Customer Reviews

One Hundred Dollar Misunderstanding

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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.

By Robert Gover, gocycles@aol.com.

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.

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.

You'll remember "Kitten," the fourteen-year old prostitute and protagonist, for a long time. It's not quite fair, of course, to oppose her jazzy exuberance against J.C.'s Chamber of Commerce persona, but then who cares....

Centered around the black part of an anonymous town in the early 1960's, this book follows the travails of a white college sophomore who decides to increase his "sociological" understanding of the town's other residents -- poor, black citizens who shift just south of the law. When J.C. slinks down to the local cathouse, he's not quite sure what brought him there. Male curiosity, of course, and boredom and desperation at his failing grades, but he's not quite capable of parting the mists that shroud his, um, intellect. The education he ultimately receives doesn't push him out of his towel-snapping frathouse habitat, but it does make an impression. Or at least it should.

Kitten, on the other hand, needs no such lessons in life. Although she spends a good part of the book naked (sometimes working, sometimes just vacuuming), her corpus matters much less than her colosum. I'm half-in-love, I confess, and you will be too. Unless you spent your college days hopping from one formal to the next.

The book recounts a white middleclass college student's sociological study of prostitution in a small midwestern college town in the fifties. The study focusses on a teenaged black prostitute. The student exhibits a remarkable lack of prejudice for a white person writing in that era. The chapters alternate between narratives by the student and the prostitute as the story unfolds. Of course the student is compelled by his use of the scientific method to participate in a number of sexual activities. It is interesting to note the observations of the girl toward the student. She might as well be conducting her own sociological experiment. Both are astute observers and it is interesting how their observations are shaded by their backgrounds. I read this amazing book as a college student and remembered it vividly -- except for the part about what happened to the money at the end. So I was forced to buy it and read it again. It was even better than I remembered it being. I am glad it is still in print. How come the others in the trilogy aren't?

Robert Gover wrote this book in 1961, as a humorous light-hearted satire on racial and sexual mores in the United States. The Civil Rights movement was still in its infancy; legal and de facto segregation were the dominant structure governing race relationships, and today's current "diversity" in advertising, education, employment and all else, an impossible utopian dream. Not to mention having a President...

The novel's central theme was "too hot to handle" for the NYC publishing world, but fortunately, like a couple of prominent black writers of the time, Richard Wright and James Baldwin, it found a "home" in France, where the French version received strong reviews in "Le Monde," and other French newspapers. Finally, the book was brought back to its country of origin, in English, and publisher by Grove Press, an "edgy" publisher of the time, which published, among others, the unexpurgated version of Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer

The storyline covers a weekend in the lives of two individuals, James Cartwright Holland, a 19 year old white college sophomore, and "Kitten," a 14 year old black prostitute. An arrangement that could be used to define the term misalliance. The story is told in alternating chapters, each representing the perspectives of the main protagonists. Gover has a gift of capturing the patois of his characters, which heightens the "misunderstandings" that evolve over the weekend. Holland has just received his first semester grades, and that includes three failing ones. He decides that he needs a little "solace," and with the impetus provided by one of his "frat brothers," decides that the local "cat house" is the place to reconfirm his virility. Kitten, on the other hand, seems far too astute and wise for her 14 years, perhaps as a result of growing up without a childhood. Her "sorority sisters," well, of sorts, have instructed her on the importance of identifying potential "investments,' i.e., wealth clients, and with the wad of cash that Holland has in his pocket, she assumes he will be her "mark." And yes, the 100 bucks is the going rate for an entire weekend with her "investment."

In terms of the patois, consider from Kitten: "...he standin there wiff a lil old h***, lookin roun read dum. Gee-zuz! How dum kin one Whitboy git?"

I first read this book in the early `60's, and decided on a re-read. Both times I was impressed with how Gover seemed to capture, in a low-key way, the stunning racial hypocrisy of the time. Holland is constantly proclaiming that he is not prejudiced, and not a prude, even though the dialogue reveals how he is. Of course, he has a girlfriend, wife-to-be, that he "respects" too much to engage in any...

On the re-read however, I was also struck by the "fairy tale" aspect of the novel. The downside of these relationships was certainly glossed over, if not completely omitted, and the essence of the power relationship, well, perhaps I should just say that, like in a fairy tale, there was a happy ending for the underdog, and the obtuse college kid got his "comeuppance." There were also a couple other unrealistic aspects to the tale.

Gover's own review at Amazon should definitely be read. He is still with us, but his copyright for this book has been taken by an unscrupulous publisher so if you intend to buy this, please make sure what version you are acquiring.

So, if you are willing to suspend some disbelief, or let's say, using a more modern expression, willing to accept some "magic realism," and would like to enjoy a humorous social satire on "the way we were," or, perhaps still are, then I'd strongly recommend this book. 5-stars.

The boy and girl are unforgettable characters who create their own little world together and move beyond the clever symbols from each of their quite different habitats to reach a level of youthful motion that is both funny--and promising to humanity.

Gover's $100 misunderstanding was written in a time when to use the -F- word in public was criminal; when fraternizing with the Other could lead to a beating, or some serious jail time. Yet, our fascination with the Other goes on today.

Gover's book, a love story between a Stepford son (Waspy white frat boy) and the 14 yr old hooker, Kitten, is heartwarming and poignant. Pay attention to the language this guy puts in the mouth of these two characters. Man!

Whatever happened to novels of socio-political adventure? Dis one gots laygz.

I read this book when it was new, and I doubt there was a page without a belly laugh on it. Other reviewers have commented, and validly so, about the social implications of the book, so I won't repeat them. But what was most memorable for me was the brilliant strategy of alternating chapters between the two protagonists. It brought into sharp contrast the vast gulf that existed between their respective worldviews, and did so in an engaging and hilariously entertaining way.

What no one has yet mentioned is that there was at least one sequel: "Here Goes Kitten." If I recall correctly, there was also a second sequel whose title eludes me. In the first sequel, Jim and Kitten meet again 20 years or so later, and dance their dance again.

The only book I've ever read that made me laugh this hard and long was "Letters From the Earth" by Mark Twain--another literary/satirical classic.

I cannot believe this book was written in the late 1950s. It's both impressive and disheartening as nothing much has changed since that time. Certainly the races mix better than ever, but they don't seem to understand each other any more than five decades ago before "civil rights" were enacted. Robert Gover gives us a whacky, sly, and entertaining workout between two well-drawn satirical figures. It at times challenges your preconceived notions, even if you think you've got it all figured out.