Samuel Roth, Infamous Modernist

Acknowledgments

xxv In 2005, Samuel Roth’s grandchildren donated an extensive collection of their grandfather’s papers and books to the Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts at Columbia University. In addition to Roth’s own publications and published and unpublished writings, there is correspondence to and in some cases from Pound, Sylvia Beach, Harriet Weaver, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Garfield Hays, John Slocum, Ben Abramson, and John Rodker. There are also drafts of Roth’s autobiography, “Count Me among the Missing,” and his daughter’s memoir of her father, “In a Plain Brown Wrapper.” Both are unpublished. I want to thank the grandchildren for their generous sharing of information with me, for allowing me access to the archive, and for permission to use the following images for illustrations: figures 1, 2, 6, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 25. I want to sincerely thank the following persons and institutions for their help: Fred Dennis, Greenwich, Connecticut, for permission to use a letter of May 10, 1922, from the Sylvia Beach Papers, Manuscript Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, and for permission to reproduce that letter (my figure 9) and an advertisement in The Saturday Review for four of Roth’s magazines. Krzysztof Willmann, a Polish scholar who sent me late-nineteenth-century and present-day maps of the shtetl where Roth was born, and of the surrounding territory. He also directed me to Internet sites with information about the history of these locations. I am indebted to him for most of the details regarding Nuszcze (including the correct spelling). aCknowledgMents xxvi Acknowledgments Judith Legman, La Clè Des Champs, Valbonne, France, for permission to use information from Gershon Legman’s unpublished “Peregrine Penis: An Autobiography of Innocence,” and for permission to use the image of Gershon Legman she kindly sent me. Maryjane Treloar, Saratoga Springs, New York, for permission to quote from an unpublished essay by Arthur Sainer titled “He Was Dreaming His Better Self,” and for permission to reproduce photos of the Yussef Roth family (1907) and Samuel Roth (1915). She has also permitted me to reproduce the photo of The Poetry Book Shop. Myra Hindus, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and Linda Simon, Skidmore College, for permission to use Milton Hindus’s unpublished 1983 essay “Samuel Roth.” The Arents Library, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, for access to its Grove Press Archive. The Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, for access to the Lynn Womach Papers. The Elihu Burritt Library, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain , Connecticut, for access to the Canon Clinton Jones Archives. The Dorot Jewish Division of the New York Public Library, Stephen Schwartzman Building, for various reference materials, including copies of early editions of The American Hebrew and The Menorah Journal. The Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, West Branch, Iowa, for the “Misrepresentation Files” of papers about the anti-Hoover scandal books of 1931. The Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin, for the Morris L. Ernst Papers. The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati , Ohio, for a photograph of Maurice Samuel. The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, Bloomington, Indiana, for permission to reproduce the circular “Violence in the Handling of Women” (Vertical File, Erotica Producers, 20th Century, Samuel Roth). The Library of Congress, for the Names and Records of Persons Arrested Under the Auspices of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (the Ledgers of John S. Sumner), Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. The National Archives and Records Administration, Bureau of Prisons Records , for the photograph of Frederick “Fritz” Joubert Duquesne. The New York City Municipal Archives, for permission to reproduce the Tax Department 1940 photo of 96 Willett Street, Manhattan. New York Public Library, Manuscript Division, research libraries, xxvii Acknowledgments Schwartzman Building, for access to the John Quinn Papers and the Berg Collection. The Princeton University Library, Manuscript Division, Rare Books Library , for access to the Sylvia Beach Papers. The Robert D. Farber University Archives and Special Collections Department , Brandeis University Libraries, for the letters Samuel Roth wrote to Milton Hindus in the Milton Hindus Papers. The U.S. Department of Justice, Record Information/Dissemination Service , for part of the FBI files on Fritz Duquesne. Michael Ryan, curator of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, and his staff were extremely helpful and I am grateful for their assistance...