 While a Fulbright scholar in Paris, writing his thesis on James Joyce at the Sorbonne in the early 1950s, he co-founded the English-language literary quarterly "Merlin", which published early works by Eugène Ionesco and Jean Genet.In 1952, Seaver wrote an essay lauding the work of the then little-known novelist Samuel Beckett.This essay became instrumental in Beckett's finding an American publisher and champion.