The Olympia Reader: An Anthology of Erotic & Literary Classics

by Maurice Girodias (editor), Henry Miller (Contributor), Samuel Beckett (Contributor)

Contributors include: Henry Miller, Paul Ableman, Beauregard de Farniente, Marcus Van Heler, James Sherwood, J.P. Donleavy, Lawrence Durrell, Harriet Daimler, Charles Henri Ford, Samuel Beckett, John Cleland, Pauline Reage, Ataullah Mardaan, Jean Genet, Rank Harris, Henry Jones, Marquis de Sade, William S. Burroughs, Philip O'Connor, Maurice Girodias, Hamiltaon Drake, We We Meng, Chester Himes, Raymond Queneau, Jean Genet, Greagory Corso and Harriet Daimler.

Genres: Fiction, Erotica, Literature, Anthologies, Short Stories

891 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

Reviews

[Toni · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was gifted to me on valentine's day by my husband. I adore this book. It has a series of erotic short stories and each tale is prefaced by a story by Maurice Girodias who talks about what they had to go through to publish each story. Most of these stories were written in the 1950's and so the editor had to deal with having his work confiscated for pornography, by the French police. Dark tales like The Story of O, and Spartacus come to mind.

[Adam Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Remember when "erotica" was more porny?

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Olympia Press has an important place in the history of 20th century literature, though reading through the selections of erotica here from the Traveler's Companion Series it seems like a somewhat quaint one, at least to me. Maybe "quaint" isn't the right word. The erotic material excerpted here was printed in small paperbacks with green minimally-designed covers kept behind bookstore counters in Europe These copies would be traded across oceans to reach a readership curious for what existed outside the boundaries of decency. This picture of these books serving as "companions" to lonely "travelers" is quaint, but they also conjure a picture of bachelors with poor hair and shoes, less literary adventurers and more pathetic titillees. As erotica goes the stuff here is soapy, cartoonish, amateur. It reads like an imitation of a grandma's last lap dance by her middle-aged nephew who was cut from the will, -- something like that. The erotica here was written for money and it shows. Some of it is interesting, like the late "Teleny" attributed to Oscar Wilde, or The Story of O. Then there's de Sade, who reads best in short cuts like the one here. --Reading a little of de Sade makes you want more de Sade, but having more de Sade makes you want a lot less. No, most of this I feel reads as "naughty" or attempted-funny but is hardly exciting in any way: again, historically interesting.

The other side of the selections here are from serious writers who couldn't find publication elsewhere, such as Miller, Genet, Burroughs. Then there's something in-between like "Candy" by Terry Southern which is still pretty funny but no longer shocking. I guess my favorite here is Chester Himes. Himes is a really good, often great writer.

Then there's the note of score-settling by Maurice Girodias against Nabokov regarding the publication history of "Lolita", which is not included here but was denied permission by its author, -- a story that persuades no one familiar with the professional dishonesty of Maurice Girodias evidenced in his relationships with multiple/all? of the writers he published.

If you're a Miller fan you won't need these excerpts.

If you're a Genet fan, -- the same. Genet is a very great writer who I found during a young-enough age (over the year after graduating high school). I read his novels pretty much backwards, Querelle and Funeral Rites, then the prison novels, then Our Lady (and after that I read the plays, then the poems, and finally Prisoner Of Love).

If you're a Burroughs fan, you'll find here the opening of the original edition of The Soft Machine, 1961, which you'd have to pay at least a couple hundred dollars for in full. I've read the whole 1961 edition and I didn't think too highly of it, by the way. The later excerpt from The Ticket That Exploded is much better but does not make you want more because more is only the same. I personally don't think Burroughs picked back up the juice he had in Naked Lunch until his later trilogy written in America.

As for Nabokov? "Lolita" is probably the most important work Olympia ever published. If anything with the #metoo movement it's also the least-dated as well as the most enduring. A lot of the Travelers looking for "Lolita" to be their companion were mightily disappointed. So they replaced it with the reputation for "Lolita" as being a gateway, a brave little boat of a book making the most wicked crime imaginable possibly included on the table of recognized human behavior, recognized in the same way a historically-banished island full of unrepentant cannibals would somehow be slid under the door unnoticed and then seated at the same table. "Lolita" was immediately co-opted. Its actual story is now finally being popularly known by those that will never read it, revealing it to be a horror, a history and a tragedy. It's also for me incredibly irritating to read, or rather re-read. A word to anyone who has read and liked a few Nabokov novels: I used to be you. Then I read the deadly combination of his interviews and his translation of Eugene Onegin and Nabokov was ruined for me somewhat forever. But that is something I'll either save for another time or graciously spare you from having to endure hearing me stand up and announce to the world.

It's well worth buying a paperback, --back-pocket, that is, -- copy of The Olympia Reader.

[Heidi Bakk-Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's an artifact of a specific time (1960s) and thus is sexist, racist and just plain troubling in some places. Certainly literary, and valuable when it comes to researching the censorship of the time. It's just one of those books I acquired at Carlson Book.

[John E. Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Get your erotic groove on. Fill your dreams with sweat and sighs.