An Interview with 'Accursed Publisher' Maurice Girodias
by Mike Golden
If Maurice Girodias' timing was not always perfect, it never lacked flair, as the rogue genius and so-called "accursed publisher" proved one last time on July 3, 1991, when he managed to pass away live on the radio in his beloved Paris, at the age of seventy-one, while plugging the recently published second installment of his memoirs, and talking about the battles he fought against censorship.
Born April 12, 1919, Girodias was brought up in a privileged artistic and intellectual atmosphere. By the time he was fourteen, he had not only read Tropic of Cancer in manuscript, he had been commissioned by his father, publisher Jack Kahane, to draw the cover for the groundbreaking publication. Before Miller, Kahane had published Haveth Childers Everywhere-the first printed portion of Finnegans Wake-and The Life and Loves of Frank Harris, so the tradition Girodias would follow in was firmly established. → Read more