The Irving Rosenthal papers

Born in 1930, American editor and author Irving Rosenthal is counted among the Beats, a group of young writers in the 50s and 60s known for their bohemian lifestyles and rebellion against the then popular art forms. Though he published only one major novel, Sheeper, and has not been remembered as a major Beat writer, American novelist and poet Gilbert Sorrentino in a 1994 interview with Alexander Laurence cited Rosenthal as one of the most compelling of the Beats. The Irving Rosenthal Papers consist of 28 letters and two postcards from Rosenthal, primarily to American editor, poet and filmmaker Ira Cohen (b. 1935), as well as manuscript versions of Rosenthal's novel Sheeper, of his Pastiche of the Golden Flower and of his translations of Mohammed ben Abdullah Yussufi's The First Yarmulkas. The letters, most of which were written from Morocco, provide valuable insight into the influences that shaped Rosenthal's Sheeper.