One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding [Paperback]

Robert Gover (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1989

A college sophomore spends a weekend with a pretty 14-year-old black prostitute under the manly misapprehension that she has invited him because she finds him irrresistable. Outraged when her guest resists payment, Kitten steals her rightful $100 fee, and the hijinks begins. Includes an all new introduction from the author.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...I hope this book will be read by every adolescent in the country." -- Gore Vidal, Esquire

...(Robert Gover)has farced up the race, sex and money issue in American life by caricaturing two amorous antagonists... -- Herbert Gold, New York Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Publisher

In the late 1950's, you couldn't even curse in a novel. You had to dance around sex, and you certainly couldn't portray race relations in an honest light. How in the world was a realistic story ever told? Along comes Robert Gover, an American whose novel was exiled to Europe by the puritan values that would soon tumble. One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding makes cartoon characters out of the stereotypes that dominated the races by sneaking them under the cultural radar in the bodies of a young black prostitute and a rich white college kid. This oil and water relationship has more in common than one might think. Before this quick and engaging read is over, the genius becomes the fool, the chicken becomes the fox, and the reader just might question his/her own assumptions. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Grove Pr; 1st Evergreen Ed edition (September 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802131816
• ISBN-13: 978-0802131812
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,012,082 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Classic humorous dialog on race and sexuality, April 19, 2006

By 

F. Orion Pozo "Orion Pozo" (Raleigh, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding (Paperback)

I picked up Robert Gover's One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding to read because of the recent events in Durham, North Carolina where a black stripper, hired to perform at a Duke University lacrosse team party, has accused three white males at the party of raping her. Published 45 years ago this book has nothing to do with rape, but it does deal a lot with issues of sexuality as it relates to class and race, privilege and poverty in the southern United States. Jim is a white college sophomore in a Southern college on a Friday night with a hundred dollars in his pocket. Kitten is a 14 year old African-American prostitute. Their paths cross as Jim visits a "Negro house of ill repute."

The book proceeds with Jim and Kitten narrating alternate chapters. Each sees the other as an answer to their needs and their encounter builds into a weekend of misunderstandings as their different backgrounds and expectations keep them from ever having meaningful communication. Yet, despite the insurmountable cultural chasm that separates them, their determination eventually makes small inroads possible.

This book made history at the time because of the frank discussion of sexuality and racial differences. Today, the terminology seems remarkably tame, even quaint. Yet the issues raised about sexual morality and class privilege are as relevant as ever.

Gore Vidal said: "There is always a division between what a society does and what it says it does, and what it feels about what it says it does. But nowhere is this conflict more vividly revealed than in the American middle class's attitude toward sex, that continuing pleasure and sometimes duty we have, with the genius of true pioneers, managed to tie in knots. Robert Gover unties no knots but he shows them plain and I hope this book will be read by every adolescent in the country, which is most of the population."

To truly appreciate this story it is important to remember that it is fiction. No 14 year old girls were lured into prostitution in the writing or reading of this book. Robert Gover states it as follows: "The caricatures in this story never were and aren't. If a reader happens to transmute them from typo-alphabetic symbols to figments of his imagination, they will continue to not exist, except as figments of his imagination. This also applies to the events which are this story - they didn't happen and don't. Any reader who imagines them happening I asked to please remember he is doing just that - imagining. In other words, the following is a made-up, untrue story."

As an untrue story, this book still does a great job of pointing out, through caricature, some of the seemingly timeless problems of class and privilege in American society, especially as they relate to the sexual behavior of the middle class.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reviewed by author, January 28, 2010

By 

J. Robert Gover "Robert Gover" (Rehoboth Beach, DE United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

By Robert Gover, [e-mail].

I write this as the author of One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding to ask that buyers of this book please avoid the edition with the plain green cover. That version of my novel is a ripoff. It runs paragraphs together and even ignores chapter breaks, running the last paragraph of chapter 1 into the first paragraph of chapter 2 without a paragraph break. Since each chapter is told by a very different character--a white college sophomore versus a young black prostitute--this scrambling of the text destroys the story.

The publisher of this scrambled-text version, David Moynihan, claims my novel is in the public domain. It's not, although its status is complicated as I explain below.

Grove Press inexplicably failed to get a copyright in my name when it published the first American edition of this novel. Grove states in the front pages of its edition that it obtained copyright by Robert Gover in 1962. Since obtaining copyright is a routine part of the publishing process, I naturally assumed that Grove had done what it was contractually obligated to do and said it had done.

According to the old copyright law of 1909, authors had to renew in 28 years. When I applied for renewal in the late 1980s, someone in the US Copyright office gave me the original US copyright instead. But because of the way the US Copyright law read back then, I was also obligated to renew in 1990. Believing I had a new copyright, I failed to renew. The US Copyright Law has since been changed so that authors own the rights to their works for their lifetimes plus 70 years.

I subsequently learned that this novel is protected by world copyright via GATT, as the USA is a signatory to GATT. My French publisher, Le Table Ronde, obtained US copyright of its translation in 1962, and all other editions in English and other languages flow out of the French edition.

Because this novel was first roundly rejected in the USA in 1960, it was sent to Paris by my literary agent. Le Table Ronde quickly accepted it for publication in French translation. The French edition appeared in the summer of 1962 to rave reviews. It was so enthusiastically acclaimed by the French that American publishers suddenly changed their minds about rejecting it and sought me out.

During the sixties, Grove was viewed as the most daring publisher in the USA, and this novel--because it satirizes "race mixing," which was outlawed in many states and taboo in all back then--was seen as a book for gutsy Grove to bring out in hardback.

Grove's edition sneaked up the New York Times bestseller list during a strike of newspaper printers which shut down papers citywide, obliterating the usual reviews and advertisements. However, just before the strike, my novel was reviewed in the NY Times Book Review section on page 3 by novelist Herb Gold About a month prior to this, a foreign edition of it was reviewed in Esquire Magazine by Gore Vidal, August of 1962. And prior to Vidal's review, Henry Miller read it in French and shared his enthusiasm for it.

I was told by Barney Rosset, publisher of Grove Press, that the top management of the NY Times very much disliked the satirizing of white racist assumptions and would not accept advertisements for this novel, beyond the first and only one put up by Grove. But the novel was positively reviewed by other major publications.

Other right-wing conservatives in positions of power also intensely disliked it and I was denigrated as a "political pornographer." One rumor portrayed me as an abuser of young women--the heroine of this story is a 14-year-old waif seeking to stay alive by any means. Some black literati who did not read the novel were misled by such nasty rumors to suppose I am a racist, since I have white skin.

I'm really a mixed breed. My original English ancestors came to the Virginia Colony in the 1600s and some of them owned African slaves until the Civil War. Sex across the color line went on secretly back then--a light-skinned baby born among the slaves was raised in the main house, and a dark-skinned baby born in the main house was raised by the slaves. Other Govers came as indentured servants and some of them ran away and were taken in by Indian tribes. Now, most of the people with my last name live on Indian reservations. My perception of American racism is colored by this mixed genealogy.

In 2008, when I first noticed Moynihan's version up on amazon.com, I sought legal help to notify Moynihan that he was in violation of my rights. Moynihan's response was a barrage of vaguely threatening emails to my lawyer and publisher. He's no stranger to litigation. When Conde Nast sued him, his legal antics gave that large corporation all they could handle. For details about this case, search "Conde Nast and David Moynihan," or Disruptive Publishing.

My lawyer (who worked pro bono) wrote Moynihan a letter asking him to remove it, but his scrambled-text version continues to be sold. Although I have the copyright to this novel according to today's law, I do not have the kind of money it takes to bring Disruptive Publishing to court.

My hope is that one day this novel will be read in a post-racist America and judged purely as a literary work with historical implications: How ridiculous we were back in the bad old days.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still good after all these years, January 4, 2001

By 

Maryanne Raphael (Carlsbd, Ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding (Paperback)

Book Review by Maryanne Raphael

ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR MISUNDERSTANDING By Robert Gover, Creative Arts Book Company, Berkeley, CA

By using cartoonish exaggerations in a novel, telling the story from the perspective of an uneducated, intelligent 14 year old Black prostitute and a naive White college sophomore, author Robert Gover turned his "serious novel about race relations"into a world-wide best seller.. This fast moving, easy to read satire captured readers everywhere. Dealing with human communication, ONE HUNDRED DOLLAR MISUNDERSTANDING has something to say to everyone. In the early sixties, this novel which mixed sex, race and money shocked America. Now, 40 years later it still has readers turning pages.