In
September of 1969, Simon and Schuster published The Seven Minutes by Irving Wallace. This was Wallace's novel
concerning obscenity and censorship, its plot centering upon a bookseller
accused of selling copies of a fictitious obscene book titled, The Seven
Minutes by J.J. Jadway. As part of his research, Wallace had interviewed
Girodias, at the time the world's most notorious publisher with Barney Rosset
of Grove Press a close second.Girodias
was tipped to the upcoming release of Wallace's book and its content. He was
not happy about the way Wallace had handled the Girodias-based character of
Christian Leroux, a sleazy Paris publisher who had been the
"original" publisher of Wallace's fictitious The Seven Minutes by
J.J. Jadway. So unhappy was he that Girodias had a book quickly written
purporting to be The "Original" Seven Minutes by J.J. Jadway that the
Wallace book was based upon.Additionally,
in a grand, single-finger salute to Wallace, Girodias wrote an inflammatory
Preface, which tells the "real" story behind The Seven Minutes, of
how he got a hold of the original manuscript, and how rotten the Wallace book
was. He added a blurb to the front cover of the book, too, just to make sure
Wallace got the message:"The
Last and the Greatest Underground Erotic Masterpiece...On which Irving Wallace
Based His Bestselling Novel."Suffice it
to say, Wallace and Simon and Schuster got the message and they were not
amused. They took legal action against Girodias, and the court decided that
Girodias had deliberately produced a book guaranteed to confuse the public and
do harm to the publisher and the reputation of the author.Girodias was ordered to destroy all
150,000 copies of the book's print run. In practical terms this was done by
tearing off the front covers to provide proof and pulping the now defaced
books.
The Rarest Book in Erotic Fiction
The story behind The Original Seven Minutes by J.J. Jadway. Irving Wallace, Simon & Schuster, and Maurice Girodias. Full text of the revised edition online.