The great publisher Barney Rosset has passed away. Rosset bought Grove Press in the 1950s, championing the work of countless writers, including: Henry Miller, Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac, Malcolm X, Pablo Neruda, Kenzaburo Oe, Kathy Acker, and David Mamet.

In the 1960s, he launched the provocative magazine, Evergreen Review. In a highly recommended interview at The Paris Review, Rosset shared his first encounter with Miller’s work as a college freshman at Swarthmore:

I read Tropic of Cancer, which I bought at Steloff’s Gotham Book Mart on Forty-seventh Street. Who told me about it, I don’t know, but I liked it enormously and I wrote my freshman English paper about both it and The Air Conditioned Nightmare … After I read Tropic of Cancer, I left—decided to go to Mexico. Because the book had influenced me so much, I left in the middle of the term. But I ran out of money. I never got to Mexico; I got as far as Florida and I came back. Four weeks had gone by. They had reported me missing to the United States government. My family didn’t know where I was. I came back, sort of sadly.

(Via Sarah Weinman)

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet will write and direct a new adaptation of the “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

Variety reports that Disney bought the rights to the new project, and Andrew Braunsberg will help produce. The new script will combine influences from the play by Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich, the girl’s diary, and Mamet’s “own original take” on the story.

Here’s more about the deal, from the article: “Braunsberg is best known for producing ‘Being There,’ and he spent a year gathering the rights from the Anne Frank Estate, and the estates of Hackett and Goodrich. He met with ICM’s John Burnham, who recommended Mamet.” (Via Publishers Lunch)