Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [133]
But this was an illusion. S&S was still owned by Shimkin, and in the final analysis, he was to decide what happened. In some ways, the situation pleased him. If he was good at anything, it was at setting one faction against the other and allowing each of them to believe that he favored their side. He feigned sympathy to Gottlieb and his followers (particularly Nina Bourne, the advertising director, and Tony Schulte, who dealt with marketing), and let it be known that they were the future of S&S; he was equally sympathetic toward Schwed, and let him know that he represented the solid, day-to-day financial reality of S&S, which was what really mattered in the long run. Both sides had his ear, and both sides might have thought, from time to time, that they had his backing, but in fact Shimkin merely hoped to buy time by keeping Bob at S&S for as long as possible without having to give up much, if anything, in exchange. He was a master of retreat by small, slow stages, the Marshal Kutuzov of book publishing. One came away from him with a tiny raise, possibly a new title, some small concession—anything that would keep one from asking for major changes or a big raise. He was always happy to give away what he didn’t mind losing in the interests of peace. His expression at such times was that of the Buddha, serene and benevolent, but it was deceptive. The truth was that Shimkin, having eliminated most of his partners, was for the first time in full control of both Pocket Books and S&S and not at all sure what he wanted to do with it all. He talked about taking the company public and dropped hints both to Seymour Turk, his chief financial officer, and to Dick Snyder that they were being groomed to succeed him. No Ottoman sultan ever divided his court with more subtlety or better ensured that his son and heir remained powerless.
Since all this was being played out against a background of trendy publishing successes and at a time when Wall Street’s interest in book publishing was raising even the most second-rate of publishing houses to the level of interesting investments, Shimkin had good reason to be cheerful. All he had to do was make sure nobody rocked the boat.
The boat, however, was about to be rocked more severely than anybody could have guessed by Bob Gottlieb. As the sixties passed by, Bob’s reputation as a wunderkind had grown by leaps and bounds. He seemed capable of anything, from securing, via Tom Maschler, the U.S. rights to John Lennon’s book A Spaniard in the Works to publishing a whole string of “commercial” best-sellers. Then he announced the news that nobody—least of all me—had expected: He was leaving S&S to go to Knopf.
Pledged to secrecy during his negotiations, the news that he was leaving was a bombshell that rocked not only S&S but the industry. There were those who saw it as a crippling blow to S&S, particularly since he was taking Nina Bourne and Tony Schulte with him, and others who felt that it would spell the end of Knopf as a kind of icon of quality publishing. As it turned out, neither of these predictions was correct, but certainly for a moment it seemed as if S&S had been torpedoed and was fast sinking.
I felt, perhaps more sharply than most, a certain wistful sense of betrayal. Bob was my friend. We had been close, both at work and away from it, and although we were very different in many ways, we shared a great many things: We were both omnivorous readers (Bob was better read in literature, while I had read more history), we shared the same kind of sense of humor, and much the same view of the world. I was deeply apprehensive about what life at S&S would be like for me without Bob and also felt hurt that he had not asked me to join him at Knopf. This clouded our relationship during the transition period, since it seemed to me that I had been judged and found wanting. Bob, to be sure, broke the news to me with infinite tact and rightly pointed out that his departure offered me a great opportunity and that it was time