I’ve read most every interview in the four-volume Paris Review Interviews set by now. The first volume is by far my favorite. Borges, Hemingway, Bellow, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, etc. - there are a lot of big names in there. But the piece in that volume I think I like best is one I didn’t really expect to care that much about: Robert Gottlieb, editor and former New Yorker editor. It’s different in format to others in that it’s not a straight one-to-one interview but a (heavily edited) collection of fragments from interviews with authors who’ve worked with him, as well as responses he’s given in an interview himself. But it reads like a kind of story, about a beautiful lost world of “marvelous readers,” people who have “read everything,” authors of varied temperament, and, finally, hard work and tremendous professionalism. Also: if, like me, you harbour certain wooly fantasies about a New York publishing world somehow bound up with high-rise offices, corduroy jackets, and - just possibly - take-out deli sandwiches, you’ll like bits of period atmosphere like this…
John le Carré: “Negotiations were always tight with Bob. He was celebrated for not believing in huge advances, and it didn’t matter that three other houses were offering literally twice what he was offering. He felt that for half the money, you got the best. Most publishers, when you arrive in New York with your (as you hope) best-selling manuscript, send flowers to your suite, arrange for a limo, maybe, at the airport, and then let you go and put on the nosebag at some great restaurant. The whole idea is to make you feel great. With Bob you did best to arrive in jeans and sneakers, and then you lay on your tummy side-by-side with him on the floor of his office and sandwiches were brought up.
“After I finished one book, I think it was A Perfect Spy, my agent called me and said, Okay, we’ve got x-zillion yen and whatnot, and I said, And lunch. My agent said, What? I said, And lunch. When I get to New York I want to be taken, by Bob, to a decent restaurant for once and not eat one of those lousy tuna sandwiches lying on my tummy in his room. Bob called me that evening and said, I think we have a deal; and is that true about lunch? And I said, Yup, Bob, that’s the break point in the deal. Very well, he said. Not a lot of laughter. So I arrived in New York, and there was Bob, a rare sight in a suit, and we went to a restaurant he had found out about. He ate extremely frugally, and drank nothing, and watched me with venomous eyes as I made my way through the menu.”
I’ve read most every interview in the four-volume Paris Review Interviews set by now. The first volume is by far my favorite. Borges, Hemingway, Bellow, Dorothy Parker, Truman Capote, Kurt Vonnegut, etc. - there are a lot of big names in there. But the piece in that volume I think I like best is one I didn’t really expect to care that much about: Robert Gottlieb, editor and former New Yorker editor. It’s different in format to others in that it’s not a straight one-to-one interview but a (heavily edited) collection of fragments from interviews with authors who’ve worked with him, as well as responses he’s given in an interview himself. But it reads like a kind of story, about a beautiful lost world of “marvelous readers,” people who have “read everything,” authors of varied temperament, and, finally, hard work and tremendous professionalism. Also: if, like me, you harbour certain wooly fantasies about a New York publishing world somehow bound up with high-rise offices, corduroy jackets, and - just possibly - take-out deli sandwiches, you’ll like bits of period atmosphere like this…
John le Carré: “Negotiations were always tight with Bob. He was celebrated for not believing in huge advances, and it didn’t matter that three other houses were offering literally twice what he was offering. He felt that for half the money, you got the best. Most publishers, when you arrive in New York with your (as you hope) best-selling manuscript, send flowers to your suite, arrange for a limo, maybe, at the airport, and then let you go and put on the nosebag at some great restaurant. The whole idea is to make you feel great. With Bob you did best to arrive in jeans and sneakers, and then you lay on your tummy side-by-side with him on the floor of his office and sandwiches were brought up.
“After I finished one book, I think it was A Perfect Spy, my agent called me and said, Okay, we’ve got x-zillion yen and whatnot, and I said, And lunch. My agent said, What? I said, And lunch. When I get to New York I want to be taken, by Bob, to a decent restaurant for once and not eat one of those lousy tuna sandwiches lying on my tummy in his room. Bob called me that evening and said, I think we have a deal; and is that true about lunch? And I said, Yup, Bob, that’s the break point in the deal. Very well, he said. Not a lot of laughter. So I arrived in New York, and there was Bob, a rare sight in a suit, and we went to a restaurant he had found out about. He ate extremely frugally, and drank nothing, and watched me with venomous eyes as I made my way through the menu.”
