We just learned that Barney Rosset, the maverick, irascible, but always independent publisher who provided inspiration for radical editors and publishers everywhere has died. A tip of the hat to this not easily categorizable man, who published the Tropics of Henry Miller, all of Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and much, much else. More than any other person, he’s responsible for the retreat of censorship laws in the U.S. (at one point the U.S. postal service took him to court in every state in the union for shipping pornography through the mail—that was for Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence). It’s hard to imagine a publisher not only willing to wrestle with these sorts of issues—but courting the fight.

In the pic here, you see him in front of a wall in his loft he not long ago decided to paint—not that he had a background in painting, he just felt like doing it.

So he did.

We’ll miss him.