Ted Solotaroff, longtime book editor of such authors as Russell Banks, Sue Miller, Max Apple and Bobbie Ann Mason at Harper and founder of The New American Review–supported at first by NAL and later by both Simon & Schuster and Bantam–died Friday at home from complications of pneumonia. He was 80.NYT
Obituary
Alexander Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89
His son Stepan Solzhenitsyn told the AP that the Nobel-winning author died late Sunday, “but declined further comment.”AP
Last Lecture Author Randy Pausch, 47, Dies
The Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor made famous by his bestselling video lecture and book adaptation died today from complications from pancreatic cancer. The book has been translated into 30 languages. Pausch’s rich career is celebrated in a long statement release today by CMU.Obituary
Eleanor Friede, 87, Book Editor
The former editor and agent died earlier this month at home in Charlottesville, VA. Working at Macmillan in 1969, she offered a $2,000 advance for the “much-rejected” Jonathan Livingston Seagull. “In 1974 Ms. Friede was offered her own imprint at Delacorte Press, where she continued to publish flying books as well as works by writers like Françoise Sagan, Jorge Amado and Hugh Downs. In the early 1980s, after Doubleday acquired Delacorte, she started Eleanor Friede Books, a literary agency.”NYT
On van de Wetering
Dutch crime writer Janwillem van de Wetering, 77, died on July 4, 2008, following a struggle with cancer. Best-known for his Amsterdam Cops series, Soho Press will be reissuing all 14 of van de Wetering’s Soho Crime novels in paperback, beginning this fall. Chicago Tribune book critic from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s Joseph Coates Jr., 75, died of lung cancer last week.Tribune
Thomas Disch, Novelist, Said to Take His Own Life
The “author, poet and critic who twisted the inherently twisted genre of science fiction in new, disturbing directions, including writing his last book in the voice of God, died on Friday in his Manhattan apartment. He was 68. “His friend Alice K. Turner said Mr. Disch shot himself. She and other friends told how his apartment had been devastated by a fire; then his partner of more than 30 years died; then his home in Barryville, N.Y., was flooded; and finally, he faced eviction after he returned to the apartment.” His friend, novelist Norman Rush, tells the NYT: “He was […]