Avid Reader: On Bob Gottlieb [by David Lehman]

Did you know that in college Richard Howard was known as Dick Howard? Or that Robert Gottlieb, one of the great names in American book publishing, got his first job (at Simon & Schuster) by writing, when asked to state why he wanted to work in publishing, that he found the task impossible “since it has never occurred to me to be in anything else”? These are among the facts and anecdotes that enliven every page of “Avid Reader,” Robert Gottlieb’s memoir of a life spent in publishing, which was published in 2016 (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux).

Though I feel like this book’s ideal reader — because, like the author, I went to Columbia, spent two post-graduate years in Cambridge (England), and have devoted my life to books — I can recommend “Avid Reader” to anyone who would understand publishing as a profession and a business in the second half of the twentieth century and since. At S & S, Gottlieb was the wunderkind who revitalized the firm. He published a varied list ranging from William Shirer’s monumental “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” to “Calories Don’t Count.” His great achievement was the publication of “Catch 22” by Joseph Heller, which was originally entitled “Catch 18” but had to be renamed because Leon Uris had come out with “Mila 18” about the Warsaw Ghetto. Gottlieb believes that Heller’s “Something Happened,” which disappointed the world, is even better than “Catch 22,” so I promise to look for it next week at the Strand.

At Knopf, Gottlieb directed the list of the most prestigious (and “literary”) of all New York houses, and for five years, he was at the helm of The New Yorker, succeeding William Shawn

If there is a moral to Gottlieb’s memoir, it is that “personal conviction” is the most important thing that an editor brings to a book. The editor’s job is not just to recognize the quality of the manuscript and to improve it but also to champion it, promote it, to share the good news. This is something that Gottlieb and his colleagues grasped before others did. But the anecdotes beat the morals.

Gottlieb has written on ballet and is co-editor of a volume of American songbook lyrics that I find indispensable. You will enjoy reading about “Dick” Howard, Lionel Trilling (whose generosity to the author was extraordinary),and Andrew Chiappe at Columbia; about F. R. Leavis and the Cambridge theatre scene in the 1950s; about “Mad Men” era New York; and about all the other arts in which Gotttlieb has a cultivated interest. (His favorite things include plastic handbags from the 1950s.) There are a lot of pointers that everyone in publishing ought to have: “Titles and covers can make all the difference.” 

I loved learning that Bob Gottlieb liked reading till all hours and couldn’t be bothered to attend morning lectures. I feel the same way. This is a sweet book.

from the archive; first posted September 2016

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