Seaver was instrumental in defying censorship, to bring to light works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Hubert Selby, Eugène Ionesco, E. M. Cioran, D. H. Lawrence, Jack Kerouac, Robert Coover, Harold Pinter and the Marquis de Sade.
After graduation he taught high school briefly before he traveled abroad to Paris and the Sorbonne while writing his dissertation on James Joyce.
[1] In his memoir, Seaver recalls the moment in 1952, when he wrote a first, and seminal essay extolling the work of then-unknown Samuel Beckett.
He was 25 and had just finished reading the novels Molloy and Malone Dies, which he believed were masterpieces: "How do you write a meaningful comment on such rich, complex, still undiscovered work, without making a critical fool of yourself?"
Slightly less tentatively, I wrote: 'Samuel Beckett, an Irish writer long established in France, has recently published two novels which, although they defy all commentary, merit the attention of anyone interested in this century's literature.