Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography [Paperback]

Robert Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 20, 2012

For sixteen years Robert Rosen worked behind the X-rated scenes of such porn magazines as High Society, Stag, and D-Cup. In BEAVER STREET: A HISTORY OF MODERN PORNOGRAPHY, Rosen blows the lid off the lucrative and politically hounded adult industry, providing a darkly engaging account of its tumultuous decades--from the defining Traci Lords scandal and the conception of 'free' phone sex to the burgeoning success of smut in cyberspace in the twenty-first century.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Beaver Street is an electrifying journey through porn's golden age." --The Sleazoid Podcast

"Beaver Street is brutally honest... vivid...compelling... fascinating." --Sharan Street, Editor, Adult Video News

"A confessional for-adults-only romantic comedy with a rare, thoughtful twist... riveting." --David Comfort, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

"Whatever twisted... fantasy you might've had, you can bet that Rosen once brought it to life in print." --Ben Myers, Bizarre

"Shocking... evocative... entertaining... A rich account that adds considerable depth and texture to any understanding of how the pornography industry worked." --Patrick Glen, H-Net

"HOT TYPE! Pick of the month" Vanity Fair

"Robert Rosen was in the trenches of the porn industry for years, and he clearly took copious notes with his one free hand. His history of modern porn is entertaining, insightful, and hot.” Michael Musto, columnist, The Village Voice

"HOT PICK! Enormously entertaining... Beaver Street captures the aroma of pornography, bottles it, and gives it so much class you could put it up there with Dior or Chanel." Jamie Maclean, Editor, Erotic Revie

About the Author

Robert Rosen is the author of the international bestseller Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. His work has appeared in a wide array of publications all over the world, including Uncut, Mother Jones, The Soho Weekly News, La Repubblica, VSD, Proceso, Reforma and El Heraldo. Over the course of a controversial career, Rosen has edited pornographic magazines and an underground newspaper; has written speeches for the Secretary of the Air Force; and has been awarded a Hugo Boss poetry prize. Rosen was born in Brooklyn and lives in New York City with his wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, a writer, editor and singer. For more information about Robert Rosen, please go to robertrosennyc.com.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Headpress (March 20, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1900486768
• ISBN-13: 978-1900486767
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #264,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Robert Rosen is the author of "Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon," an international bestseller that's been translated into six languages. His investigative memoir, "Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography," was recently published in the US and UK by Headpress. Rosen's work has appeared in publications all over the world, including Uncut, Mother Jones, The Soho Weekly News, La Repubblica (Italy), Proceso (Mexico), Reforma (Mexico), and El Heraldo (Colombia).

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb investigative memoir on outrageous subject July 1, 2011

By poison penn

Format:Paperback

I've just completed Beaver Street and could not put it down. There is nothing like it; rather no comprehensive history of modern porn, especially of what is called The Golden Age of porn, the Eighties. The author was right in the thick of things--not just observing--but just detached enough to be objective. He explains how phone sex came about and why there are now laws to protect minors from appearing in porn. But, as the author reveals, there was nothing to protect the porn industry from the likes of the conniving underaged Traci Lords. The author calls his book an investigative memoir. I'd call it a perfect (and perfectly outrageous) mix of personal experience, research, reporting, and conclusions. It's a well written overview of a huge, pervasive industry people know little about.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Remarkable Book August 14, 2011

By Matthew Flamm

Format:Paperback

Robert Rosen's Beaver Street is both an absorbing memoir of a writer's struggle to make a living and a brief history of pornography as it grew from a mom and pop business into the industrial giant it is today. But this well researched, smartly written, surprisingly funny book is also a one of a kind tour through a fast-disappearing underbelly of American popular culture. Rosen, a pre-gentrification New Yorker, fell into porn when it still held a certain countercultural allure. His cast of characters includes hapless, aspiring artists, shrewd businessmen (and businesswomen), all-out neurotics, sexual desperados, and conniving egomaniacs. Kind of a cross section of a broken down IRT local train circa 1980. Beaver Street shows us an alternative Grub Street, one that many of us never knew existed.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and fascinating memoir July 17, 2011

By R.C. Baker

Format:Paperback

Vivid and funny, "Beaver Street" moves at a cinematic pace, a period piece that picks up the story of modern porn where "Boogie Nights" leaves off. This wickedly honest personal memoir of the 80s and 90s sex industry segues from a behind the scenes look at porn shoots to hilarious office banter amid the cramped cubicles of fetish magazines. Rosen is particularly sharp on the one-two punch that brought down the huge porn mag industry--first, the Traci Lords scandal (she was underage when she burned up the screen in such classics as "Talk Dirty To Me III"), followed by the unexpected success of the phone sex business. For a fascinating and funny look at America's id, "Beaver Street" can't be beat.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent personal history of pornography in America. April 21, 2012

By Scoobird "MR"

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

The book was a great read...very well-written and a page turner, too. While I am not a porn officionado, I do love history. This is one, excellent history of a movement whose real background and players are not well-known to most out of the industry. If you are looking for your next good read, this should be the book.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Read Beaver Street! July 14, 2011

By Sarah

Format:Paperback

Robert Rosen has an uncanny knack for combining fact and filth in Beaver Street, resulting in an account of the porn magazine industry that is both detailed and informative, as well as accessible and riveting. The book provides insight into the lives of porn stars and porn producers that had me laughing one minute, and reeling the next.

You get the sense that Rosen has always had this book in mind from the very day he started working in the industry. An account this evolved and thoughtful clearly comes from years of work, tireless note taking, and perhaps most especially from an ever-alert and observant eye belonging to this talented journalist.

Whether you're doing research about the industry or you're simply reading up on it to enhance your own understanding, consider Beaver Street a great resource. Rosen's account is well-balanced, illuminating, and visceral when need be.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Raunchy, Rollicking Ride Back to the Porny Days of Yesteryear! July 7, 2011

By P. Slim

Format:Paperback

Robert Rosen describes "Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography" as an "investigative memoir," which it definitely is, in the best and truest sense of both words. Aided by meticulous research and an engrossing, pull-no-punches narrative, he has succeeded in creating what, to my mind, is a new and unique genre of non-fiction writing. He manages to combine his own personal history--from the streets of Brooklyn to the halls of City College and the Pentagon, to the sweat-stained cubicles of the porn magazine jungle--with an incisive history of the pornography business that principally focuses on the period starting with the creation of phone sex to the present.

As a former denizen of Smut Alley myself, I can attest to the accuracy and veracity of Rosen's book. I loved his humor and honesty, and I also learned a lot of things that I never knew about the people who ran the magazine mills--the Carl Rudermans and the Chip Goodmans who strove so mightily to remain anonymous and above it all, yet laughed all the way to the bank.

For the millions of people who have an abiding and well-nigh insatiable curiosity about porn--and I discover them anew every time I go to a social gathering and mention that I once toiled in the vinyards of lust--"Beaver Street" will be a real treat and impossible to put down. For the rest of us who are curious about the world we live in and how it got that way, this is essential reading.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars From Another Carl Ruderman Fan May 13, 2013

By From another Former Porn Worker

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Your book was amazing! I downloaded it to my kindle and could NOT put in down last night. You perfectly capture the atmosphere of the office, that slight paranoia, tinged with smarmyness, with the forced instance that everything around here is perfectly normal. I too worked in the industry, though far more recently, but it seems nothing has changed.

Your assessment of CR is priceless. I too, have sat in front of that exquisite Victorian desk, surrounded by his priceless artifacts that invariably feature naked women or abstract genitalia, patiently waiting my turn for him to say, "...And Ms. XXXX, what good news do you have for me today?". From your description of him, I could hear his voice leap from the page. I could see him as I saw him in his office at 801 Second Avenue, a bit more shriveled version that the one you saw, but in that same beautifully cut, tasteful grey pinstripe suit, pocket square, and genteel sneer.

Also in the short time I was there, I know the company was sued multiple times. Weirdly it was never mentioned in the meetings. It was simply like it didn't matter. Also by the time I got there, the porn down on the lower floor was never mentioned. Ever. People on the 19th floor did NOT speak to or of the people down there. I only knew about them because I has skills he needed for both floors.

I loved the part about "the founder". After he lost the lease on the 19th floor and we were moved to the far less glamorous 11th floor, that bust was placed directly outside my door, so it would stare at me day in day out. It was rumored that there was a camera in it, but that was probably just conjecture.

He was elderly by the time I worked for him, yet he was insistent on never dying.... He kept a personal chef with him at the office, a woman he paid far less than she was worth, peanuts really. She would prepare his daily vitamins and medications, dozens in all, and his breakfast and lunch in the office's formal dining room. All the upper management were expected to attend, but as a woman and a low level techie I was fortunately denied that privilege.

I liked your Maria. It explains his current secretary while I was there. She was a Mid-fiftish battleax of a hag who would agree with him if he said the sky was green, and spent much of her time repeating back anything he said in different words as if she had just thought of that. She, and the other woman before her, trained themselves to expect and indulge his every whim. The woman before at least seemed to see the humor in the situation, as Maria seemed to. I would have been stoned all the time too.

There was a whole host of crazy characters there who like me, had no other options at the time, and those of us that got out sometimes get together and talk about it, because no one else would ever believe us. They are a crazy bunch but those who survived, many are people I really like, cause as you and Maria were, we were witness to a legend being written. Like you I walked out of that office with no job but that "incredible lightness of being".

All in all you reminded me that despite everything, Carl Ruderman has charisma. A sly, slithering sort of charisma, but charisma just the same. I can't even say I dislike him. He is the sort of man who will do anything for money, and it seems that he did.

In the end, those of us that got tangled up in it have one hell of a story to tell at cocktail parties.

Marvelous work! Read more ›