posted on 24 Dec 2015

The Tender Hours of Twilight by Richard Seaver

Richard Seaver is a legend in the publishing and book editing world. He died in 2009 at the age of 82 but left behind a mountain of papers that he intended to edit into an autobiography of sorts. He never got around to the task but, thankfully, his wife of many years, Jeannette, did an heroic job of trimming the reams of paper into a terrific book.

Seaver was the classic American in post-war Paris. He had gone there to live the impecunious life of the literary acolyte – in thrall to the memory and reputation of Joyce – and stayed to become one of the most important figures in the development of the 1950’s literary scene. Seaver fell in with Alex Trocchi , the bohemian Scottish experimental novelist, and together created the journal, Merlin, which went on to pioneer the work of Genet, Ionesco and Samuel Beckett. Seaver was essential to the enterprise for a number of reasons – he could speak fluent French, he could translate the complex writings of Beckett and he had fabulous inter-personal skills. Beckett was famously reticent and suspicious of other people but Seaver was able to coax him from his shell, eventually becoming a life-long friend; the playwright even followed him to the Grove Press when he returned to America.

Seaver married Jeannette Medina in Paris but after an enforced period of service in the US Navy during the Korean War they both returned to America to spend the 60s in the heart of the literary revolution that was sweeping the publishing world. The experience of producing Merlin landed him a job with an emerging book club but his reputation for championing ‘difficult’ authors who challenged the boundaries followed him and he was courted by the owner of the emerging Grove Press – who he eventually joined.

This was the time of the Lady Chatterley Trial and the other challenges to the antiquated censorship rules that dominated both US and British cultural output. Seaver was at the heart of this debate and he was responsible for bringing the work of William Burroughs, Hubert Selby Jr., Jack Kerouac and Robert Coover to the attention of the reading public. He stayed within publishing all his life and worked for Viking and Holy, Reinhart before establishing Arcade with his wife.

What this autobiography shows is not just how vital Seaver was to shaping the literary reputations of so many authors in the 50s and 60s but just what an excellent writer he was in his own right. This book is a really colourful and engaging read and the Paris years in particular are vividly recreated and atmospheric. Life in the French capitol with no money but with a burning desire to create something important leaps from the page – the sights, the smells and the anxieties. Seaver’s growing relationship with Beckett is beautifully drawn and his subsequent disappointment with the slow downward spiral of his close friend Alex Trocchi into drug dependency and eventual obscurity is sensitively handled.

However, perhaps my favourite passage in the book is the sudden and explosive appearance of Brendan Behan who lands on Seaver without warning and simply refuses to leave. Behan, soused in drink as he always was, arrives at Seaver’s door with the intent of meeting Beckett at all costs – not because he’s ever read anything Beckett has written but because he’s read Seaver’s review of his work in Merlin. Penniless, he squats with Seaver and treats the flat as his own. When Beckett does eventually meet Behan his verdict is telling – a young man, wasting his talent who will soon be dead from the excess of drink. Prescient.

My copy of this book is published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2012 and can be bought online for under £20.

 

Terry Potter

December 2015