{"id":3119,"date":"2015-10-02T08:00:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-02T13:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/?p=3119"},"modified":"2015-10-02T08:00:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-02T13:00:22","slug":"knopf-history-is-linked-to-updikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/10\/02\/knopf-history-is-linked-to-updikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Knopf history is linked to Updike&#8217;s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/10\/220px-Alfred_A._Knopf.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-3120\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/files\/2015\/10\/220px-Alfred_A._Knopf.jpg\" alt=\"220px-Alfred_A._Knopf\" width=\"220\" height=\"274\" \/><\/a>On October 1, 2015, Literary Hub published <a href=\"http:\/\/lithub.com\/the-life-and-times-of-alfred-a-knopf\/\">&#8220;The Life and Times of Alfred A. Knopf&#8221;<\/a> by Chip McGrath, excerpted from a special edition history on the occasion of the company&#8217;s 100th anniversary. Since, as McGrath points out, Updike was &#8220;the last great acquisition of the Alfred era,&#8221; he is well represented.<\/p>\n<p>John Updike once compared Alfred A. Knopf\u00a0to &#8220;a cross between a Viennese emperor and a Barbary pirate,&#8221; McGrath writes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;[Knopf&#8217;s] correspondence was hearty and businesslike and seldom ventured to make editorial suggestions. (A good example is the letter he wrote to Updike in 1967 after reading <em>Couples<\/em>. He called the novel a &#8216;lollapalooza,&#8217; and then shrewdly suggested that at his own expense Updike hire a lawyer in case any of Updike\u2019s friends or neighbors thought they recognized themselves in the book. Updike, incidentally, was the last great acquisition of the Alfred era, and despite their age difference, the two men hit it off immediately, not only because Knopf happily picked up Updike\u2019s first novel, <em>The Poorhouse Fair<\/em>\u2014after Harper dithered over it for months, suggesting first one revision, then another\u2014but out of a shared love of typography.)&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I love books physically,&#8221; Knopf wrote in his 1917 catalog, and &#8220;in 1965, when Knopf celebrated its 50th anniversary and was widely recognized for its distinguished record, it was Alfred who got most of the praise. The Typophiles, an organization that encouraged the appreciation of fine typography and bookmaking, published a two-volume Festschrift in his honor, with tributes from writers like John Hersey, Paul Horgan, John Crowe Ransom, and Updike.<\/p>\n<p><em>Photo: \u00a0Carl van Vechten.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On October 1, 2015, Literary Hub published &#8220;The Life and Times of Alfred A. Knopf&#8221; by Chip McGrath, excerpted from a special edition history on the occasion of the company&#8217;s 100th anniversary. Since, as McGrath points out, Updike was &#8220;the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/2015\/10\/02\/knopf-history-is-linked-to-updikes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-updike-quoted"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3121,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions\/3121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/johnupdikesociety\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}