Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Memoirs

HOTHOUSE

Boris Kachka

the Art of Survival and the Survival of Art at America's Most Celebrated Publishing House, Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Founded in 1946, FSG is younger than its competitors yet is home to more Nobel Prize-winning writers than any other publishing house in the world.

Founded in 1946, FSG is younger than its competitors yet is home to more Nobel Prize-winning writers than any other publishing house in the world, making it arguably the most influential publisher of the postwar era and a cultural Institution on par with the New Yorker and the New York Times, which have been the subject of numerous books. FSG‘s story, however, is more colorful than either and has never been told.
Think of HOTHOUSE as the literary equivalent of back-of-the-house food narratives like _Heat, Waiter Rant_, and _Kitchen Confidential_. Filied with huge personalities, fighting and fornicating, as weil as an insatiable drive for artistic exceilence, HOTHOUSE brings to life the tumultuous pageant of postwar cultural life, with central characters including Edmund Wilson, T. S. Eliot, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Elie Wiesel, Flannery O‘Connor, Barnard Malamud, J. D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, John McPhee, Susan Sontag, Philip Roth, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Jeffrey Eugenides, Jonathan Franzen, and many more.

FSG is arguably the most intluential publishing house ofthe modern era. As a cultural institution, its importance rivals that of The Neiv Yorker or The New York Tirnes, and its untold story is every bit as compelling—as rich, tumultuous, and entertaining as many of the great novels it has published. Both vast and detailed, filled with fresh gossip and keen insight, Hothouse teils an essential story for the first time, illuminating not only the rich pageant of postwar iiterary life but also the vital intellectual center of the American Century.

From veteran New York magazine writer Boris Kachka, who has devoted five years and nearly two hundred Interviews to this book, Hothouse is a lively inside account of postwar literary and intellectual life through a vibrant new lens: the story of book publisher Farrar, Strnus and Giroux.
Boris Kachka is a contributing editor for New York magazine, where he has written and edited pieces on literature, publishing, and theater for more than a decade. His recent feature stories include profiles of Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Eric Bogosian, and Jonah Lehrer. He also writes regularly for Conde Nast Traveler about international culture and etiquette as weil as his favorite subject, New York City. Born in the former Soviet Union, he was raised in Brooklyn, where he lives today with his wife.

Available products
Book Published 2013-08-01 by Simon & Schuster
Book Published 2013-08-01 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

Boris Kachka would have you believe that Hothouse is the inside story of book publishing.

Scintillating history . . . Writing with vigor, skill, and expertise and drawing on dozens of in-depth interviews, Kachka shares risqué gossip and striking insider revelations and vividly profiles the house’s world-shaping writers. . . . Kachka’s engrossing portrait of an exceptional publishing house sheds new light on the volatile mixture of commerce, art, and passion that makes the world of books go round.

Juicy . . . The New York book world, poised between scruffy glamour and crass commercialism, emerges in this lively chronicle of an iconic institution . . . Entertaining, accessible, smart, and thought-provoking, this is a book very much in tune with the lost literary milieu it re-creates.

A roaring chronicle . . . For anyone with a sweet tooth for the book world or a thought and a care for American culture after the Second World War, the book is a brightly lit, well-stocked candy store. . . . It’s also a superb business story, revealing how an enterprise became an institution. . . . An essential book.

As a literary biographer, l‘m amazed this book hasn‘t been written yet in some form.

Lively history . . . A smart, savvy portrait of arguably the country’s most important publisher . . . complete with sex, sour editors, and the occasional stumble into financial success. . . . A smart and informative portrait of the mechanisms of modern publishing.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux is the Versailles of American publishing. . . . But every palace has its intrigue, as Kachka shows us in this lively, witty account. . . . The extramarital (and often intramural) affairs conducted by publisher Roger Straus in the 1960s and ’70s were legendary—his wife called the company a ‘sexual sewer’—but the entire office apparently would have made Don Draper blush. Kachka dishes up these cold cases piping hot, but his research reveals an equally fascinating business story: How do you balance fine art and filthy lucre?

“Astounding: an intelligent, knowing, beautifluliy written, spectacuiarly well-reported (read: gratifyingiy gossipy) chronicle of the ultimate old-school book publisher. If you want a sense of how big-time, high-end New York publishing used to work and works today, I can‘t imagine a finer, more authoritative guide.“

Hothouse has both intelligence and wit in its revelations of publishing, publishers, and the capture of authors. The story of FSG is a dazzling wide-lens view of decades of literary America. To call Boris Kachka’s prose ‘brilliant’ is not a cliché; it has meaning.