Herman Graf, an important and fearless figure in independent publication that sold copies of Henry Miller's Roman “Tropic of Cancer” to bookstores after it was engaged in a legal fight whether the obscene was, died on 27 February in his house in Flushing, Queens. He was 91.
His cousin Paul lighter said that the cause was Parkinson's disease.
Under the many other achievements of Mr Graf, he helped the satirical novel by John Kennedy Tool, “A Confederacy of Dunces”, to be changed in a bestseller long after the author's death.
A racingor with a flowering voice, Mr. Graf was a bibliophile that loved the works of Stendhal and Thomas Mann. His apartment in Queens was filled with books, many of them first editions. And he was a ruthless and boisterous seller for Grove Press, where he spent most of two decades, and Carroll & Graf, the publishing house he later founded with Kent Carroll.
“He was daring and not afraid,” said John Donatich, the director of Yale University Press and a former assistant of Mr. Graf, in an interview. “He changed thoughts of people and showed people things in his own way, whether he was obtaining a book, sold a book to a foreign publisher or received a foreign publisher to sell one to him.”
When Mr Graf arrived at Grove Press in 1964, the publishing house in Greenwich Village was at the end of a long battle in the first amendment to 'Tropic of Cancer', a sexually explicit first-person report of a writer in Paris in the 1920s and 30s.
Barney Rosset, who was known as a risky owner of Grove for fighting censorship, had paid Miller $ 50,000 in 1961 for the rights to reprint his novel, which was published in Paris in 1934 but was never legal in the United States.
Three years after Grove had published it, the battle still raged in the courts over several court cases that wanted to ban the book as an obscene.
“I was advised to go to Philadelphia,” said Mr. Graf in the documentary “Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press in 2007.” One bookstore with this agreed to buy 500 copies of “Tropic of Cancer”; Another lasted 800.
Sam Sokolove, who owned the Arcade Book store in Philadelphia, hesitated. Mr Graf assured him that Miller's novel was “the safest book in the store” because the American Supreme Court had voted months earlier that it could not be banned by law.
“I worked him and worked him up and let him take it,” said Mr. Graf.
Mr. Graf stood up as Vice -President Marketing and Sales Director at Grove, but he had a stormy relationship with Mr. Rosset, who rented and fired him three times. Mr Donatich said that Mr. Rosset explained a resignation by telling Mr. Graf: “I want to be clear, this is not about your performance. It's personal. “
“And,” Mr Donatich added, “who except Herman could laugh about it?”
During a break of Grove, Mr. Graf Herman Graf Associates and, in collaboration with Dell, was acquired the rights to publish 'the Senate Water Watergate report', written by the Commission that had investigated the infringement of the Watergate burglaries and cover-up, ling to President Richard M. Nixon's rejection on 9 August 1974. released in July.
In a tribute to Mr. Graf, Jennifer McCartney, a former assistant of him, wrote that he, in order to get the rights to the report, Senator Sam J. Ervin Jr. had called, the chairman of the Watergate Committee, “and had an impression on him.”
“Or rather, that was the story that Herman told,” she added. “After all, he was a seller.” (Senator Ervin wrote the preface.)
In 1980, gross $ 2,000 paid for the paperback -rights to 'A Confederacy of Dunces', the posthumously published novel by John Kennedy Toole about the setbacks of Ignatius J. Reilly, a developed Misanrope who is not from the modern world and lives with his mother in New Orleans. Mr. Tole died by suicide in 1969 and left the manuscript behind, rejected and not published. A hardcover edition was finally published by LSU Press in 1980 and received excellent reviews, but it was not sold well.
Mr. Graf Cajoled Bookstore buyers and distributors to gain more copies, who produced hardcover sales and produced it in 1981 as a paperback. It didn't hurt that the novel De Pulitzer Prize won for fiction that year.
“That was very unusual in those days,” said Matthew Goldberg, a former buyer at Golden-Lee Book Distributors, one of the companies that Mr Graf insisted to buy the hardcover. The marketing efforts of Paperback -publishers were usually separate from those of hardcover, the Heer Goldberg said.
“Herman was a unique man,” he added. “He came across as surly and streetwise, but he was an incredibly well -read man who could quote Balzac for you.”
Herman Graf was born on October 22, 1933 from a Jewish family in Germany. In 1937, he and his Nazi persecution family fled and settled in the Bronx. His father, Isidore, owned a shoe store, and his mother, Mathilda (Rosenberg) Graf, supervised the house.
After graduating at Hunter College in 1955 with a bachelor's degree in psychology, Mr. Graf Joken as a social worker in New York City, an advertising seller at the San Francisco -Examinator and an insurance seller.
He found his calling in 1961 when a newspaper advertisement from Doubleday & Company classified, beckoned: “Love to Read? Like to sell? “He was hired as a sales representative and worked there two years before moving to McGraw-Hill for a similar position in 1963.
After Mr Graf left Grove, he formed and Kent Carroll, a colleague there, Carroll & Graf in 1982.
“We didn't have five cents and not a bank loan,” Mr. Graf told Publishers Weekly in 2007.
But the company has been successful for many years with an eclectic mix of original books and reprints.
Mr Graf, whose tasks varied between the company and the editorial parties, did not always go well with Mr. Carroll.
“Ken formed himself as the editor and would say something,” Herman simply sells the books; I acquire and edit them, “said Philip Turner, who was an editor at Carroll & Graff. “But Herman acquired many titles.”
Carroll & Graf was purchased in 1998 by the Avalon Publishing Group, which in turn was purchased in 2007 by the Perseus Book Group. Within a year, Perseus Carroll & Graf closed, and Mr. Graf moved to Skyhorse as editor of acquisitions.
He acquired the first New York Timesbestser from the company: “Don't start the revolution without me!” (2009), by Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler and governor of Minnesota.
“He brought an enormous amount of knowledge of acquiring, editing, designing, on the market and selling books and selling books,” wrote Tony Lyons, the president and publisher of Skyhorse, in an E -mail. Mr. Graf, he added, had a talent for “convincing retailers to buy large quantities of books.”
Mr. Graf's marriage to Joyce Bankel ended with her death in 2003. His daughter, Suzanne Haruvi, died in 1995, and his grandson, Jeremy Haruvi, died in 2012. In addition to his cousin, Mr. Lighter, Mr. Graf is survived by his companion, Merlene Groome; His brother, Manfred, known as Mel; And his nieces, Stephanie and Alisa Graf and Barbara lighter.
In 2011, Mrs. McCartney, the former assistant of Mr. Graf at Skyhorse, began to put together a list of quotes from Mr. Graf and posted them on Tumblr. (Until he died, she only attributed them to “H” to protect his privacy.)
He said about books: “I do what I like to book 'book Foreplay' with all my new books. Touch them, keep them in my hands. I like to spread them open and give a pinch. It's magic.”
He said pragmatically about selling: “He doesn't understand the art of selling. If someone says, “No, I don't want it,” you don't shake with their hand and say, “Good.” '
