Background
Pascal Covici was born on November 4, 1885 in Botosani, Romania. He was the son of Wolf Covici and Schfra Barish. He came to the United States in 1898 with his parents and sister to join his brothers in Chicago.
Pascal Covici was born on November 4, 1885 in Botosani, Romania. He was the son of Wolf Covici and Schfra Barish. He came to the United States in 1898 with his parents and sister to join his brothers in Chicago.
Covici attended the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and the University of Chicago, studying literature. He left college without a degree and for a time managed six five-and-ten stores owned by his brothers.
From 1918 to 1922, Covici worked for Waterbury Grapefruit Groves, Bradenton, Florida publishing a monthly newspaper, managing a nursery, and supervising workers. He returned to Chicago in 1922. There he and a partner, Billy McGee, a former priest, opened a bookstore. They became publishers the following year. Ben Hecht, whose 1001 Afternoons in Chicago was one of Covici-McGee's first publications, wrote that their cluttered shop quickly became a "Mecca of the arts. "
Covici-McGee's small list consisted largely of "lush and unusual books" that were meant for limited-edition collectors. One of these books, Hecht's Fantazius Mallare (1922), got the publishers into legal trouble; it was seized by postal authorities as obscene, and the publishers, author, and illustrator were arrested. Covici reluctantly pleaded nolo contendere and paid a $1, 000 fine.
In 1924 McGee left the business because of illness, and the following year the publishing firm became Pascal Covici, Inc. Covici and Donald Friede formed a New York publishing house in 1928, with a staff of seven (including themselves and their wives).
Covici-Friede's unconventional and unorthodox practices brought it almost immediately both legal and financial difficulties. In 1928 it published Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness, a novel about lesbianism that outraged the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The book was seized as obscene in January 1929. The publishers were convicted in magistrate's court, but a higher court reversed their convictions and dismissed the case. The decision was important because of its finding that a book could not be declared obscene simply because of its subject.
Friede sold his share of the business in 1935, and three years later the firm was liquidated in order to pay its debts. Before its dissolution Covici-Friede had added to its list of authors John Steinbeck, whose three previously published novels had been commercial failures and whose fourth had been rejected by several publishers. Covici had come across Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven (1932) on a remainder table in a friend's Chicago bookshop in 1934. He read it and wrote to Steinbeck that he would like to be his publisher. Covici-Friede brought out Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat in 1935. It was a success for both author and publisher. Four other Steinbeck works were published in 1936 and 1937, and Covici bought the rights to Steinbeck's earlier works and reissued them. "I have the best publisher in the world, " Steinbeck wrote in 1937.
In 1938, after Covici-Friede was dissolved, Covici became a senior editor at the Viking Press. He gave his birth year as 1888, so that he would not appear to be older than fifty. In his career at Viking, Covici, in addition to bringing Steinbeck to the firm and being his editor, was responsible for overall editing of the Viking Portable Library and also was editor for other writers, including Saul Bellow and Arthur Miller. Bellow's Herzog (1964) was dedicated to Covici. Writers and associates valued his editorial skills and his ability to motivate writers to their best effort. More than thirty authors dedicated books to him.
Covici's relationship with Steinbeck was an extraordinary one. They conducted a voluminous correspondence. Steinbeck's Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969) consisted of a journal prepared for his editor in 1951 as he was writing the novel. Steinbeck dedicated the novel to Covici and presented the manuscript to him in a mahogany box he had carved while writing the novel.
Covici died in New York City.
Ben Hecht described Covici as "a tall shapely man with a Punchinello handsomeness, " who was always excited about books and was ever solicitous of the needs of both his customers and the artists who gathered in his shop.
Friede described his partner as a "flamboyant Rumanian with the shock of white hair on a poet's head, which in turn was set on a football player's body. "
Miller described him as "a mixture of slave-driver and very caring father. "
Quotes from others about the person
"For nearly forty years Pat was my collaborator and my conscience. He demanded of me more than I had and thereby caused me to be more than I should have been without him. " (Steinbeck)
On August 1, 1915, he married Dorothy Soll; they had one son.