A Very British Pornographer: The Jack Kahane Story Secret Knowledge

This programme contains very strong language and scenes of a sexual nature from the start.

In 1934, a book was published that would go on to cause social outrage

and legal controversy.

It would shock its readers with its blunt, explicit language

and its graphic portrayal of sex.

It would say...

the unsayable.

The book was this one.

Tropic Of Cancer by Henry Miller.

And here is an extract from the very first chapter.

"Oh, Tanya. Where, now, is that warm cunt of yours?

"Those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs.

"There is a bone in my prick six inches long.

"I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tanya,

"big with seed.

"I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly

"and your womb turned inside out.

"Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire,

"but I know how to inflame a cunt."

Strong stuff.

And if you think that's shocking today,

imagine the effect it had more than 80 years ago.

It's one of the most influential novels of the 20th century,

and Miller's unflinching prose

sent shock waves throughout the literary world.

But in 1934, a book using such language was unprintable

in London or New York.

Instead, it was published in Paris

by a short-sighted dandy from Manchester called Jack Kahane.

Paris, between the wars, was a city teeming with highbrows and lowlifes,

crooks and contessas, junkies and jazz men.

And writers.

Lots and lots of writers.

And into this world wandered Kahane,

a failed playwright, a failed novelist,

a lover of great literature

and a shrewd businessman who knew that sex sells,

and who wasn't averse to selling dirty books

alongside some of the 20th century's most important works of literature.

This is the story of a man whom I believe to be one of the most

important and unlikely figures

in the history of literary censorship.

My name is Neil Pearson.

I'm mostly an actor, but for many years,

I've been interested in antiquarian books.

I collect them, I deal in them,

and I love what they tell us about our literary history.

And one publishing house in particular has always fascinated me.

The Obelisk Press.

It was founded by Jack Kahane.

Born in Manchester in 1887

to a prosperous Romanian Jewish textile family,

Kahane fell in love with music and theatre from an early age.

He spent his adolescent years actively promoting his home city

as a hub of literary and musical culture,

and promoting himself as a young man about town,

challenging authorities, setting up cultural societies,

and trying his hand at playwriting.

But Kahane's especial love of French culture

lit a passion for the country itself,

and in 1914, the very existence of France was under threat.

Full of the sort of boyish idealism that was likely to get you killed,

Kahane was desperate to see front-line action.

In 1916, he got his wish, somewhere out there,

on the killing fields of the Great War.

At Ypres, he was gassed, then badly wounded by an exploding shell.

He spent several months in a military hospital,

the rest of the war behind the front line,

and the rest of his life dealing with

the permanent effect on his physical and mental health.

But amid all the carnage, one good thing happened.

Towards the end of the war, he married Marcelle Girodias,

the French daughter of a wealthy railway engineer.

For the rest of his life, Kahane's adopted country

would be his permanent home.

And for a would-be writer and bohemian

at the dawn of the roaring '20s,

Paris was definitely the place to be.

If a cabbie in a time machine

ever pulled up alongside me and said, "Where to?",

I wouldn't have to think very long.

IN FRENCH:

After the carnage of the Great War,

young people were looking to forget,

and thousands upon thousands of them chose to forget in Paris.

The exchange rate was fantastic,

accommodation was plentiful and cheap,

and everything a young person needs

for a good time was readily available.

They didn't just come to forget.

Many came to write. Paris was the literary epicentre

of a new movement, modernism,

which was embracing freedom and experimentation.

This was the world of Gertrude Stein

and Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce,

and like moths to a flame,

they were all drawn here,

to the Boulevard Du Montparnasse.

Writer and historian John Baxter

is an expert on the city's more disreputable past.

So, John, it's a Saturday night,

and here we are in Montparnasse in the mid-1920s.

Paint the picture for me.

OK, we're at the very crossroads of bohemian Paris.

In the Rotonde Cafe here,

the Spaniards would be carousing.

There'd be Salvador Dali, Luis Bunuel.

Here in the Select, every drunk prostitute, pickpocket and

general layabout would be looking for a way to make some money.

And over here in the Coupole,

the Americans would be flooding in,

looking for a tremendous night, which would begin with cocktails

and end at 4am with them dancing in the dance hall underneath,

so everybody was having a great time.

This was like Soho in the 1890s,

like Greenwich Village in the 1950s.

If you were young and you wanted to be where it was happening,

this was where it was happening.

Paris in the 1920s was the crossroads at which

all the arts met, cross-pollinated and experimented.

And for an aspiring writer like Jack Kahane,

his adopted city provided a literary freedom

that couldn't be found back home.

In Britain and the United States,

this was still an extremely restrictive time to be a writer.

As far as the authorities were concerned, it was the writer's job

to reflect the values of his country,

not challenge them.

Publishers were regularly taken to court,

and books which seemed innocuous even by the standards of the day

could be prosecuted for obscenity, blasphemy,

promoting immorality, sometimes all three.

But on this side of the Channel, things were different.

In 1922, a book which was unprintable

both in the US and the UK

was published here in Paris, and the way it was published

would later have a profound effect on Jack Kahane.

The book was Ulysses, by James Joyce.

In 1920, excerpts from the unpublished novel appeared in

an American magazine, which was promptly prosecuted.

A masterpiece it may have been,

but it was still unprintable on either side of the Atlantic.

It's impossible to find a passage in Ulysses

which is obviously offensive.

But that didn't stop the censors trying.

However obliquely, Joyce was writing about masturbation and casual sex,

and that was enough to get him prosecuted.

In France, the obscenity laws were as stringent as they were

anywhere else, but there was an important loophole.

They were only ever used against work published in French.

If you published in English, in Paris,

you could publish pretty much what you wanted,

and as long as you didn't sent the books abroad...

..you wouldn't be prosecuted.

In 1922, the owner of a small bookshop in Paris decided to

use this loophole to publish

one of the greatest books of the 20th century.

Her name was Sylvia Beach,

and the bookshop was called Shakespeare And Company.

At the beginning of the 1920s,

Beach's shop was here on the rue de l'Odeon

and it quickly became the headquarters

of Paris' English-speaking literary community.

With Ulysses, it had also become the city's most daring publishing house.

And where Beach led, many other young publishers quickly followed,

printing books unpublishable anywhere else.

A literary party had begun.

But poor Jack Kahane wasn't around to get his invitation.

So where was he?

The family's archives contain

a treasure trove of photos from this time,

and amongst the pictures of Jack and Marcelle,

there are a few which explain his

temporary exile from the city of light.

In the early 1920s, Kahane's health had deteriorated.

The war had left him with only one lung,

and in 1919,

he was diagnosed with tuberculosis,

at that time an incurable disease.

He was sent to a sanatorium in sleepy, rural France,

a long way from the bright lights of Paris.

And while the rest of the world was getting to know James Joyce,

he was becoming addicted to a very different kind of fiction.

He became addicted to

light French novels.

Very light French novels,

like this one.

The books' plots were virtually interchangeable.

They all featured pretty young girls,

their fearsome mothers

and handsome but disreputable young men,

chasing each other through country houses and nightclubs.

So far, so PG Wodehouse,

but these books had an added ingredient.

Sex.

They weren't explicit, but they were saucy.

A chapter would end with the lovers outside the bedroom door

and the next chapter would begin with them happily sitting up in bed,

having breakfast.

Across the Channel, books had been banned for less.

But Kahane saw a business opportunity.

In the strait-laced, censorious world of the British literary scene,

there was no equivalent to this kind of novel,

so he wrote one of his own,

Laugh And Grow Rich.

The book is a frothy, mildly sexy romp about two young things in Paris

and kept just the right side of what was permissible in the UK.

Published in London in 1923,

it was well reviewed and ran to three editions.

For the first and only time in his life,

the writer Jack Kahane was a hit.

I particularly like...

this bit here.

"It was now half past ten, and taking down the telephone receiver,

"I asked to be put through to her room.

"After a few moments, she answered.

"'Oh, is it you? How early you are.

"'I've had to dash out of my bath to answer you.'

"'I want to know if I may come and see you.'

"'Not just yet, for I am standing here

"'dressed simply in drops of water.'

"I grunted. If a telephone were only a telescope as well."

It wasn't Ulysses, but it wasn't meant to be.

Kahane had finished the novel he'd set out to write.

And people were buying it.

But modest success wasn't enough.

He wanted to be taken seriously. He wanted to be James Joyce.

He tried his hand at more serious novels,

all of which fell flat.

By the late 1920s,

he was forced to admit defeat.

Jack Kahane, the writer, was dead in the water.

If he wanted to be successful, he'd have to try something else.

In 1929, he had an idea.

He convinced his father-in-law

to bankroll his stake in a publishing house

that produced glossy editions de luxe,

coffee-table art books in French and English

that were much in vogue at that time.

Kahane was finally ready to return to Paris,

this time as a publisher.

But, as usual,

his timing was a little off.

There have been better years to start a new business

than the year of the Wall Street Crash.

Wealthy young expatriates were wealthy no more,

and headed for home.

Paris emptied, and the market for English-language books collapsed.

The party was over.

So far, Kahane had relied on support from his wife's rich father,

but with the family business in turmoil,

that source of income was rapidly drying up.

Kahane had a family to feed, and needed to make money - fast.

Luckily, he had a plan.

While Wall Street crashed,

Kahane was closely following a scandal across the Channel,

caused by a book which had been seized before publication.

But they missed this copy.

Sleeveless Errand by Norah James,

a morbid story about a man and a woman who embark on a suicide pact.

According to an influential 1868 ruling in the British courts,

the test of obscenity was whether the material intends to

"deprave and corrupt those whose

"minds are open to such immoral influences".

But it's hard to see this book as being likely to deprave or corrupt,

even by the standards of 1929.

Occasionally, someone will say "hell" or "bitch",

but nothing stronger, and no-one has sex.

Kahane managed to get hold of his own copy,

and when he read it he saw not so much a great novel

as a fantastic opportunity.

He was certain that the subject matter

wouldn't raise an eyebrow in France,

and he bought the rights off the UK publisher

at a knock-down price.

He printed his own edition here in Paris,

and sold it to expatriates and English-speaking tourists

eager to see what all the fuss was about.

It carried this wrap-around band,

cleverly proclaiming that this was the version which had been

seized by the London police.

It sold very well,

and in 1931, Kahane bought out his business partner

and founded a new publishing house

based on this daring new business model.

He called it...

the Obelisk Press.

The inspiration for the company's name and logo came from the obelisk

here in the Place de la Concorde.

Given what he would go on to publish,

it's a suitably phallic symbol.

Kahane hadn't gone into business to publish dirty books,

but he wasn't stupid.

Sex sells.

He knew that the racier the novel, the quicker it would sell,

and over the course of his publishing career,

he certainly printed his fair share of smut.

So, how saucy is saucy?

Well, Kahane signed up a list of authors who would write memoirs

and fiction of a saucy nature for him,

among them N Reynolds Packard,

who, when he wasn't filing copy for American newspapers,

would write of his exploits across Europe

as the Marco Polo of sex.

And when the supply of racy novels threatened to dry up,

Kahane solved the problem by writing one himself,

under a pseudonym. This...

..is Gold And Silver by Henry Bridges,

aka Jack Kahane.

It's an everyday story of casual sex, cocaine and lesbianism

on the Cote d'Azur.

"Taking her in his arms, he put her on the bed,

"where he began undressing her, awkwardly, hesitatingly,

"embracing her as he took off every scrap of clothing.

"His desire becoming ever greater,

"it was short work to have her naked before him,

"her beautiful body more beautiful than he had realised,

"at his mercy.

"Almost gloatingly, he allowed his hands to wander over her.

"He began undressing.

"'No!' exclaimed Madeline, 'I can't bear that.

"'There's a dressing room over there.'"

(Disappointing.)

By today's standards, most of these titles are quite tame,

end-of-the-pier smut rather than out-and-out porn.

They may have paid the bills, but Kahane wanted to do more.

He wanted to make a lasting contribution to literature,

and so, alongside the smut,

he reprinted notoriously banned books, such as...

..Lady Chatterley's Lover, by DH Lawrence,

24 years before it was legally available in the UK.

And then in 1932, a brand-new manuscript landed on his desk,

which would raise the stakes significantly.

It was written by a middle-aged,

unpublished American writer down on his luck.

Like Kahane, Henry Miller had turned up late to the party,

settling in Paris at a time when most expatriates were leaving.

Miller, penniless and with absolutely no plan,

threw himself into the seedy underbelly of Paris.

And Paris rewarded him with the material for his first novel.

Tropic Of Cancer is a seething picaresque,

in which the city of Paris is as much character as setting.

It's a Paris seen mostly at night,

a Paris teeming with artists and writers,

pimps and whores, highbrows and lowlifes.

The book is a candid chronicle

of Miller's life at the time he was writing it.

Up to and including the sex.

Lots and lots of sex.

Tropic Of Cancer was clearly unique, clearly brilliant,

and clearly unpublishable.

Miller's literary agent, William Bradley,

was convinced of the first two,

but sent the manuscript to Jack Kahane anyway,

hoping he would disagree with the third.

Kahane read it in one sitting.

Later, he would call it the most terrible,

the most sordid, the most magnificent manuscript

that had ever fallen into his hands.

Kahane knew it was a masterpiece.

But he also knew it was

way more incendiary than anything he'd published so far.

It would be the first real test of the censor's patience,

a test that would put his entire business at risk.

He decided it was a risk worth taking,

and in 1934, he changed the course of literary history.

OK, so, this...

..is the first edition of Tropic Of Cancer by Henry Miller,

published by the Obelisk Press in Paris

on the 1st of September, 1934.

I think this is beautiful.

Let me try to convince you.

It's not pretty to look at.

It's a little dogged, it's a little dowdy,

and it's a badly made paperback.

Also, the illustration is appalling.

It was done by Maurice Kahane, Jack's then 14-year-old son,

and it shows nothing so much as

a complete misunderstanding of the book.

It shows a great big crab - Cancer, get it?

And in its pincers it holds a lifeless woman.

It bears absolutely no relation to anything in the book.

In monetary terms,

this is probably worth now about £10,000.

It was published in a limited edition of only 1,000 copies.

Probably about half of those were read to death.

Probably about half of those that remained were destroyed

by customs or the postal service,

and of those that remained,

most are now in institutional libraries,

which is where they should be,

because they'll be preserved forever.

Before this copy existed,

Tropic Of Cancer by Henry Miller

didn't exist, except in Henry Miller's imagination.

That makes it beautiful.

And the fact that this is still here

is more beautiful still.

The first edition of Tropic Of Cancer

is a powerfully evocative object.

But it's much more than that.

It kick-started a literary revolution.

Andrew Hussey is a professor at

the University of London's institute in Paris,

and an expert on the work of Henry Miller.

What was different about the style of

Tropic Of Cancer that hadn't come before?

If you go back to the 1930s,

it's going to be very hard to find out how people spoke,

whether in England or America,

because literature doesn't recreate that properly.

Joyce does, a little bit,

but in a very different sort of way.

The language of the streets is not something that writers do.

But Miller does that.

And Miller talks about the electric heat of the streets,

and this is something that you can actually feel, you know,

-through the text.

-Can you show us an example of that?

Um, if memory serves, I think on page 247.

-I'm being very careful.

-Yes.

There you go.

"On a damp winter's night, it's not necessary to look at a map

"to discover the latitude of Paris.

"It's a northern city, an outpost erected

"over a swamp filled in with skulls and bones.

"Out on the boulevards, there is a cold, electrical imitation of heat.

"Tout Va Bien, in ultraviolet rays,

"that make the clients of the Dupont chain cafes

"look like gangrened cadavers.

"Wherever there are lights, there is a little heat.

"One gets warm from watching

"the fat, secure bastards down their grogs,

"their steaming black coffees.

"Where the lights are, are people on the sidewalks, jostling one another,

"giving off a little animal heat through their dirty underwear,

"and their foul, cursing breaths."

That's... You know, that is superb prose.

What influence did Henry Miller have on literary movements,

especially American literary movements that came after him?

Well, he's kind of an influence on the Beat Generation,

and I think that's certainly true,

and the leaders of the Beat Generation,

that's Burroughs, Kerouac and Ginsberg,

have certainly read Miller.

What they took from Miller was a sensibility.

A rebel sensibility, like an outsider kind of voice.

But the prose doesn't match up.

I think Miller is superior to all of them

in lots of different ways, and in a way,

I would jump over the Beat Generation

and look at the voices in contemporary American literature.

I'm thinking of people like David Foster Wallace with Infinite Jest.

Miller didn't invent all of this, but, like all great artists,

he gave a voice to what needed to be done.

At last, Obelisk had on its list what Kahane had craved for so long,

a modern literary classic with a scandalous reputation,

and sales to match.

Its success now made Obelisk a port of call for all literary editors

with difficult books to place.

The money generated by the lighter, frothier fiction

now allowed Kahane to take a punt on writers of genuine literary merit

who couldn't get published anywhere else.

Over the next few years, he would publish first editions

by writers like Lawrence Durrell, Anais Nin,

even James Joyce himself.

Obelisk's roster of authors began to read

like a who's who of inter-war literary heavyweights.

But it wouldn't last for long.

At the end of the 1920s,

the Depression had seen many expatriates leave for home.

At the end of the 1930s, a very different threat was looming.

War was in the air.

And in Germany, dangerous books had dangerous consequences.

Undeterred, Kahane moved his offices here,

to the suicidally expensive Place Vendome,

where his rackety book business

briefly rubbed shoulders with Cartier and Chanel.

By now, what little health he had was failing fast.

For all the success he'd had as a publisher,

he was still haunted by his own personal failure as a writer.

In 1937, he published his last novel.

Lady, Take Heed! appeared under the pseudonym Cecil Barr,

but its mood is far from light.

The bright young things have all gone home

to be replaced by young women murdering abusive stepfathers,

only to fall into the hands of abusive brothel-keepers.

It's a story of broken dreams and frustrated desires.

And to whom does Cecil Barr dedicate it?

"To Jack Kahane,

"without whose deep knowledge and wide experience of the subject

"this book could never have been written."

Kahane's poor health, which had haunted him all his life,

continued to deteriorate,

and on the 3rd of September, 1939,

the very day war was declared,

Jack Kahane died of heart failure.

Within a few months, German troops had entered his beloved Paris.

Kahane's son, Maurice, wrote the letter

informing Obelisk's clients of its founder's death.

Once the war was over, he would continue his father's work.

In 1953, he established the Olympia Press,

and, copying his father's tried and tested business model,

published incendiary books that no-one else would touch.

The spirit of Jack Kahane lived on.

Kahane's ambition had been to become a great writer.

Instead, he became one of the most influential publishers

of the 20th century.

The books he printed challenged what was acceptable in literature,

and their impact resonated long after his death.

In 1960, more than 20 years

after it was published by the Obelisk Press,

a landmark court case allowed

Lady Chatterley's Lover to be sold in the UK.

And four years later, the US Supreme Court finally ruled

that Henry Miller's Tropic Of Cancer was not obscene.

The rules that had constrained freedom of expression for so long

had begun to fall apart.

Kahane was a man of romantic ideals but realistic expectations.

Yes, he was called a pornographer,

but that was only ever a means to a much more ambitious end.

He was a man who loved literature, who loved art,

and who was prepared to push the boundaries of what was acceptable

in order to bring us some of

the most important books of the 20th century.

He may have failed as a writer,

but Jack Kahane should be remembered as one of the most radical,

pioneering publishers in literary history.