Martinis And Manuscripts: Publishing In The Good Old Days
Unlike Random House or Simon & Schuster, what Straus would have dismissively called "commercial publishers," FSG insisted on publishing only books of the greatest literary merit, damn the remainder bins. This premium on prestige was what mattered at FSG; the company cared for nothing as sordid as profits. And from 1978 to 1995 "FSG published the work of ten out of the eighteen [Nobel Prize] winners."
Pointing out the players isn't enough, though, so thankfully Kachka provides enough heat to earn that "Hothouse" title, reflecting the climate that existed at FSG in the '60s and '70s, what Straus' wife Dorothea affectionately labeled "a sexual sewer." Kachka reports that it wasn't uncommon for Straus to grab a nooner with any of a number of female staffers. "The rumor," Kachka writes, "went that the man who delivered the clean towels to the office on Fridays ... also provided Roger with fresh sheets."
Straus may have been a hound, but he was an intensely loyal one. Next to his marriage to Dorothea, his longest standing relationship was with Peggy Miller, "Perfect" Peggy, who for 40 years acted as his secretary, mistress and greatest confidante. Kachka characterizes Straus's relationship with Sontag (they may have once had an affair) as symbiotic and paternal. Sontag was allowed to treat the offices of FSG as her own, was advanced cash when she wanted, and was given health insurance. Straus relied on her opinions of other writers, especially when it came to European literature. It was Sontag who told him to pass on Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose in favor of Salvatore Satta's The Day of Judgment, which would sell 2,000 copies to Eco's 50 million worldwide.
What Kachka has done is something neither Straus nor Giroux could do: write the history of the illustrious publishing house. Giroux's finely-tooled sense of decorum would never permit him to air FSG's dirty laundry or his own resentments. Perhaps, as Kachka suggests, as the good steward of the legacies of Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, and John Berryman, among othes, he saw no point in it. Straus, in the last years of his life, set out to write the book but never did. Perhaps it seemed too daunting. Or perhaps he thought he'd never die.
It shouldn't be surprising that the final chapters of the book, devoted to Jonathan Galassi's tenure as publisher, lack the zing and fire of the earlier years. At times Hothouse feels like a magazine feature, a little too inside-baseball for those on the outside, a little yesterday's-news for those in the know. We are all intimately acquainted with the Franzen — Oprah flap, and some of us couldn't care less.
In the end, Kaschka acknowledges that there is no way that the present-day FSG or any publishing house can possibly compare to that Golden Age: "The old, aristocratic order of Roger Straus has given way to a world of uniformity and accommodation. No longer do emperors roam the halls of Midtown or Union Square, taking their droigt du seigneur and yelling, 'F- - - the peasants.'"
Even so, with Hothouse and a gin martini in hand, it's not hard to imagine those good old, bad old days of publishing.
Read an excerpt of Hothouse