#knopf100

by editor Ann Close

    (from the jacket of The Selected Letters of Willa Cather)

As we close out this year-long celebration of our 100th anniversary, Knopf editor Ann Close shares one more story from our imprint’s history. Thank you for following along throughout the Knopf 100!

     A lot has changed in publishing as we read somewhere almost every day, but a lot has stayed the same, in particular the relationship between publisher or editor and writer. Writers still want undivided and instantaneous attention for their work (and themselves), and a wise publisher/editor knows exactly how to give it.

     Willa Cather came to Knopf a mere six years after its founding when she had already published three of her best known novels—O Pioneers, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia—and she came because Alfred Knopf offered to republish a book of stories, enriching it with a few new ones, when her previous publisher showed no interest, and also because she didn’t think that house was promoting her books as well as Knopf promoted his list. And she might have been right. The first novel of hers he published was “One of Ours,” which won the Pulitzer Prize, a first for both Willa Cather and the new Knopf Publishers.

     There were other reasons too, and Cather writes about one of them in a letter to her brother Roscoe on January 8, 1940.  She starts off by saying, “It’s hard for me to tell you much about the realities of my life. But a writer’s relations to his or her publisher is a very vital fact—means happiness or constant anxiety.” And goes on to say about Alfred Knopf:  

        “Somewhere I still have a letter from him, dated ‘Christmas morning, 4 o’clock.’ I had been at his house for a Christmas Eve party (awful English, excuse!) and I took with me the ms. of  ‘A Lost Lady’ thinking he might read it over the holiday.   He sat up after the party that night and read it, and wrote me that night at 4 a.m. The letter reached me by special messenger on Christmas morning. So it began:

                                                                            Christmas morning,

                                                                             four oclock.

           My dear Miss Cather.

           I think you are a very great writer.-------

   The story struck him hard; and he was there at the bat when I pitched him a ball.  (This figure is bad baseball, I know, but it expresses the relation between a writer and a live publisher, who isn’t afraid.) …

A very happy publication day to Robert Hughes.

The Spectacle of Skill: Selected Writings of Robert Hughes

A very happy publication day to Tim Whitmarsh and Ethan Hawke!

Battling the Gods by Tim Whitmarsh

How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities.

Rules for a Knight by Ethan Hawke

From Ethan Hawke, four-time Academy Award nominee—twice for writing and twice for acting—an unforgettable fable about a father's journey and a timeless guide to life's many questions. 

A very happy publication day to David Thomson, Hannah Rothschild, Mark Molesky, Vladimir Nabokov, and Flora Fraser!

How to Watch a Movie by David Thomson

From one of the most admired critics of our time, brilliant insights into the act of watching movies and an enlightening discussion about how to derive more from any film experience.

The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild

Wickedly funny, this totally engaging, richly observed first novel by Hannah Rothschild is a tour de force. Its sweeping narrative and cast of wildly colorful characters takes you behind the scenes of a London auction house, into the secret operations of a powerful art dealer, to a flamboyant eighteenth-century-style dinner party, and into a modest living room in Berlin, among many other unexpected settings.

This Gulf of Fire by Mark Molesky

The captivating and definitive account of the most consequential natural disaster of modern times. On All Saints’ Day 1755, tremors from an earthquake measuring perhaps 9.0 (or higher) on the moment magnitude scale swept furiously from their origin along the Atlantic seabed toward the Iberian and African coasts. Directly in their path was Lisbon, then one of the wealthiest cities in the world and the capital of a vast global empire. Within minutes, much of the city lay in ruins. 

Letters to Vera by Vladimir Nabokov

The letters of the great writer to his wife—gathered here for the first time—chronicle a decades-long love story and document anew the creative energies of an artist who was always at work.

The Washingtons by Flora Fraser

A full-scale portrait of the marriage of the father and mother of our country—and of the struggle for independence that he led

A very happy publication day to Diana Nyad, Orhan Pamuk and Jane Smiley!

Find a Way by Diana Nyad

On September 2, 2013, at the age of sixty-four, Diana Nyad emerged onto the sands of Key West after swimming 111 miles, nation to nation, Cuba to Florida, in an epic feat of both endurance and human will, in fifty-three hours. Diana carried three poignant messages on her way across this stretch of shark-infested waters, and she spoke them to the crowd in her moment of final triumph: 1.   Never, ever give up. 2.   You’re never too old to chase your dreams. 3.   It looks like a solitary sport, but it’s a Team.

A Strangeness in My Mind by Orhan Pamuk

From the Nobel Prize winner and best-selling author of Snow and My Name Is Red: a soaring, panoramic new novel—his first since The Museum of Innocence—telling the unforgettable tale of an Istanbul street vendor and the love of his life. 

Golden Age by Jane Smiley

It started luckily and well. My favorite London publisher, Sonny Mehta, had decided to move across the Atlantic to join Alfred Knopf. At some point soon after that—I’m not sure when exactly—my guardian angel must have given Sonny a copy of the English edition of A Year In Provence, and he and his colleagues in New York liked it. I was thrilled to have such a distinguished American publisher and, even after all these years, I still am.

There are several reasons for this. Perhaps the most important is that, in a business often resembling musical chairs, people tend to stay at Knopf. Jon Segal, my long-suffering editor, has been dotting my i’s, crossing my t’s and improving my efforts for twenty-five years, and he is by no means the only person at Knopf who deserves a long-service medal. This is very comforting for an author, and it produces better books.

Another unfair advantage enjoyed by Knopf authors is the care and attention they receive during book tours. I’ve done ten of these marathons in the U.S., sometimes as many as 18 cities in 21 days, and I shall never forget the efficiency and good humor of the people who shuttled me from airport to radio station to bookstore to TV station and back to the airport. They turned an ordeal into an adventure.

Then there are the small but infinitely satisfying details that one finds in every Knopf book. The paper is always a good weight, something you appreciate every time you turn a page. The margins are generous. The typography is immaculate. The jacket designs are imaginative and appropriate for the subject. So Knopf books are like the very best literary furniture, a pleasure to look at and a joy to own. So bravo to all you Knopfers, and keep it up. Your authors need you.