Parfrey's had a number of successes as a publisher, aside from the cultural phenomenon of the first "Apocalypse Culture." Rudolph Grey's "Nightmare of Ecstacy" inspired the Tim Burton film "Ed Wood." Other Feral House products such as "Lords of Chaos," a guide to the black metal underground, "Sex and Rockets," a biography of occultist and Jet Propulsion Laboratory founder Jack Parsons, and "Pills-a-go-go," an exploration of America's obsession with pharmacology, have all sold well and won plaudits from critics. In fact, the film rights to "Sex and Rockets" were recently optioned by Don Murphy of Angry Films/Sony, the producer of "Permanent Midnight" and "Natural Born Killers." If the film's made, it could be Feral House's next "Ed Wood."

The flip side? According to Parfrey, Feral House barely breaks even each year, and the literary grand pooh-bahs at the New York Times Book Review and elsewhere generally hold their noses and ignore him.

"In that precious little book world, the likes of me are not welcome," Parfrey smiles. "I'm not Saul Bellow or Phillip Roth. No Feral House book has ever been reviewed in the New York Times. We've put out 50 books. One's been made into a movie, and several others have created cultural trends. But for some reason it's more important to review yet another book about Virginia Woolf than a Feral House book."

And then there's been the occasional lawsuit. One by ex-FBI official Oliver "Buck" Revell against the Feral House book "The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror," by David Hoffman caught Parfrey with his pants down and no legal insurance. Faced with possible bankruptcy, Parfrey had to eat crow in December and apologize to Revell "for any and all misstatements." Even though the allegations that Revell had advance knowledge of the 1988 Pan Am Flight 103 bombing were only a small part of the 600-page book, Parfrey agreed to destroy all remaining copies to placate Revell.

But Parfrey now has legal insurance and says he'll fight all such lawsuits in the future. (He believes he would have won the Revell suit had he been financially capable of going to court.) As for the death threats and the condescension by the literary establishment, to some degree that's all part of the game.

"I became a publisher because people didn't see it the way I did in terms of what I found interesting," he says. "If other people weren't going to publish what I found intriguing, then I had to do it. I couldn't really work for other people. Like, 'Hey, I'll find another "Chicken Soup" book for ya!' I couldn't see myself doing that. No way."

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