But in my opinion nothing can excuse the laziness ofa great number of Editors. When the Writers arepoor and have staked a great deal on their Writings,then the laziness is simply disgusting : in fact, it amountsto cruelty. It is concerned with some of the verysaddest tragedies that the world has ever seen, andI only mention it because it is very common and be-cause itis as well that the novice should know what toexpect.

Caro has never revealed who his Simon & Schuster editor was, and when I ask him point-blank, he smiles firmly. “I’d rather not say. I’ve promised myself I’m not going to go down that road, and I never have.” (Gottlieb, in his memoir, was less discreet. It was Richard Kluger, who in 1973 quit editing to write books of his own, including the Pulitzer-winning Ashes to Ashes, a critical history of the tobacco business.)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

NABOKOV: By “editor” I suppose you mean_proofreader.Among these I have known limpid creatures of limitless tact andtenderness who would discuss with me a semicolon as if it werea point of honor—which, indeed, a point of art often is. But Ihave also come across a few pompous avuncular brutes who wouldattempt to “make suggestions” which I countered with a thunder-ous “‘stet!”’

He wrote for the same editor, Michael Korda at Simon & Schuster, for more than three decades before moving to Liveright, an imprint of W.W. Norton, in 2014.