Soon after Barney Rosset's seventy-fifth birthday party in 1997, his companion Astrid Meyers made a list of some of the things he "likes extremely." It is a curious list, yet a revealing one: playing pool, Korean women, tennis, rum and Coke, spanking, Victorian erotica, dogs, Man's Fate (Malraux), photography, Thailand, fried chicken, and three-bean salad. He also likes rearranging furniture, strippers, bars at three in the morning, primitive and naive art, and Samuel Beckett. A catalog of the things he heartily dislikes would be even longer. Astrid names only a few: rudeness, zaftig women, Rudy Giuliani, spicy foods, and Chicago. The list should be extended, for he very definitely dislikes certain whole sections of civilization (as an eighth-grader he published a newsletter called Anti-Everything) and in particular, any form of oppression: instruction manuals, Don't Walk signs, automatic transmissions, smoke and dust, the religious right, politicians, and practically everyone with whom he has been forced to have business relations. Rosset is shy, daunting, imposing, quick-tempered, courageous, and morbidly sensitive. He has a talent for adapting himself to uncongenial surroundings, and much of his life has been spent in passionate rebellion against censorship laws that people of milder temperament learned to endure and to eventually ignore. At seventy-seven he has a few loyal friends, a somewhat longer list of bitter enemies, and has published more than a dozen authors of such quality as to assure him a permanent place in the history of publishing.