Samuel Roth

Samuel Roth (* 1893 in Galicia , † 1974 in New York ) was an American publisher and writer . In the USA he became known for his fight against censorship , especially of erotic literature , and in Germany as the editor of the book My Sister and I, which supposedly came from Nietzsche .

Live and act

Roth was born in 1893 in a shtetl on the eastern slopes of the Carpathian Mountains into a poor, Orthodox Jewish family. In 1905 his father, a simple tailor, emigrated with his family from this easternmost part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy to the USA and lived in great poverty in New York's Manhattan on the Lower East Side . The teenage Samuel Roth joined anarchist groups in Greenwich Village and was friends with Alexander Berkman , Emma Goldman and other well-known anarchists then working in New York. He had a close friendship with his compatriot Frank Tannenbaum , who was also socially committed . Tannenbaum, who taught at Columbia University , provided Roth with a scholarship in 1916 that allowed him to study there for two semesters. However, he could not continue his studies and then, together with Tannenbaum, published a literary magazine, The Lyric . In it he also published his own poems and essays, which were praised by respected colleagues such as Ezra Pound and Edwin Arlington Robinson . Eventually, to ensure his livelihood, he opened a school teaching English to immigrants. At this time, around 1920, Roth broke away from his anarchist friends, who represented a syndicalist direction, and took a quasi- individual anarchist position himself , that is, he decided to fight against the state as the suppressor of freedom of expression and information, which he himself led to the end of his life.

Roth, who broke up with his parents at the age of fifteen and has since been on his own, opened a small bookstore in Greenwich Village in 1918 that quickly became something of an artist's pub. Financially the shop was not a success, so that Roth gladly gave it up when in 1920 the New York Herald offered him the position of literary correspondent in London. In this position, Roth made numerous contacts with young English writers, some of whom later became famous. Because of these relationships, he founded several literary magazines back in New York, including Beau , which can be considered the first American men's magazine and the forerunner of Esquire . However, they could not hold their own for long.

In his subsequent magazine, Two Worlds , Roth printed James Joyce 's novel Ulysses as a sequel. At that time, this was banned in both England and the United States due to obscene passages and was therefore not protected by copyright in these countries . It was printed in France and distributed by the Paris bookstore Shakespeare and Company . Although there was particularly strong demand from English and American readers, it was hardly possible for them to get a copy due to strict controls. Roth remedied this by slightly defusing the novel in some places in the choice of words and starting to publish it as a series in a private print. This called the French publisher Sylvia Beach on the scene, who got numerous writers, including some very prominent ones, to sign a letter of protest denouncing not the censorship in England and the USA, but the supposedly illegal pressure of the work by Roth . This campaign, in which important authors such as George Bernard Shaw , Aldous Huxley , Ezra Pound and John Cowper Powys did not take part, caused Roth to be branded a literary pariah , although the accusation against him was legally questionable.

Even James Joyce himself finally went legal action against Roth, although in the end, after the result of various methods 1934 Ulysses , beneficiaries of Roth's approach has become a risky legal limbo was released in the US. Since the mid-1920s, Roth repeatedly reprinted, camouflaged or openly, books and smaller writings that were banned by the censorship in the USA, mostly because of obscene content, including later, highly famous works such as Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence , but often also explicit pornography. He was therefore persecuted with fanatical zeal by the New York "Society to Combat Vice" and involved many times in legal proceedings. Overall, Roth spent more than ten years in prisons because of his publishing activities, serving “honorable sentences”, as he proudly remarked.

In 1934, out of annoyance at the business practices of his established Jewish publishing colleagues during the Great Depression, Roth wrote a book, Jews Must Live , which was often attacked as anti-Semitic and an expression of Jewish self-hatred .

In 1951 Roth brought out a text as a publisher that he had announced in Two Worlds in 1926 , but no longer printed: the work supposedly written by Friedrich Nietzsche during his time in the madhouse , My Sister and I , in which, among other things, the intimate sexual relationship to his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche . The work was immediately described as a forgery by the then most renowned Nietzsche expert in the USA, Walter Kaufmann . Roth denied this, but could not prove the authenticity of the text.

In 1955, Roth was charged with mailing obscene material - erotic literature and nude photographs. In the following process, known in U.S. legal history as Roth vs. United States received, the Supreme Court ruled by six votes against three that, although obscene material is not generally covered by the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution , art, literature and scientific research are protected by the article, even if they are sexual Handle content. This was a milestone in US legal history. Nevertheless, Roth was still sentenced for his offenses under the old laws, this time as a repeat offender, to five years in prison. While earlier pornography judgments were overturned in the following years, Roth was in jail and, as Gay Talese writes, "the books to which he owed his stay there, among other things, could have been completely legally sent through the post."

Even during his long imprisonment, Roth largely disappeared from the public eye. The memory of the man who through the Roth vs. United States had made a decisive contribution to the fact that works of world literature such as Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer or William S. Burroughs ' Naked Lunch could be published in the United States. It was only as a result of the legislative initiatives to restrict freedom of expression and information that came after the 11th September “was brought back to life. A lengthy article appeared in the Boston Phoenix that critically remembers Roth's career but ultimately acknowledges: “We should remember Roth for the most American of his qualities: his refusal to accept laws that he intuitively recognized as false. We owe Roth's persistent struggles with official institutions for many of today's journalistic freedoms, "which are now threatened again by the state.

Own writings (selection)

• First offering. A book of sonnets and lyrics. New York: Lyric Publishing Co. 1917.
• Europe. A book for America. [Verses] New York: Boni & Liveright 1919.
• Now and forever. A conversation with Mr. Israel Zangwill on the Jew and the future. With a preface by Mr. Zangwill, the text by S. Roth. New York: Robert M. McBride & Co. 1925.
• Stone walls do not, the chronicle of a captivity. New York: William Faro 1930
• The Private Life of Frank Harris. New York: William Faro 1931
• Lady Chatterley's husbands. An anonymous sequel to the celebrated novel, Lady Chatterley's lover. New York: William Faro 1931.
• Songs out of season. New York: William Faro 1932.
• Jews must live. An account of the persecution of the world by Israel ... Illustrated by John Conrad. New York: Golden Hind Press [1934.]
• The peep hole of the present. An inquiry into the substance of appearance. Pref. by Arthur Eddington . New York: The Philosophical Book Club 1945
• Halfway. A poem of our time. New York: [sn] 1947.
• Bumarap; the story of a male virgin. New York: Arrowhead Books 1947
• Apotheosis; the Nazarene in our world. New York: Bridgehead Books 1957
• My friend Yeshea. Published for the Friends of Mishillim by Bridgehead Books, New York [1961]

Published titles (selection)

• John Hamill: The strange career of Mr. [Herbert] Hoover under two flags. New York: William Faro 1931
• Clement Wood: The Woman that Was Pope. New York: William Faro 1931
• DH Lawrence : Lady Chatterley's Lover . (The Samuel Roth edition) New York: William Faro 1932
• Norman Lockridge: The sexual conduct of men & women. With a minority report on Prof. Kinsey by Gershon Legman. New York: Bridgehead Books 1948
• Milton Hindus: [ Celine ] - The crippled giant; a bizarre adventure in contemporary letters. New York: Boar's Head Books, 1950 (several reprints by other publishers)
• Friedrich Nietzsche: My Sister and I . Translated and introduced by Dr. Oscar Levy . New York: Boar's Head Books 1951 (both the main text and the introduction are generally regarded as forgeries; however, numerous reprints in other publishers and translations into several languages)
• Norman Lockridge: Read majesty; the private lives of the Duke & Duchess of Windsor. New York: Boar's Head Books 1952
• Longus: The pastoral loves of Daphnis and Chloe. Done into English by George Moore; introduction by Samuel Roth. New York: Boar's Head Books 1953
• Maxwell Bodenheim : My life and loves in Greenwich Village. New York: Bridgehead Books 1954
• George Sylvester Viereck: Men into beasts. New York: Bridgehead Books 1955 (several reprints by other publishers)
• Violations of the child Marilyn Monroe. By her psychiatrist friend. [Prelude signed by HPS] New York: Bridgehead Books 1962
• Arthur Sainer: The sleepwalker and the assassin; a view of the contemporary theater. New York: Bridgehead Books 1964

literature

• Leo Hamalian: Nobody Knows My Names: Samuel Roth and the Underside of Modern Letters. In: Journal of Modern Literature, 3 (1974), pp. 889-921
• Jay A. Gertzman: Bookleggers and Smuthounds: The Trade in Erotica, 1920-1940. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press 1999. Chapter 6: The Two Worlds of Samuel Roth. Man of Letters and Entrepreneur of Erotica, pp. 219-282; 360–377 (notes), ISBN 0-8122-3493-6
• Adelaide Ball: "Wroth Wrecks Joyce." Samuel Roth and the "not quite unauthorized edition of 'Ulysses'". Joyce Studies Annual 3 (1992), 242-248
• Walter Stewart: Nietzsche: My Sister and I - A Critical Study. , nl: Xlibris Corp. 2007, ISBN 978-1-4257-6055-7
• Gay Talese : Thy Neighbor's Wife (1980). German: You should desire. Berlin: Rogner & Bernhard 2007, Chapter 6: pp. 122–145
• Jay A. Gertzman: Sleaziest Pig in the World AND First Amendment Martyr: An American Success Tragedy . In: -e * I * 39- / efanzines.com (Vol. 7, No. 4) August 2008 (only online)
• Walter Stewart: Friedrich Nietzsche: My Sister and I - Investigation, Analysis, Interpretation. nl: Xlibris 2011, ISBN 978-1-4653-4788-6
• Jay A. Gertzman: Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist. Gainesville FL / USA: University Press of Florida 2013, ISBN 978-0-8130-4417-0

proof

1. ↑ The story is mainly represented in Joyce biographies, e.g. B. in that of Richard Ellmann (1959ff). Roth's daughter, who had access to previously unused documents, turned against the representation in it in: Adelaide Kugel: "Wroth Wrackt Joyce." Samuel Roth and the "not quite unauthorized edition of" Ulysses. Joyce Studies Annual 3 (1992), 242-248
2. ↑ The complicated story is told and a. in: Herbert Gorman: James Joyce. His life and his work. (1948) Hamburg: Claassen 1957, pp. 303-323; See a. Adelaide Ball: "Wroth Wrecks Joyce." Samuel Roth and the "not quite unauthorized edition of" Ulysses. Joyce Studies Annual 3 (1992), 242-248
3. ↑ Leo Hamalian: The Secret Careers of Samuel Roth. In: Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 1, no. 4 (Spring 1968), pp. 317-338
4. ^ The book and comments on it online: Jews must live ; Excerpts from this book have been translated into: Georg Leibbrandt: Jüdische Weltpolitik in Selbstverzeugnisse. Munich: More likely to follow. 1938
5. ↑ Nietzsche research generally followed Kaufmann's view and took hardly any notice of the work. Nevertheless, there were a few serious voices who found both the confused story surrounding the book and its creation, as well as its content, worth a closer analysis (see My Sister and I ).
6. ↑ Roth vs. United States
7. ↑ See Chapter 6 of Gay Talese: Thy Neighbor's Wife . (1980); German edition: You should desire. Berlin: Rogner & Bernhard 2007, pp. 122–145
8. ↑ Michael Bronski: Hero with a dirty face. ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: The Phoenix (Boston), 15th and 22nd August 2002