For those interested in 20th-century literary history and avant-garde gossip, it would be hard to conceive of a more intriguing subject than the life of Maurice Girodias (1919-1990) and his Olympia Press.

This charmingly amoral Parisian "discovered" and published a staggering list of important English-language literature - history-making works like Samuel Beckett's Watt, Henry Miller's Plexus, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, William Burroughs's Naked Lunch, and many others - all under the uniform green covers of Olympia's cheaply produced "Traveller's Companion" series of smut fiction. How a sleazy pornographer like Girodias managed to round up such a daunting Rolodex of geniuses should make for a guaranteed fascinating read - or so I thought before I slogged through John De St. Jorre's lifeless Venus Bound.

The story of the Olympia Press contains every vital element: the sin 'n' sophistication of postwar Paris; the young, creative expatriates, writing pornography by the ream to pay for their next baguette or brick of hashish; the temperamental literary titans from Britain and America, turning to the less-repressive legal atmosphere of France to publish their controversial masterpieces; the customs agents and police vice squads tearing through boxes of books in search of "obscenity"; and, in the role of ringmaster, Girodias himself, a bilingual con artist, a pornographer in a slick suit, a litigation addict with a team of lawyers, and ultimately, a publisher of profound literary vision.

Yet in St. Jorre's book - despite its racy title - all these lubricious ingredients somehow add up to a meal of dry toast. Admittedly, the facts are all here; if you're looking for names and dates, Venus Bound will certainly suffice. But the magic that gives life to a biography is mysteriously absent. You won't find in the book even the faintest whiff of garlic, Gauloise smoke, or fresh ink drying on a banned novel.

Venus Bound begins with an appropriate nod to Girodias's father, Jack Kahane - himself an important publisher of scandalous literature - whose Obelisk Press first published Miller's Tropic of Cancer in 1934. St. Jorre then proceeds to Girodias and the Olympia Press (founded 1953), devoting a chapter or two to each of the significant Olympia authors, and focusing on their (generally bad) relations with Girodias.

Never a businessman of much integrity, Girodias seems to have spent most of his career avoiding creditors, cheating his writers out of royalties, and plunging into vengeful legal actions over foreign copyrights. While labyrinthine court battles clearly played an important role in the Girodias saga, St. Jorre's endless recounting of them does little to round out his picture of the rogue publisher. In addition, St. Jorre is not a skilled enough writer to inject any real drama into slow-moving transatlantic lawsuits.