Re-blog of Barbara Rogan’s Stunning Post

     My April 19th post of THEN & NOW (The Writer’s Life), was a comparison of the writing/submission process THEN (circa the 1930s), with typewritten Mss, manila envelopes, stamps and snailmail … and NOW, with the computer, internet and email.  I was pleased with its reception.  A few days after its introduction, I read a brilliantly written blog post by Barbara Rogan which stands as a kind of counter-point to THEN & NOW in that it gives insight to the publishing business from the other side of the desk, so to speak, and offers thumbnail portraits of some of the great editors and publishers.

     I offer it now as a reblog, for your enjoyment.  After you experience the richness of her prose and the subject, I invite you to check out her latest novel, A Dangerous Fiction

             Please enjoy:

A Dangerous Fiction

The Best Part of Publishing

Posted 9/12/12, by Barbara Rogan

The problem with living in the golden age of anything is that you never know it at the time. It is what it is, that’s all. Only much later, when it’s over, do you realize in retrospect what anextraordinary period it was.

I thought about this the other day when I came across a piece in the New Yorker, “Editors and Publisher” by John McPhee: an affectionate appreciation of his two great New Yorkereditors, William Shawn and Bob Gottlieb, and his publisher, Roger Straus Jr. It occurred to me that I had known and worked with two of these men, Bob Gottlieb when he was editor-in-chief of Knopf, and Roger Straus Jr. during his long tenure at the helm Farrar, Straus and Giroux. I was, at the time, a young literary agent based in Tel Aviv, representing Israeli writers abroad and American and European writers in Israel. I had moved from New York to Tel Aviv at the age of 22, worked for an Israeli publisher for a year, saw a niche into which I might fit, and at the ripe old age of 23 launched the Barbara Rogan Literary Agency.

Read More: 1066 more words

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