Avid Reader, Robert Gottlieb
Avid Reader, Robert Gottlieb
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Avid Reader
A Life

Author: Robert Gottlieb

Narrator: Robert Gottlieb

Unabridged: 12 hr 53 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/13/2016


Synopsis

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.

Robert Gottlieb photographed by Jill Krementz at his desk in his office at Knopf on September 26, 1972; all rights reserved.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Lauren

Having finished this book, I feel like I've just ended a bad relationship. Things started off well: I was so sure that I would enjoy Avid Reader that I had it, sight unseen, on my wish list, but my library hold came through before I could buy it. I dove in and the first, fortuitous chapter was smoot......more

I loved how this memoir started. Right from the beginning of the book, it talks about his first experience of reading(or being read to!). I wonder how he can remember all those books so vividly. No wonder...he is a genius. I love how he describes his parents; his father being a non-fiction reader (who w......more

Goodreads review by Lew

Although the book runs out of steam, the middle chapters on Gottlieb's time with Knopf and his experiences when he moved to The New Yorker are fascinating. Sure there is name-dropping galore, and sometimes cringing, half-hearted attempts to seem humble when describing the many accolades and praise h......more

Goodreads review by W.

As the former president, publisher and editor-in-chief of Alfred A. Knopf and the former editor of The New Yorker, Robert Gottlieb has had a huge impact on the reading public. For example about 100 pages into AVID READER, Gottlieb writes, "Two completely unknown writers she sent my way early in my K......more