Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [119]
Max, however, was becoming an increasingly feeble presence at S&S. Most of what was being published was now done without his knowledge or, perhaps more important, interest. He was not alone in this. Except for the Knopfs, who despite having sold their company to Random House maintained strict control over their list, the sixties was the period in which many of the founders of the “new” publishing houses willingly or unwillingly began to surrender editorial control.
Publishing had once been a placid stream in which it was common for publishers to go on working well into extreme old age, since the public taste in books didn’t change much; now, it was increasingly part of the media business, linked to television talk shows and movie companies, supplying not only popular entertainment but trendy advice for upwardly mobile readers. In this atmosphere, trends were hard to spot and seldom lasted long. The publisher almost had to be part of the generation he was publishing for, to share the same tastes and needs, to be able to turn on a dime, and, above all, to have a certain Fingerspitzengefühl for the popular culture. It was not an art that could be practiced successfully from the ivory tower, nor from Max’s home in Sands Point. Besides, the growth of the industry was turning the founder publishers, one by one, into businessmen, however reluctant they might be. Bennett Cerf now had to deal with stockholders and Wall Street, and later with the directors of RCA and General Sarnoff himself, not just with importunate editors and prima donna authors; Max had to deal with Shimkin and the ever-present demand for increased capital outlays. Given their temperaments, it was natural that Cerf should come to enjoy his new role as Wall Street’s publishing guru and that Max should hide himself away, revising endless drafts of letters to the Durants and to Madame Helen Kazantzakis, the formidable widow of the author on whom Max had staked his claim to cultural immortality. In neither case were they looking for new talent—they had reached the age (and the positions) where, increasingly, the old talent looked just fine to them.
Under the circumstances, the post of editor in chief (or its equivalent) was bound to become more and more important. He or she was to soon come to be a combination of rainmaker, intellectual gadfly, and live connection to the popular culture—roles that the owner-founders in simpler times had been able to fulfill themselves. What had once been an honorific became, almost overnight, the hottest position in publishing. Hitherto, there had been star authors, of course, but now, for the first time, there were about to be star editors, some of them bigger stars, in fact, than their authors. Even the best known of editors had been, in the old days, essentially bureaucrats and subservient to the owner or owners of their publishing house. Certainly, they neither sought nor were given fame. Maxwell Perkins in his own lifetime was very much an éminence grise, careful not to steal the limelight from his owner-boss Charles Scribner, let alone from his major authors. It is notable that when Perkins died, Hemingway neither recognized the immense value of Perkins’s suggestions, enthusiasm, loyalty, and support to his work nor wasted a moment in suggesting to Scribner that somebody else could take on the role. The deep bond between author and editor that was to actually make writers leave their