The Evergreen Review to be rebooted by O/R Books

During its short print life, from 1957-1973, The Evergreen Review published a striking lineup of literary luminaries: Jean-Paul Sartre, Vladimir Nabokov, William Burroughs, Marguerite Duras, John Rechy, Jean Genet, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Jorge Luis Borges, Norman Mailer, Amiri Baraka, Henry Miller, Pablo Neruda, Malcolm X, Frank O’Hara, Kenzaburo Oe, Octavio Paz, Terry Southern, Harold Pinter, Susan Sontag, Richard Brautigan, Tom Stoppard, Charles Bukowski, Gunter Grass and Samuel Beckett among them.

Now the magazine created by Barney Rosset is getting a reboot from progressive publisher O/R Books.

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FOR THE RECORD

Mar. 27, 12:20 p.m.: An earlier version of this article gave the name of The Evergreen Review creator as Barney Rossett. His name is Barney Rosset.

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In an email to the L.A. Times, O/R books co-founder John Oakes writes, “We plan to make it an online juggernaut (he said modestly) -- just as it was a pathbreaker forty years ago, in print.”

At one time, the literary quarterly reached a circulation of nearly 200,000. With a mix of high and low culture and an openness about sex, it pushed the leading edge of the counterculture. The magazine’s most famous cover, in 1970, featured a photograph of Ginsberg and his partner, Peter Orlovsky, in the nude, taken by Richard Avedon.

The reboot marks an expanded partnership between O/R Books and Rosset’s estate. Later this year, O/R Books will publish Rosset’s memoir, “The Subject Is Left Handed: The Autobiography of Barney Rosset.”

“I can think of no better partner than OR,” Astrid Myers Rosset said in a statement. Astrid is Rosset’s widow and a member of the Evergreen board. “I like to imagine Barney would welcome Evergreen’s evolution, and of course its resurrection.”

O/R’s plans for Evergreen include releasing its books, like Samuel Beckett’s “Stirring Still,” and digitizing the archives to find the material for more books to come.

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