WAINHOUSE, Austryn

(Pierallesandro Casavini)

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Northwestern University Press, 625 Colfax Street, Evanston, IL 60208-4210.

CAREER:

Translator of French literature; Merlin (literary journal), Paris, France, coeditor, beginning 1950s.

WRITINGS:

TRANSLATOR

Simone de Beauvoir, The Long March, World Publishing (New York, NY), 1958.

(With Richard Seaver) Marquis de Sade, The Complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and Other Writings, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1965.

(With Richard Seaver) Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom, and Other Writings, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1966, reprinted, 1987.

(Under pseudonym Pierallesandro Casavini; with Richard Seaver) Marquis de Sade, Juliette, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1968.

Pierre Klossowki, Roberte ce Soir, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Grove Press (New York, NY), 1969.

Georges Bataille, My Mother (stories), J. Cape (London, England), 1972, published as My Mother; Madame Edwarda; and, The Dead Man, Marion Boyars (New York, NY), 1989.

Roger Martin du Gard, Confidence Africaine, Marlboro Press (Marlboro, VT), 1983.

Paul Leautaud, Moments of Love, Marlboro Press (Marlboro, VT), 1983.

(With Dominic di Bernadi) George Hyvernaud, The Cattle Car; including Letter to a Little Girl, Marlboro Press (Evanston, IL), 1984.

Claude Morhange-Begue, Chamberet: Recollections from an Ordinary Childhood, Marlboro Press/Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1987.

Aleksandra Kroh, Lucien's Story, Marlboro Press/Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1996.

Louis Calaferte, C'est la guerre, Northwestern University Press (Evanston, IL), 1999.

Contributor to periodicals, including Evergreen.

SIDELIGHTS:

Translator and editor Austryn Wainhouse spent time in the literary circle that included Samuel Beckett, and lived in Paris, France during the 1950s and 1960s. Wainhouse was a member of the Merlin group, whose writers chose the group's name from a popular journal. Merlin, one of the most noted literary journals of its day, published works by Eugene Ionesco, Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others, and was edited by Wainhouse and fellow editor Alexander Trocchi. A publishing house was also set up, called Collection Merlin, which was later taken over by Olympia Press.

In addition to his work on Merlin Wainhouse has translated the works of a number of French authors, among them Simone de Beauvoir and Paul Leautaud, and is most noted for producing what is considered the standard translation of the written works of eighteenth-century libertine novelist the Marquis de Sade. He has also translated a series of novels about life and survival during World War II, among them The Cattle Car, by George Hyvernaud, Chamberet: Recollections from an Ordinary Childhood, by Claude Morhange-Begue, and Lucien's Story, by Aleksandra Kroh. Marian Vernon, reviewing Wainhouse's translation of Chamberet for the New York Times Book Review, commented that the "small book of reminiscence … is heartbreaking in its rendering of the desperate expectation of the child and her obstinate hope against all odds." Richard Burgen commented of the "excellently translated" novel Lucien's Story in the New York Times Book Review that Wainhouse's "tight control of the spare prose … is at once a metaphor for the control the boy needed to exercise over his thoughts and emotions to survive and an acknowledgment that the tortures of camp life (especially at Bergen-Belsen) are beyond the descriptive powers of language."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Library Journal, January 24, 1988, Marian Venon review of Chamberet: Recollections from an Ordinary Childhood, p. 83; September 15, 1996, review of Lucien's Story, p. 76.

New Statesman and Society, October 6, 1989, p. 40; May 27, 1994, review of My Mother; Madame Edwarda; and, The Dead Man, pp. 37-38.

New York Times, September 22, 1968, W. H. Gass, "Written with a Hose," pp. 374-377.

New York Times Book Review, January 24, 1988, Marian Venon, review of Chamberet, p. 14; March 9, 1997, Richard Burgin, review of Lucien's Story, p. 24; July 20, 1997, Christopher Atamian, review of The Cattle Car, p. 20.

Publishers Weekly, August 18, 1989, p. 48; July 12, 1999, review of C'est la guerre, p. 78.

Times Literary Supplement, August 4, 1989, p. 857; January 30, 1998, p. 21.*