead. Without letting go of White Thighs, The Chariot of Flesh, and other spirited delicacies, I saw that I would be able to develop my firm into a serious publishing house. In 1955 I received two manuscripts of unusual interest, both of which had been rejected by several American firms: J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

The history of The Ginger Man has turned a little sour and is not yet fit to be told in detail. But when the manuscript first arrived on my desk, it was good, brimming with vim and defiance, although too long and burdened with the redundancies common to many first novels. The author was adamant in his refusal to cut any of the "censorable" passages (a view which I heartily approved) but he did accept the rather extensive editing I felt the book needed. I was naturally surprised and disappointed when The Ginger Man was later produced in England and the United States in a version bowdlerized by the author himself. There are, therefore, two versions of The Ginger Man now in circulation, and the abridged one is not certainly the better of the two.

The history of Lolita has grown almost into an epic, and it includes some of the best and some of the worst experiences I have had as a publisher. At the time Vladimir Nabokov's manuscript was handed to me at his request, I had never heard of him. The enthusiastic recommendation of his literary agent seemed to point rather to scholarly pomp than to originality. But any prejudices I may have had dissolved after reading the first few pages. I will always remember the effect that first reading of Lolita had upon me: that feeling of high excitement and absolute certainty, so rarely encountered in a publisher's life -- if ever. I was absolutely fascinated by the many paradoxes on which that subtle monument was built: the literary form, which belongs to the old Russian tradition, and the subject matter, which belongs to modern New World psychology; the inhuman coldness and grandiose self-esteem of the author-protagonist, which combine so oddly with his taste for personal immolation; his ultra-reactionary positions which are so difficult to reconcile with his nihilistic attack upon established order.

I wrote to Vladimir Nabokov and our first exchanges were pleasant and courteous. I did not really believe in the commercial potentialities of the book, nor did he. The charm of Lolita seemed too esoteric to allow a large public success and the book certainly had nothing in common with the usual censorable article; my decision to publish it was founded exclusively on personal inclination. Nabokov, at the time, was convinced that Lolita could never be printed in America and he was contemplating the use of a pseudonym. He finally decided to use his own name, and he also agreed with my suggestion to cut a good number of French sentences and quotations which, I felt, sometimes worried his style with excessive affectations. Our contract gave me world English-language rights (but I was so far from imagining a success that I omitted to retain a share of the eventual film rights).

Publication, in September 1955, was followed by complete silence. This was hardly surprising, although I must admit that I had more or less consciously hoped that some courageous reviewer would break the wall of silence which had so far met any offering by the Olympia Press. Then, at the end of 1955, The Sunday Times interviewed several writers as to their choice of "the best books of the year," and Graham Greene included Lolita in his selection. This so enraged John Gordon, Editor in Chief of The Sunday Express, that he wrote in his column: "On his recommendation, I bought Lolita. Without doubt it is the filthiest book I have ever read. Sheer unrestrained pornography." Graham Greene riposted by founding a mock society of censors, The Friends of John Gordon. Public debates were organized and Mr. Gordon's righteous fury was rather swept away in the general hilarity. But if this champion of suburban culture lost that first battle, he certainly built the launching pad for the book's meteoric career.

The next episode in the Lolita story took place in Paris a few months later when an inspector from the Brigade Mondaine (the Vice Squad) came to call and asked for one copy each of (continued on page 145)Pornologist(continued from page 68) twenty-five books (including Lolita) published by my firm. He said that the British Home Office had forwarded renewed complaints concerning my activities, so serious that, this time, grave measures would have to be taken against me.

Now this highly specialized department of the French police exerts moral censorship on all written material (including foreign literature) in addition to its main duty, which is the control of prostitutes and brothels. I say control rather than suppression, advisedly: you only have to walk a few yards in the Rue Saint Denis to perceive that the mundane efforts of the Brigade have not been successful. The thousands of prostitutes who walk the Paris streets are not incognito, not is their activity legal; some tacit arrangement with the Brigade Mondaine might offer an explanation of this state of affairs.

It occurred to me that I might try these methods in warding off the servants of law and order. After a few preliminary investigations in the enemy camp, I ascertained that a compromise could indeed be arranged, but at so high a cost that I decided to wait and see. On December 20, 1956, the twenty-five books of which I had given a copy of each to the Brigade Mondaine inspector were banned by decree of the Ministre de l'Intérieur (Home Secretary); Lolita was on that list. I noted that the decree was so worded as to be applicable only to the English version of these books, and exclusively to the version published by Olympia Press. Furthermore, the ban was officially justified by the obscene nature of the books, whereas the law invoked by the decree was designed to apply to political writings. (This law, by the way -- "loi du 29 juillet 1881 sur la Liberté de la Presse" -- is the very law which is presently being manipulated by the French government to be turned into an instrument of total censorship.)

I lost no time in counter-attacking. Here was the chance to make Lolita famous, and I was determined to make the best possible use of it. I initiated proceedings against the ban before the Administrative Tribunal of Paris. Next, I published a pamphlet summarizing the legal vagaries, entitled L'Affaire Lolita, which was sent to one thousand members of Parliament and to journalists.

During this period, some crucial information from the United States had been received by the Olympia Press. A copy of Lolita had been stopped by the U.S. Customs, but, instead of the usual courteous note announcing the fact being sent to the addressee, the book was sent on its way a few weeks later with no comment. Learning this, I wrote directly to the New York Bureau of Customs, asking whether the book had not been found objectionable. I received their answer of February 7, 1957:"… you are advised that certain copies of this book have been before this Office for examination and they have been released."

As it is practically unheard of for the U.S. Postmaster General to ban a work passed by the U.S. Customs, the way was suddenly clear for publication of Lolita in the United States. And publishers who had rejected Nabokov's manuscript two or three years before were promptly stampeding to buy the American publication rights from the Olympia Press. This state of affairs naturally strengthened my case against the French government, and when we went before the Administrative Tribunal in January 1958, we won: the ban was revoked.

Such a series of commotions, legal and journalistic, preceded publication of Lolita in the United States that when it appeared in August 1958 (published by Putnam) it immediately took first place on the best-seller list.

Meanwhile, in France, the weaknesses of the IVth Republic had been dispelled by General de Gaulle's Nietzschean invasion of the scene; this sudden reversal in conditions made it imperative that the police avenge their defeat. The Minister of Interior forthwith appealed against the ruling of the Administrative Tribunal, and the case was re-examined by the supreme administrative jurisdiction, the Conseil d'État.

Supposing I had had any illusions at that time concerning the independence of this august body or any beliefs in the constitutional guarantees giving it precedence over the government itself, there and then I would have lost my innocence, shed my illusions. The earlier judgment, painstakingly fair and well-documented, was simply reversed with a crude statement to the effect that the powers of the Minister of Interior were not to be submitted to any control, were it even that of the Conseil d'État itself.

A few months before, it would have been unthinkable for the members of the Conseil d'État to bow before the wishes of one governmental department, which it is precisely their function and duty to control. While I am well aware that a cause such as mine can elicit no sympathy from those guardians of bourgeois ethics, I think my case is as good as any other to demonstrate in what manner and style, only a few weeks after May 1958 and the change of regime, the raison d'État had come to supersede any dictum of justice. As nothing now is easier than to make laws -- laws being pronounced by the government in such a way as to avoid the control of Parliament -- the government passed a decree deciding that it would be a criminal offense to question the wisdom the legality of the judgments edicted by the courts of the Vth Republic. Does this not remind you of something? Yes, of course, but contemporary France may still avoid the fate of the Weimar Republic because it is so comfortably mild and lethargic, and because it has put on a little extra weight in the past two centuries. But I am erring…

In the face of a ban restored on Lolita by a court against which no further appeal could be lodged, I had no course left me but to wait. The ban, as has been said before, applied only to the English version of the book, and I knew that the publishing house of Gallimard was planning to bring out a French translation. In due course the book appeared, in April 1959, and was immediately successful. It was quite obvious that no steps would be taken against the publisher, Gallimard being the foremost publishing house in France and its connections with the present regime, through the person of Andre Malraux, being no secret. This situation gave me a new opportunity: according to the French legal system I could resort to the unusual procedure of suing the government for damages in view of the inequitable treatment to which my firm had been subjected -- notwithstanding the government's right to ban my books.

I therefore went back to the Administrative Tribunal and stated my case. A few weeks later I was summoned by an official high in the Ministry of the Interior. He announced that the Minister had taken a personal interest in this legal imbroglio and was prepared to cancel the ban if I would withdraw my plea for damages. The deal was clinched and the ban was at last lifted for good, after three years of litigation.

During these years, others of our books had been banned, including the English translation of Our Lady of the Flowers, perhaps the best work of one of the most important contemporary French authors, Jean Genet. This offered a perfect test case, even better than Lolita, inasmuch as the original French version had been openly on sale in France for nearly ten years. I'll not go into the intricacies of the case which, at this writing, is still pending. Let me say only that we have asked £50,000 indemnity for the ban imposed upon forty-one books, and that, just as in the precedent Lolita case, the Ministry of the Interior has offered to bargain: no damages, no ban. This time, however, we have refused the compromise; justice will have to follow its course.

• • •

Lolita, of course, has become a test case in most of the countries in which it has been published or sold. Currently, it is still banned in Australia, South Africa, New Zealand and only partially in Austria. In Argentina the book was forbidden in its Spanish version, but that decision has been reversed. In the war against censorship in English-speaking countries, the publication of Lolita has been the major event in many years, and has paved the way for the rehabilitation of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which I hope and trust will be followed shortly by that of Henry Miller's Tropics; and then Anglo-Saxon censorship of literary works virtually, will have ceased to exist. In Belgium, Lolita was banned, surprisingly enough, just last October. I wrote the Home Secretary of Belgium expressing my astonishment and Monsieur Rene Lefebvre replied personally, promising to investigate. A few days later the ban was lifted. Things have gone less smoothly in Burma, however, where the government seized five hundred copies of Lolita, put the importer in jail, and refuses to answer my letters.

In my personal estimation, I doubt that Lolita would have sold many thousands of copies had one of the American firms to which it had first been submitted six or seven years ago, decided to publish it. The charm of the book seems to me too esoteric, its perversity too symbolic, to win large audiences on the strength of its intrinsic appeal. Some boosting and hustling were called for, and I think I (as gadfly to government and censors) provided them -- beyond any expectation the author might have entertained.

When Vladimir Nabokov wrote me, in July 1955, "You and I know that Lolita is a serious book with a serious purpose. I hope the public will accept it as such. A succès de scandale would distress me," he was unaware of the vast sums of money which would soon be coming his way. Alas, my good relations with Nabokov were to deteriorate very fast when offers from other publishers started pouring in. Worries about the succès de scandale evaporated; my guess is that he became so absorbed by the financial aspect of the nymphet phenomenon that he was blinded to other realities. It was soon plain that he resented the contract which gave me a share of the profits--made me a junior partner, as it were, in his flourishing Lolita enterprise. But I was still unprepared for a registered letter from him (just following the first offers from several American publishers to buy rights from us) which stated in royal simplicity: "I declare our contract null and void…" It took all the diplomacy of his literary agent to persuade him that things were not that simple.

Such an attitude is not uncommon among artists of Hugolian stature, and many famous examples illustrate their tendency to develop a formidably centrifugal personality with the mature realization of their worth. When a French film company recently decided to use the title Les Nymphettes productions, it seemed to be obviously trying to capitalize on the success of Lolita. But those people did not expect the additional publicity Nabokov gave them when he hired the best lawyers in Paris to persuade a bewildered French judge that he, Vladimir nabokov, was the sole inventor and owner of the word "nymphette" and would not tolerate abuse of his trade-mark. Perhaps nabokov was unaware of this charming verse by one of his favorite poets, Ronsard (1524-1585), "Quand ma nymphette ensimple verdugade" ("When my little nymph in simple hoop skirt"). Or are we to believe that the traces it left in the nabokovian universe were so well fitted to the landscape that the word may have been gradually dissociated from its source, to become nabokov's very own?

• • •

My first meeting with Vladimir Nabokov came after our honeymoon was over, and after we had exchanged letters of such flamboyant impertinence that first actual contact seemed likely to produce some sort of explosion.

The confrontation took place in the dignified salons of Gallimard, some time after their publication of the French version of Lolita. Critics, members of the international press, denizens of the literary world of all shapes and colors had been summoned to pay homage to Vladimir nabokov. After painful hesitation, the Gallimards had decided not to invite me, in order to avoid an otherwise inescapable scandal. However, the lady who was entrusted with the delicate task of sending out invitations decided that it would be fun (as she later put it) to disobey orders and send me one. Thus I was posed a ticklish choice: not to go, and be considered a coward, or to go and perhaps occasion an undignified brawl. The thought that a bit of scandal might sell another fifty thousand copies may have had something to do with my decision to accept.

My arrival upon the crowded scene was like something out of Macbeth. Twenty cameras were at the ready; the members of the Gallimard family looked on, horrified, while I slowly progressed toward the author through a sea of bodies, I realized that nabokov had identified me when his gaze left a microphone to fix upon my face. In his vicinity I found Doussia Ergaz, his literary agent and patient supporter, who looked at me in terror as I explained to her that, having been our initial intermediary, it would now be fitting that she introduce us to each other. So we were introduced: the only image fixed by the cameras shows two grins, a little forced perhaps, but grins nevertheless. The few sentences we exchanged were disordered but not unfriendly; Nabokov said a few complimentary words about my brothers (the translator of Lolita into French), who presently stood beside Miss Ergaz. Then Nabokov's grin underwent a subtle change, as his shoulder lifted in a manner which may have meant, "I am frightfully interested by our conversation but they all me over there…" With the easy grace of a dolphin he plunged backwards and sideways, and made his way toward Mrs. Nobokov who was standing nearby, quite unaware of the scene. It was all over so very quickly; I was rather nonplused, as the last think I had expected was such a mild anti-climax to our violet epistolary exchanges. So I went to the bar and had a drink.

The next morning Doussia Ergaz telephoned me early. "Just listen to this," she said, excitedly. "There is nothing to compare with it, even in Lolita! A true piece of Quilty mischief … After the Gallimard party I asked Nobokov what he thought of you. And do you know what he answered? 'Girodias? Was he there? I never saw him…'"

Fortunately, my relations with most of the writers published by Olympia have been quite friendly, or at least pleasant. Some have been extremely rewarding personally -- contact with men like Georges Bataille, or Henry Miller, the grizzly standard bearer of the revolutionary Thirties, or William Burroughs whose book, The Naked Lunch, heralds the revolution of the Sixties.

Having published in the past seven years Miller and Durrell, Burroughs and Genet, Beckett, Nabokov and brilliant younger authors such as O'Connor (Steiner's Tour), Pollini (Night -- one of the most impressive books on war ever written, Talsman (The Gaudy Image), Ableman (I Hear Voices), Donlevy (The Ginger Man,) Gregory Corso (The American Express), the Olympia Press has promulgated much of what counts, and will count in the near literary future. Few publishers have been so fortunate, and I hasten to add that I would not dare attribute this success to my personal talents. I owe it essentially to the survival of an archaic and semi-religious form of mental oppression: censorship. American and British censorship deprived these writers of their right to free and full expression in their own countries, and they had no choice but to become literary expatriates. The Christian clerical domination over the vulgus pecus in the Middle Ages has been adapted by the modern states -- including atheistic ones -- to new forms of moral control and pressure: good taste, middle-class ethics and party ideals have crystallized those false relations of man and state into a solid and rigorous system.

One day I received an angry letter from a Soho bookseller who complained that he could not get more than a £3 for my books, whereas a few years before he used to sell them for twice that price, or more. I was responsible for this miserable state of things, he fumed, because his clients found my books less shocking than they used to be. I replied to this unusual complaint by explaining that he was wrong in his conclusions; my books were quite as disgusting as ever, but his clients had simply become used to them, perhapts outgrown them; I concluded by saying how gratified I was to have helped cure them of their typically British obsessions.

I emphatically deny that freedom of expression in sexual matters would cause social chaos, encourage rape and misconduct, destroy marriage and pervert childhood. I believe, on the contrary, that it would lead to a broader, fuller life, disencumbered of the many idle nightmare which haunt us. Pornography for one thing would immediately cease to exist in all of its thousand forms.

The common man may be deprived of artistic creativeness, may be blind to line or color, deaf to music or poetry, and yet he may attain supreme glory sexually. He may sense sex as the source of life, warmth, art, curiosity, awareness, intelligence, progress. But he is told that sex is evil, shameful, corrupting; that this great driving force should be reserved for the purpose of reproducing his own kind, in darkness, so that he will transmit his fears and failures to the next generation.

And thus our moth-eaten, knock-kneed Prometheus does err, his poor head dizzy with arguments such as the following, which I quote from that delightful symposium of unconscious humor, the Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on the Obscene Publications Bill, published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office, London, 1958.

Sir Theobald Mathew (Director of Public Prosecutions): "… If I do not advise a prosecution in any particular case there will not be one in all probability, unless some private citizen takes it upon himself to do it. So that, to that extent, I accept full responsibility as a censor; but I do not decide whether books are obscene."

Mr. Hugh Fraser (committee member): You do admit to some extent you are a censor?"

Sir Theobald: "Yes."

Mr. Fraser: "That is the point and it does strike me that there is some need for some sort of expertise on this, especially having in mind your remarks about Ulysses: you said you had passed Ulysses: because you found it unintelligible. That, quite frankly, is not what I call expertise, Sir Frankly, is not what I call expertise, Sir Theobald. I am not a literary man, but I dot know that it has influenced (though I find it difficult to comprehend myself) and had an impact on young writers during the last twenty years or so, and that influence has been very considerable indeed. I think it is alarming that you as a semi-censor, it we can discover a censor any-where in the whole cosmogony of the legal and police services, can do these things and can pass such a book merely because, as you have admitted, you found it completely unintelligible."

Sir Theobald: "I must apologize for making a joke. But I would say, even with expertise, I am looking at a book to see whether it is calculated to corrupt and deprave those into whose hands it may fall. I defy anybody to say that Ulysses, in the way it is written--and, of course, I know it has had a very considerable influence upon some literature, with its new ideas in the use of words and so forth--could either corrupt or deprave them. 1 turned it down for that reason. Having waded through a great deal of it and, having had certain passages marked for me, I still say I do not believe anybody would read such a book as obscene or pornographic literature." MR. Simon (committee member): "D. H. Lawrence thought it wan an obscene book curiously enough."

Sir TheoBald: "I am sure he did--because he understood it!"

Minutes of Evidence, indeed.

• • •

In the last few years my time has been occupied not only with Olympia press (our current catalog list over sixtytitles) but also with two absorbing and quite unrelated ventures; the creation and operation of La Grande Séverine, a restaurant-cum-nightclub of Babylonian proportions, and the writing of a biography of Roger Casement. Irish patriot, executed by the British for whom I hope to be instrumental in obtaining posthumous justice, since I consider the manner of his trial, conviction and execution to be an infamous combination of criminal hypocrisy, suppression of the truth, corruption of due process and cynical exploitation of the blind prejudices of public morality. On the English side, a point of honor is at stake; in Ireland, the honor of a national hero must be safeguarded; and the world must know the truth.

La Grande Séverine has been one of those educational projects from which stronger men than I, had they foreknowledge of the problems entailed, would have fled. It started as an idea for a semi-private club of modest proportions. Friends were profligate with suggestions and advice. The site was a building of Twelfth Century vintage; after paying for the removal of some 120 tons of silt from the basement, I was pleased to be in possession of magnificently vaulted cellars which had been covered by the sediment. Our opening was magnificent, having tasted the food prepared in the inadequate kitchen and having breathed the inadequately ventilated air. Losses mounted, the caviar turned pale, and my solitude in those fine medieval by the forced gaiety of invited guests. The final blow was a fire which gutted the premised. But this was a blessing in disguise, for three weeks later, modernized, we reopened--and my problems were miraculously solved. The publicity resulting from the fire was strangely effective and people started pouring in--and looked happy when they left. All the old friends were beck too. Hemingway demonstrated his masterful muleta technique on the dance floor. Lawrence Durrell celebrated on his favorite Saint's day (Saint Justine) and Henry Miller on his (Saint Borgia). More recently, Louis Armstrong sang for Francoise Sagan, and Simone Signoret broke a bottle on somebody's head. In other words, everything was fine.

• • •

These are but a few of the many episodes which have punctuated my life--the combined career of pornologist-pub-lisher-publican. I have learned much, I hope since my anti-war crusading days at the age of nine. Yet it is my pleasure to think that something of the childish aspiration which animated me then, at the College Georges Courteline has sustained me in the years during which I have resisted as best I might (and, I believe, with some sense of humor) the pressures and prejudices which continue to cast black shadows on the soul of man. It is true that I have from time to time compromised for the sake of making a little easy money, which may not quite fit my credo; but my excuse is that I always lost it very quickly! So with a clear conscience I look back on a practically unblemished career--one pleasant outcome of which will have been the dismantling and near destruction of moral censorship in English-speaking countries.

Attila has his own prophets.