cover image Venus Bound:: The Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press

Venus Bound:: The Erotic Voyage of the Olympia Press

John de St Jorre. Random House (NY), $27.5 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-679-44336-0

Anyone old enough to have traveled in Europe in the 1950s and '60s probably remembers those green paperbacks with black lettering, affectionately known by both their creators and many of their readers as dirty books; the best ""DBs,"" by common consent, were those published by Maurice Girodias at the Olympia Press in Paris. If that were all Girodias did, he would be no more than a shabby footnote to literary history; but because his press, in those puritanical times, was the only one on either side of the Atlantic unafraid of censorship, authors with notable but racy books went to him too--including Henry Miller (who first published with Girodias's father, Jack Kahane), J.P. Donleavy with The Ginger Man, Vladimir Nabokov with Lolita, Terry Southern and Mason Hoffenberg with Candy and William S. Burroughs with Naked Lunch. Girodias undoubtedly had good taste, and his contrary nature made him a formidable litigator; unhappily, he was also deeply reluctant to pay his authors, and relations with the best of them quickly became bogged down in endless recriminations and suits. De St. Jorre (The Patriot Game) tells the lively and often comic story of Girodias, his escapades and his Olympians with great verve and good humor, and his excellent research should make it catnip to book people. Photos not seen by PW. (June)