[Many thanks to a group of friends of Herman Graf, who sent this obituary note.]
Herman Graf, a German-Jewish immigrant who came to this country as a five-year-old, fell in love with reading, growing up in the Bronx and went on to become one of the most fascinating characters in the publishing industry in the past 60 years, passed away on February 27. He was 91 years old.
Graf began his publishing career in 1961, doing stints with McGraw-Hill, Doubleday, Arco Books, before arriving at Barney Rosset's Grove Press, where he worked in sales and marketing during the indie press's '60s and '70s heyday. This was the time when Grove was bringing writers like Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet, and Mikhail Bulgakov to American readers, even while founder Barney Rosset was frequently in court, accused of distributing "obscene" literature, like D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.
Graf's relationship with Rosset could be best described as tempestuous. Graf liked to say, "I was the Billy Martin of publishing; Barney fired me three times, and rehired me twice." There was something to this George Steinbrenner-Billy Martin analogy, as Graf, like the brawling, ill-fated Yankee manager, could handle himself in a tight spot, having been a fair boxer growing up in the Bronx.
Towards the end of his last stint at Grove, he took up the cause of a star-crossed book that Grove would publish posthumously, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Walker Percy had convinced editors at Louisiana State University Press to publish it in hardcover. While the hardcover garnered considerable critical attention, it didn't have much sales traction. Graf took it upon himself to sell thousands of copies of the LSU hardcovers to national chains and wholesalers and independent booksellers, thus seeding the market for the paperback edition. When Grove published the paperback in the spring of 1981, it sold hundreds of thousands of copies, and millions since, in good part owing to Graf's work seeding the ground with the hardcover of another house.
A year later Graf and Grove editor-in-chief Kent Carroll formed their own publishing house, Carroll & Graf, which Carroll would describe as "having more enthusiasm than money." They combed through old issues of New York Times Book Review looking for well-reviewed books that had gone out of print and brought them back in paperback editions. Perhaps their greatest find was Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, which, unlike that unfortunate boat, kept them afloat for years.
As they got their legs under them, Carroll & Graf published a wide selection of nonfiction, fiction and mystery, including bestsellers The Woman Who Wouldn't Talk: Why I Wouldn't Testify against the Clintons and What I Learned in Jail by Susan MacDougal and Ambassador Joseph Wilson's The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity. Twenty years after its founding, the partnership splintered and Carroll & Graf was purchased by Avalon Books, with Graf staying on in various capacities.
When Avalon was sold to the Perseus Books Group in 2007, Graf departed and finished his career as a freelance acquiring editor at Skyhorse Publishing.
Herman Graf was an outsized personality and had an outsized impact on pretty much everyone he came in contact with. And he came in contact with a lot of people. He was a mentor to many in the industry, and a friend to far more. He was a teller of tales and keen observer of the industry, as well as someone who knew much about its history. As one publishing colleague wrote: "He knew everything there was to know about the book business." And he was happy to share it with all.
A funeral service will be held for Graf this morning, Monday, March 3, 10-11 a.m., at Schwartz Brothers-Jeffer Memorial Chapels, 114-03 Queens Blvd., Forest Hills, N.Y. 11375. The service will be livestreamed.
Last night's Academy Awards ceremony was not a huge one for adaptations, but a few movies based on books or with book connections did take home hardware, including Emilia Pérez, Conclave, and I'm Still Here. This year's major category bookish Oscar winners are: 
Hello everyone!
Judging by the Cover: A Bookstore
Advent
Elise Hooper's spellbinding fifth novel, The Library of Lost Dollhouses, takes readers deep into the world of intricately crafted miniatures and the secrets they contain. Through the connected stories of Belva Curtis LeFarge, an art collector and philanthropist, and Tildy Barrows, a librarian and curator who runs the San Francisco museum founded by Belva, Hooper examines the layers that often lie behind polished, public narratives--especially for women.