Avid Reader: A Life
Published by Penguin Random House Audio
3.5/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
A spirited and revealing memoir by the most celebrated editor of his time
After editing The Columbia Review, staging plays at Cambridge, and a stint in the greeting-card department of Macy's, Robert Gottlieb stumbled into a job at Simon and Schuster. By the time he left to run Alfred A. Knopf a dozen years later, he was the editor in chief, having discovered and edited Catch-22 and The American Way of Death, among other bestsellers. At Knopf, Gottlieb edited an astonishing list of authors, including Toni Morrison, John Cheever, Doris Lessing, John le Carré, Michael Crichton, Lauren Bacall, Katharine Graham, Robert Caro, Nora Ephron, and Bill Clinton--not to mention Bruno Bettelheim and Miss Piggy. In Avid Reader, Gottlieb writes with wit and candor about succeeding William Shawn as the editor of The New Yorker, and the challenges and satisfactions of running America's preeminent magazine. Sixty years after joining Simon and Schuster, Gottlieb is still at it--editing, anthologizing, and, to his surprise, writing.
But this account of a life founded upon reading is about more than the arc of a singular career--one that also includes a lifelong involvement with the world of dance. It's about transcendent friendships and collaborations, "elective affinities" and family, psychoanalysis and Bakelite purses, the alchemical relationship between writer and editor, the glory days of publishing, and--always--the sheer exhilaration of work.
Editor's Note
Bookish in the extreme…
There’s plenty of bigwig literary name dropping and publishing industry gossip within Gottlieb’s memoir about the golden age of publishing. But Gottlieb’s stories of the deep and abiding friendships he formed, both with writers and with lesser-known publishing executives, remain the most engaging aspects.
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Reviews for Avid Reader
41 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This book is both interesting and frustrating. I didn't learn much about editing, nor about the many remarkable writers whom Gottlieb edited, not even about Gottlieb himself. The book is in fact remarkably unrevelatory and impersonal. But it's worthwhile as a chronicle of a slice of publishing history.It turns out that Gottlieb had a hand in many of the great books of my formative reading years, in addition to spending five years at The New Yorker. Unfortunately, you have to read between the lines as to why it was Gottlieb who ended up in this position. The book succeeds as a chronicle of the works he published, but Gottlieb seems to have no gift for characterization, not of others and not of himself. Motive is always a black hole, other people are ciphers, and he's a detached and impersonal Zelig. Most frustratingly, Gottlieb evinces no genuine desire to share or educate with the book, just to recount his life and business triumphs. As a result, the story seems empty at its heart.But still, much as I could never warm up to him personally, his career proved fun to read about. I suppose explains as much as anything why this apparently detached and cold person has so many so-called dear friends -- it's interesting watching him grind his way to triumph, many bodies accumulating by the side of the road, but those he needs being carried with him.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I was vastly disappointed long slog of a book. Writers are incapable of editing their own books, Gottlieb tells us at one point. I wish he had listened to himself.He probably edited or was responsible for most of the books I have read in my life. He clearly knows what makes for good writing, voice, as he points out (especially in memoirs) being one of the most important. But this book has no voice. It reads as if it was assembled index card by index card, linked with clumsy segues. It is remarkably impersonal, as another reviewer pointed out. Hard to see how he has so many friends, unless his writing just obscures his real self. Can't think he would have accepted this book if it hadn't been by himself!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I have a passion for books as does Robert Gottlieb. Avid Reader is a fantastic read. Gottlieb was at Knopf and The New Yorker and he shares his experiences which usually involved books. He was an obsessive and compulsive reader since childhood and shares those wonderful experience. Do not pass go. Go directly to your nearest bookstore.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Inside baseball. Too much of it. Names of his friends/associates keep coming like a gatling gun. How could he be so intimate with so many friends and give short shrift to his son? Didn't learn much about the process of book editing. No mention of audio books or e-books. Shoddy work.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Robert Gottlieb is not only an avid reader but also a great editor and a leading enthusiast for good books. His memoir is a delight to read as it is filled with fascinating stories about the publishing life.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5If I had to give this one word it would be breezy: great literary and dance world gossip, not particularly introspective even when the author tries for it, almost no friction anywhere in what was clearly a pretty charmed existence (with one divorce and one special needs child I know it wasn't all roses, but he minimizes any heartache so I will too). But a fun book, if self-indulgent—and why not? I probably would be if I were him. You have to wonder what it might have been like to go through your whole life with (if you believe him) with such relative ease, at least professionally. But hey, bless him—he sounds like he's really enjoyed it.