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jdscott50 's review for:
Avid Reader: A Life
by Robert Gottlieb
There is nothing like a good tell all. Not just to tell one's own story, but to set the record straight. Robert Gottlieb has scores to settle in his autobiography Avid Reader. A fun linear narrative that gets away with a great deal of gossip since many of the people in question are dead.
Robert Gottlieb's life is a narrative on publishing and literature in the past 60 years. He has been a part of history's biggest fiction and non-fiction as editor of Simon and Schuster, Knopf, The New Yorker, and other publishers. Gottlieb's memoir is a no holds barred take on his life. His off the cuff manner describes many run-ins with famous authors. It would seem part of the reason to have this memoir is to defend himself. His rejection of John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces may have led to the author's suicide. However, Gottlieb revisits the work to see if it had been drastically changed. He finds that his opinion on it has not. In being appointed as head of the New Yorker, the staff famously published a letter in opposition to his appointment. He says unkind things about his predecessor and his successor. He seems to underplay his involvement in many of literature's most famous works. However, he praises many works that only baby boomers of the high literary sort would remember.
What was most revealing to me was the editorial process. It can be summed up in two stories. One, when he is asked to edit Bill Clinton's autobiography he makes clear to the former president that he works for the editor, not the other way around. Second, his work on Catch-22 when Joseph Heller repeatedly praises his editorial skills, he calls to tell him to knock it off. He has this line to top off that exchange: "I felt then, and still do, that readers shouldn't be made aware of editorial interventions; they have a right to feel that what they're reading comes direct from the author to them." p63 I think that part becomes especially important as books like Go Set a Watchman are put out. I would agree that the readers would prefer to think that work comes out of an author's head like Zeus from the mountain. Works that have been published without the mystique is like looking behind the curtain before the Wizard of Oz even begins.
The structure is very linear with some narrative arcs that split the memoir mostly into his working life. In between he tells of his marriages, children, and friends. Overall, the work is an excellent highlight of his life and show the incredible work he has done in his lifetime.
There is nothing like a good tell all. Not just to tell one's own story, but to set the record straight. Robert Gottlieb has scores to settle in his autobiography Avid Reader. A fun linear narrative that gets away with a great deal of gossip since many of the people in question are dead.
Robert Gottlieb's life is a narrative on publishing and literature in the past 60 years. He has been a part of history's biggest fiction and non-fiction as editor of Simon and Schuster, Knopf, The New Yorker, and other publishers. Gottlieb's memoir is a no holds barred take on his life. His off the cuff manner describes many run-ins with famous authors. It would seem part of the reason to have this memoir is to defend himself. His rejection of John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces may have led to the author's suicide. However, Gottlieb revisits the work to see if it had been drastically changed. He finds that his opinion on it has not. In being appointed as head of the New Yorker, the staff famously published a letter in opposition to his appointment. He says unkind things about his predecessor and his successor. He seems to underplay his involvement in many of literature's most famous works. However, he praises many works that only baby boomers of the high literary sort would remember.
What was most revealing to me was the editorial process. It can be summed up in two stories. One, when he is asked to edit Bill Clinton's autobiography he makes clear to the former president that he works for the editor, not the other way around. Second, his work on Catch-22 when Joseph Heller repeatedly praises his editorial skills, he calls to tell him to knock it off. He has this line to top off that exchange: "I felt then, and still do, that readers shouldn't be made aware of editorial interventions; they have a right to feel that what they're reading comes direct from the author to them." p63 I think that part becomes especially important as books like Go Set a Watchman are put out. I would agree that the readers would prefer to think that work comes out of an author's head like Zeus from the mountain. Works that have been published without the mystique is like looking behind the curtain before the Wizard of Oz even begins.
The structure is very linear with some narrative arcs that split the memoir mostly into his working life. In between he tells of his marriages, children, and friends. Overall, the work is an excellent highlight of his life and show the incredible work he has done in his lifetime.