With Tuesday’s release of Boris Kachka’s HOTHOUSE, multiple takes on publishing are available this week. Robert Gottlieb‘s own condensed version of the history of FSG in the New Yorker is well worth reading, and includes some of his own asides. (“Alfred [Knopf] really promoted that borzoi, convincing a lot of people that ‘A Borzoi Book’ guaranteed quality. Readers couldn’t know that the Knopfs thought borzois were a particularly stupid breed of dog.”) Gottlieb finds “this vigorous and often diverting trot through the history of an important cultural institution is frequently slapdash and overwrought in its determination to show just how […]
