returning in 2016
In 1957, Barney Rosset, Fred Jordan and a few others launched the Evergreen Review with work by Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Mark Schorer, and James Purdy. For the next sixteen years Evergreen published writing that launched an assault on American propriety: literary, sexual, and social.
Evergreen’s genius lay in its ability to mix radical American voices from the literary and social fringes—Burroughs, Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Henry Miller—with a global cast of writers, many of whom were introduced to American readers by the magazine: Beckett, Genet, Grass, Oe, Paz, Walcott, Nabokov. The magazine was often shocking, always intriguing. It featured some of the finest writing available, by writers whose influence continues to shape contemporary literature. Here are a few such selections:
Samuel BeckettDante and the Lobster Gary IndianaWeymouth Smith’s Vacation Max BlaggA Visit to Bellevue Henry MillerIn Defense of the Freedom to Read Vladimir NabokovLolita and Mr. Girodias JG BallardThe Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race
In 2016, Evergreen will return under the leadership of publisher John Oakes and editor-in-chief Dale Peck. The new Evergreen builds on Rosset’s legacy of searching out the stories that aren’t being told or aren’t being heard: stories that challenge our sensibilities and expand our understanding of the way people actually live in the world, and the way their truths can be expressed. Available free of charge in an online-only format, the magazine will feature fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from an international array of new and established writers. Additionally, new editions of Foxrock Books, the book publishing arm of The Evergreen Review, will be released on a periodic basis; the first two titles available in the series are Samuel Beckett’s Stirrings Still and Marguerite Duras’ The Man Sitting in the Corridor.
John Oakes is co-publisher of OR Books. In 1987, he got his start in publishing with Barney Rosset's Grove Press. He is the founding director of the City University of New York's Publishing Institute, and a former trustee of PEN American Center. He is the editor of the anthology In the Realms of the Unreal: Writings of the "Insane."
Dale Peck is the author of the novels Martin and John, The Law of Enclosures, Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye, and The Garden of Lost and Found; the memoir-cum-novel Greenville; the young adult novel Sprout; and the essay collection Hatchet Jobs. His twelfth book, Visions and Revisions: Coming of Age in the Age of AIDS, was recently published by Soho Press, along with reprints of his first five novels. His fiction and criticism have earned him two O. Henry Awards, a Pushcart Prize, a Lambda Literary Award, and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.
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