The Tender Hour of Twilight: Paris in the ’50s, New York in the ’60s: A Memoir of Publishing’s Golden Age

Like many American writers in the 1950s, Seaver went to Paris in search of the golden age of adventurous expatriate writers like Hemingway. Soon after his arrival, however, Seaver created his own golden age with his eloquent essays that introduced Samuel Beckett to the world and his adventurous exploits in publishing with the literary journal Merlin, whose fame he helped establish with the writings of Beckett, Sartre, and Ionesco. In this charming memoir, edited by his wife, Jeanette, Seaver cleverly chronicles his decade in Paris, where he met his wife, dipped his toes into book publishing, and introduced not only Beckett and Ionesco but also Jean Genet and numerous others to the world. After a stint in the Navy, Seaver moved to New York and entered publishing, first as a book club editor and scout and then most famously as the editor-in-chief of Grove Press. Grove’s founder, Barney Rosset, had noticed Seaver’s work on Merlin and had begun courting him even before Seaver left Paris. Together, they built a remarkable list that included the unexpurgated edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Marguerite Duras, Kenneth Koch, William Burroughs, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and even Eric Berne’s best-selling Games People Play. In those heady days of publishing, as Seaver nicely and insightfully details, he and Rosset signed up books if the manuscript was good, the author serious, and the premise was provocative and controversial. (Jan.)