Thomas Guinzburg | |
---|---|
Born | Thomas Henry Guinzburg March 30, 1926 New York City, U.S. |
Died | September 8, 2010 84) New York City, U.S. | (aged
Nationality | American |
Occupation(s) | Editor and publisher |
Spouses | |
Children | 3 |
Thomas Henry Guinzburg (March 30, 1926 – September 8, 2010) was an American editor and publisher who served as the first managing editor of The Paris Review following its inception in 1953 and later succeeded his father as president of the Viking Press.
Guinzburg was born on March 30, 1926, to a Jewish family in Manhattan. [1] [2] His father, Harold K. Guinzburg, the publisher and co-founder of Viking Press, gave him a manuscript copy of The Story of Ferdinand when he was nine years old. Guinzburg enjoyed the book so much that it convinced his father to publish it and ended up selling four million copies, giving the young Guinzburg his first inkling that he might have a career in the publishing business. [3] He attended the Hotchkiss School and volunteered to serve in the United States Marine Corps during World War II. He was deployed for more than two years and received the Purple Heart for his brave action on Iwo Jima. After completing his military service, he attended Yale University, where he was a member of Skull and Bones [4] as well as the managing editor of the Yale Daily News at the same time that William F. Buckley, Jr. was editor. [1]
After graduating from Yale, Guinzburg joined several contemporaries in Paris. Donald Hall, Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton and William Styron were among them. In 1953, co-founded by Peter Matthiessen, George Plimpton, and Harold L. Humes, the first issue of an English-language literary magazine called "The Paris Review" was published. Declaring itself for "the good writers and good poets, the non-drumbeaters and non-axe grinders/so long as they're good." Guinzburg was chosen by his friends as the first managing editor of The Paris Review because he was the only one with any prior publishing experience. Thanks in no small part to his efforts, the little literary magazine quickly developed an exceptional reputation, renowned for in-depth interviews with authors such as Ernest Hemingway, Ian McEwan, and Seamus Heaney about their craft and for helping launch the careers of luminaries like T. Coraghessan Boyle, Jack Kerouac, V. S. Naipaul, Adrienne Rich, Philip Roth and Mona Simpson. [5] [1] Editor Robert B. Silvers of The New York Review of Books cited Guinzburg's "marvelous combination of idealist and realist. He was always encouraging The Review not to be deterred from discovering young writers of quality" while maintaining "a grasp of the really rough details of commercial publishing." [1]
He began working in the publicity department of the Viking Press in 1954 and assumed the position of president upon his father's early death in 1961 from lung cancer. [1] [6] Viking was purchased by Penguin Books in 1975 for a price estimated at $12 million. [7] Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, whom he hired in 1975, joined other notable editors he brought to Viking, including Aaron Asher, Elisabeth Sifton and Corlies Smith. Onassis left the firm in 1977 after Viking published the Jeffrey Archer book Shall We Tell the President? , a fictional political thriller that depicted an assassination plot against U.S. President Ted Kennedy. [8] Among the many literary prizes awarded to Viking authors during his tenure as president were eight National Book Awards, three Pulitzer Prizes, and two Nobel Prizes in literature. Guinzburg published books by Saul Bellow, Kingsley Amis, Rebecca West, Nadine Gordimer, Graham Greene, Wallace Stegner, John Ashberry, Arthur Miller, Hannah Arendt, Malcolm Cowley, Jimmy Breslin, Gordon Parks, Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, James Baldwin, Iris Murdoch and John Steinbeck who was Best Man at his wedding to Rusty Unger. He published Gravity's Rainbow , by Thomas Pynchon, which won the National Book Award the following year. As a now infamous stunt, Guinzburg had comedian Irwin Corey accept the award on Pynchon's behalf, delivering a hilarious stream-of-consciousness speech in which he referred to the author as "Richard Python". [1]
In 1980, he was a founding member of the original Rotisserie Baseball League.
Guinzburg was an active philanthropist. As part of Eugene Lang's I Have a Dream Foundation, he actively mentored and sponsored a class of students from Brownsville, Brooklyn, beginning when they were in 6th grade and for those who eventually matriculated, seeing them through college. He also founded The Dream Team of Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center. [1] which fulfills the wishes of adult cancer patients.
Guinzburg died in Manhattan at age 84 on September 8, 2010, due to complications of heart bypass surgery. He was survived by a companion of 15 years, Victoria Anstead, two granddaughters, a daughter, producer Kate Guinzburg (1957-2017) and a son, author Michael Guinzburg, from his first wife, actress Rita Gam, whom he married in 1956. [9] He was also survived by his youngest daughter, Amanda Guinzburg from his second marriage to writer/editor Rusty Unger with whom he remained close friends
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American novelists.
Jacqueline "Jackie" Lee Kennedy Onassis was an American writer, book editor, and socialite who served as the first lady of the United States from 1961 to 1963, as the wife of former president John F. Kennedy. A popular first lady, she endeared herself to the American public with her devotion to her family, dedication to the historic preservation of the White House, the campaigns she led to preserve and restore historic landmarks and architecture along with her interest in American history, culture, and arts. During her lifetime, she was regarded as an international icon for her unique fashion choices, and her work as a cultural ambassador of the United States made her very popular globally.
William Clark Styron Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.
William Sherman Pène du Bois was an American writer and illustrator of books for young readers. He is best known for The Twenty-One Balloons, published in April 1947 by Viking Press, for which he won the 1948 Newbery Medal. He was twice a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal for illustrating books written by others, and the two Caldecott Honor picture books, which he also wrote.
George Ames Plimpton was an American writer. He is known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review, as well as his patrician demeanor and accent. He was known for "participatory journalism," including accounts of his active involvement in professional sporting events, acting in a Western, performing a comedy act at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and playing with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra and then recording the experience from the point of view of an amateur.
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Viking Press is an American publishing company owned by Penguin Random House. It was founded in New York City on March 1, 1925, by Harold K. Guinzburg and George S. Oppenheimer and then acquired by the Penguin Group in 1975.
The Paris Review is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, The Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Terry Southern, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, Jean Genet, and Robert Bly.
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Harold Louis Humes, Jr. was known as HL Humes in his books, and usually as "Doc" Humes in life. He was the originator of The Paris Review literary magazine, author of two novels in the late 1950s, and a gregarious fixture of the cultural scene in Paris, London, and New York in the 1950s and early 1960s.
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