LOS ANGELES — Author and adult industry veteran Robert Rosen will be appearing at Book Soup at 4 p.m. this Saturday in West Hollywood to discuss and sign his book "Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography."
The New York resident for 16 years worked behind the scenes in porn for magazines such as High Society, Stag, D-Cup and Swank.
In "Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography," Rosen writes in depth about the adult industry, providing what is billed as "a darkly engaging account of its tumultuous decades — from the defining Traci Lords scandal and the conception of ‘free’ phone sex to the burgeoning success of smut in cyberspace in the 21st century."
“I would characterize the book as a deadly serious history that reads like a comic novel,” Rosen told XBIZ.
He describes "Beaver Street" as an "investigative memoir," as he not only explores the mechanics of the major porn profiteers, but also dissects the remarkable events that occurred during his two-decade career while putting them in political, technological and cultural contexts.
“I was working as a men’s magazine editor when the Traci Lords scandal happened back in 1986," explained Rosen, who started using the pen name Bobby Paradise when he was an editor at Swank. "I was an eyewitness, but there were still too many questions I just couldn’t answer so I started doing all this research. I was under the impression it came out of the clear blue, but I can trace it back to the Nixon administration.
"... There were a lot of things like that. Just because you witnessed them doesn’t mean you can really explain them without doing serious research.”
Rosen also talks about two kinds of pornographers — the “self-made men that were really into what they were doing," and others that were born into wealth and inherited businesses from their fathers. The latter, Rosen said, went to extreme lengths to protect their anonymity while they profited from porn.
“I do indeed take these people to task for their hypocrisy,” he noted.
Rosen said he worked on the project from 2000 to 2007, and it took him a couple years after that to decide on a publisher — Headpress in the U.K.
Rosen previously received critical acclaim for his biography of John Lennon, "Nowhere Man," which was a portrait of the iconic singer's last days.
Book Soup is located at 8818 West Sunset Blvd., LA, 90069.
