Customer Reviews

Venus Bound:: The Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press

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Venus Bound is one chapter in the story of censorship in the 20th century. It tells the story of Olympia Press, a small publishing company in Paris, and its owner Maurice Girodias. More importantly, this book relates how some of the classics of 20th century literature got published in the 1950s, a time when censorship of sexually explicit writing made it impossible for these works to be published in either the UK or the USA.

The subtitle of this work states that the book is about the press and its writers. Sadly, Maurice Girodias, who was writing the second volume of his autobiography at the time, refused to be interviewed by John De St. Jorre. So although the book is about Girodias and his life's work, there is a sense of detachment to the book. Questions that Girodias could easily have answered are answered indirectly or not at all. Yet this treatment allows a complex vision of Girodias to appear as his actions and motivations are described by the authors and employees of Olympia Press.

Olympia Press made money by commissioning erotic novels from English-speaking writers in Paris who were in need of an income. These were sold under pseudonyms to a readership in the USA and UK where such books were illegal. If that was all Olympia Press did, it would probably have faded away into obscurity with the liberalization of the laws of censorship.

However, Olympia Press was the only publisher at that time that would risk publishing much more substantive novels that couldn't be published elsewhere because of censorship. Whole chapters of Venus Bound are devoted to the stories behind the publication of J. P. Donleavy's The Ginger Man, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Candy by Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg, Story of O by Dominique Aury (under the pseudonym Pauline Reage), and William Burrough's Naked Lunch.

This is a fascinating book about a mysterious and excitable Maurice Girodias who battles the censors and his own writers in court to maintain the Olympia Press. Although this is a book about erotica, the treatment is scholarly and there is nothing here that will offend any but the most sensitive readers. It will appeal to those who have an interest in the history of censorship or who want more information on any of the works published by Olympia Press. At the end of the book are a Chronology, a Olympia Press List of titles, and a Bibliography.

This is the book that changed my life and got me interested in literature. I ended up reading so many other books because of this book. In my life,this was the book that changed it all. Will it work for anyone else? Probably

This is a great book about the publisher, Maurice Girodias, as well as about the history of some of the authors and books published in Paris before censorship was relaxed in the US and in Britain. Very readable, and although I would not argue with the comment made by another reader calling it "scholarly" (below), certainly not dry.

For a discussion of the trials and legal maneuvering that allowed the publication of some of these books in the US, read "The End of Obscenity: The Trials of Lady Chatterley, Tropic of Cancer and Fanny Hill", by Charles Rembar.