Literary Flack

lareviewofbooks:

Jane Smiley

Let’s pretend that we know no more of Nancy Mitford than we do of Shakespeare, that we have a tempting outline of her life with one or two intriguing details, but no family notoriety, no volumes of letters, no newspaper articles or gossip. In fact, let’s

“Robert Gottlieb has worked in publishing since 1955, when he was hired as an editorial assistant at Simon & Schuster. Over the next few years, under conditions he once self-deprecatingly described as “the kids running the store,” he became editor in chief. Later, he was publisher and editor in chief of Alfred A. Knopf and, for five years, the editor in chief of the New Yorker magazine.

The list of books Gottlieb has edited and authors he has worked with is enough to dazzle any reader. In an early coup, he discovered Joseph Heller’s “Catch 22,” and while working at Knopf he encouraged Toni Morrison to become a full-time novelist. Gottlieb was the editor Bill Clinton requested when it came time to write his own memoirs, and he has also worked on the autobiographies of such entertainment figures as Lauren Bacall, Sidney Poitier, John Lennon and Bob Dylan. The literary works he has edited include books by Ray Bradbury, Salman Rushdie, Janet Malcolm, John Cheever, V.S. Naipaul, Nora Ephron and the historian Robert A. Caro, along with many, many more…”

(by Laura Miller, from Salon, 4/26/11)