Johnson Profile

Dennis Loy Johnson, proprietor of Melville House Publishing and editor of Moby, one of my daily must-reads, is profiled, along with co-owner Valerie Merians, in this NY Sun article by Brendan Bernhard. The article focuses primarily on the series of books by French authors Dennis has published (among whom Dominique de Villepin and Bernard-Henry Levy.)

“The whole community of Americans interested in French literature has been feeling as if it’s under assault,” says Mr. Johnson, mournfully but with the air of a man who wants to rectify the situation. “It all kind of stopped after Camus. There are fewer and fewer French books being translated, and unless it’s something written by Michel Houellebecq, you’re probably not going to hear about it.

That might explain why Dennis was deluged by requests from editors on a recent trip to Paris. In the middle of all this, he’s still managed to do some very serious investigative work for his post-NBA column, which you can read here.