Robert Gottlieb: the editor who changed American literature

The man who ushered classics like Catch-22 into the world, Gottlieb has reason to brag. But in his new memoir Avid Reader he prefers to downplay the editor’s role Joseph Heller, the author of Catch-22, once gave an interview where he credited his editor with kicking his work into shape. After the interview ran, Heller got an irritated phone call. The caller was his editor, Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb told Heller to knock it off. “I felt then, and still do, that readers shouldn’t be made aware of editorial interventions,” Gottlieb writes in his new memoir, Avid Reader: A Life. “They have a right to feel that what they’re reading comes direct from the author to them.”Gottlieb’s book is full of stories like that one. He is a very unassuming person, for an alleged legend – a characterization he laughs at to me, saying his daughter pokes fun at him for so often being called it. Yet beginning at Simon & Schuster in the 1950s and 1960s, flourishing at Knopf in the 1970s and 1980s, and with a brief but memorable detour to the New Yorker (as an editor), Gottlieb’s editing pen has touched the manuscripts of most of the important American writers of the 20th century – and several of the British ones, too. He did it, though, as much from behind the scenes as he possibly could. “I’ve given very few interviews,” he told me when I met him at his book-lined townhouse on New York’s East Side. He is only giving this one now, he says, because he needs to help the publisher sell his book. ... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2016-09-27 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Amazon Changed Reading. Now It Could Change Writing

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[ Fast Company | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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Book Review: ‘Critical Hits,’ edited by J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado

In the anthology “Critical Hits,” gamers like Hanif Abdurraqib, Alexander Chee and Larissa Pham explain what the medium means to them. Continue reading at The New York Times

[ The New York Times | 2023-11-20 10:00:28 UTC ]
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Black Romance Authors and Editors Share Their Passion for Love Stories

Amid ongoing challenges, Black authors and editors are creating the love stories they want to read. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly

[ Publishers Weekly | 2023-11-17 05:00:00 UTC ]
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12 Books for Tolerance and Understanding (2023), by The Editors of WLT

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[ Literrary Hub | 2023-11-14 10:00:45 UTC ]
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Panel Mania: Worm: A Cuban American Odyssey by Edel Rodriquez

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Scholars Chart Religious Changes

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Jane Garrett, Book Editor With a Prizewinning Touch, Dies at 88

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Alexandra Chang Turns the Pain of a Friendship Breakup Into a Short Story

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World Literature Today to Co-host Online “RESISTIR Latin America” Poetry Event

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World Literature Today to Co-host Online “RESISTIR Latin America” Poetry Event and Call for Peace

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A new $25,000 book prize will recognize the best new literature about the arts.

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