Rest in Peace Barney Rosset

Barney Rosset,89, died Tuesday after going under a double heart valve transplant in Manhattan, New York. Mr. Rosette was an accomplished publisher who brought Beat poets, French Surrealist, German Expressionist and dramatist literature to light her in the United States.  Rosset introduced American readers to many significant writers, including Nobel Prize winners: Samuel Beckett, Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Kenzaburo Oe and Harold Pinter.

Mr. Rosset was undoubtedly a controversial figure in the literary world.  His autobiographical publications of Che Guevara, Malcolm X and Ho Chi Minh, at a time when Communism and racial instability rocked the U.S, made him a target to the authorities and radicals at the time. He was sued many times and received death threats on a regular basis, at one point his office was bombed in Greenwich Village. But still Mr. Rosset continued publishing literature that his mainstream competitors dared not touch.

Say what you will about the man, his ideas and passion however will carry on through his admirers.