Obelisk Press
This respectable office building at 338 rue Saint-Honoré was once home to one of the more scandalous publishing houses of the twentieth century. Jack Kahane hit upon the idea to launch the Obelisk Press while reading a 1929 newspaper report about the seizure by British police of a book called Sleevless Errand. Norah James’ novel was only mildly obscene, but a scattering of phrases like “bloody hell”, “for Christ’s sake” and “bitch” were enough to attract prosecution in 1929 England. Kahane, then a partner in Henri Babou’s Vendôme Press in Paris, managed to acquire a copy of the novel and saw the business opportunity: Here was a book whose marketing campaign had already been conducted for free by the British press, it’s mild language would surely go unremarked by French censors who paid little attention to foreign language publications, and the book’s rights could be acquired cheaply from a publishing concern anxious to cut its losses.1
The Vendôme Press edition of Sleevless Errand sold well and set Kahane’s resolve to launch his own company:
I would start a publishing business that would exist for the convenience of those English writers, English and American, who had something to say they could not conveniently say in their own countries. The next Lawrence or Joyce who came along would find the natural solution of his difficulties in Paris.2
The publication of books that were either banned or unprintable in the US and Britain would remain the stock-in-trade of the Obelisk Press throughout its run from 1931 to 1939.
Jack Kahane
Kahane was born in Manchester, England in 1887. An ardent francophile from youth, he attempted to enlist in the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of WWI, but was rejected. Instead he served as an officer with the British Royal Fusiliers and was badly wounded and gassed at Ypres.
In 1917, he married a French woman named Marcelle Girodias and by the early 1920’s they were living outside Paris in Rozoy-en-Multien. There the couple raised three sons and Kahane began writing his own novels. His first, Laugh and Grow Rich, was published with moderate success, but the subsequent volumes, Love’s Wild Geese, The Gay Intrigue, The Vain Serenade, and The Pure In Heart sold poorly, prompting Kahane to try his hand at the publishing business. In 1929, he purchased an interest in the Vendôme Press and moved to Paris where the Kahanes settled into an apartment near the Champs-Élysées. Vendôme was a publisher of deluxe illustrated volumes—essentially coffee table books—run by Henri Babou from a small office in the fashionable Place Vendôme. In addition to his work on the coffee table books, Kahane managed to wrangle the publication of two minor volumes penned by his literary idol, James Joyce: Haveth Childers Everywhere (Vendôme, 1930), which was a selection from Joyce’s then Work in Progress, Finnegan’s Wake, and a collection of thirteen short poems titled Pomes Penyeach (Obelisk, 1932):
At that time my admiration for Ulysses was ardent and unadulterated, and, as a budding publisher, my dearest ambition was to publish something, anything, by THE GREATEST EXPATRIATE [...] James Joyce himself.3
Through the 1930’s Kahane would continue to write his own volumes of light smut which he self-published at Obelisk under the pen names Basil Carr and Cecil Barr.
Tropic of Cancer
In October 1932, Kahane received a package from the literary agent William Aspenwall Bradley containing a strange manuscript by an unknown author identified only as “Anonymous.” Kahane brought the manuscript home and devoured it in a single evening:
“At last!” I murmured to myself. I had read the most terrible, the most sordid, the most magnificent manuscript that had ever fallen into my hands; nothing I had yet received was comparable to it for the splendor of its writing, the fathomless depth of its despair, the savour of its portraiture, the boisterousness of its humour. [...] I was exalted by the triumphant sensation of all explorers who have at last fallen upon the object of their years of search. I had in my hands a work of genius and it had been offered to me for publication.4
The manuscript was Tropic of Cancer—“an unprintable book that is fit to read” as Ezra Pound later described it and the unknown author turned out to be Henry Miller, an American expatriate whom George Orwell would proclaim “the only imaginative prose-writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.” However it was the “unprintable” business that gave Kahane pause. The objectionable language in Tropic of Cancer far exceeded the occasional “bloody hell” or “for Christ’s sake” that had made Sleevless Errand so appealing. Furthermore, Tropic of Cancer was a book of high literary merit—with the potential to become Kahane’s Ulysses—and he wanted it to reach the broadest possible audience. The Obelisk Press accepted Miller’s novel in 1932, but it would not see publication for nearly two years as Kahane fidgeted and fretted over the legal implications of launching such a scabrous tome. The matter was resolved only when Anaïs Nin’s offer to cover the printing expenses of 5,000 francs proved sufficient to dispel Kahane’s apprehension.
Tropic of Cancer rolled off the press in September 1934 bearing an explicit warning on it’s cover: “Not to be imported into Great Britain or U.S.A.” and for good measure, Kahane affixed a second label in bright red warning French bookstore owners that it must not be placed on open display stands or in windows (”Ne doit pas étre exposé en étalage ou en vitrine”). The warning effort, while offering Kahane a semblance of legal cover, seemed destined to bury the book from public view. Likely it was all a bit of marketing theater. A book requiring its own warning labels was sure to whet the appetite of expatriates looking for a salacious read. Kahane had found success with similar tactics in the past—the first printing of his own novel, Daffodil (1931) bore the label “3rd impression” to lend it an appearance of popularity; A second printing was labeled as the “5th”, a third became the “9th” and so on. Though Kahane had effectively banned Tropic of Cancer in Britain and the US before censors in either country knew of its existence, sales of Miller’s novel remained steady throughout the 1930’s—enough to see the book through five genuine Obelisk printings.
Four subsequent Miller titles were published by Kahane before the demise of the Obelisk press in 1939, including Aller Retour New York (1935), Black Spring (1936), Max and the White Phagocytes (1938) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939). During this period Obelisk also produced books by D. H. Lawrence, Anaïs Nin, Lawrence Durrell, Cyril Connelly, Richard Aldington and Frank Harris.
Assassinated?
The circumstances of Kahane’s death are rather hazy. Miller’s biographers generally limit their comments to pointing out the significance of the date: Kahane died on September 3, 1939, the day Britain and France declared war on Germany. Neil Pearson writes in a recent book on the Obelisk Press that Kahane died of heart failure in his apartment.5 The New York Times reported in Kahane’s obituary that a brief illness preceded his death.6 However, a very different story is presented by Martha Cornog who writes that Kahane, rumored to be a spy for the British Foreign Office, was shot dead by an unknown assailant while sipping tea at a cafe terrace on the Champs-Élysées.7 Miller researcher Karl Orend has also taken up the view that Kahane was assassinated for espionage.8
Location
338 rue Saint-Honoré
Paris, 75001
map
Notes
- Neil Pearson, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, 65-68
- Jack Kahane, Memoirs of a Booklegger, 227-228
- Jack Kahane, Memoirs of a Booklegger, 238
- Jack Kahane, Memoirs of a Booklegger
- Neil Pearson, Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press, 72
- The New York Times, September 8, 1939
- Martha Cornog, Libraries, Erotica, and Pornography, 56
- Karl Orend, “The Observations Gathered Concerning His Morality and Probity Are Favorable” Nexus, Vol. 4, 187
4 comments on "Obelisk Press"
Sam_Spade,
Thanks, there are actually two obelisks nearby. One is in the Place de la Concorde and the other is in the Place Vendome. Actually, the one in the Place Vendome is more of a column than an obelisk, but this is the one that provided the name for the Obelisk Press — Kahane launched the Obelisk Press from Henri Babou’s office in the Place Vendome and later moved to his own spot on the Rue Saint-Honoré. I think it was in the Place de la Concorde that all of the hot guillotine action occurred (not sure about that though).
Another interesting footnote: The area behind 338 Rue Saint-Honore was the site of the Jacobin Club.
And the obelisk nearby marks the location of the guillotine that beheaded the king & queen and many others.
I’m a president of fondation HENRY MILLER ans I want to know please the adress of karl oerend and roger jackson
thanks a lot
