Robert B. Silvers

For the photomosaic artist Robert Silvers, see Photographic mosaic.
Robert B. Silvers

Silvers at the National Book Critics Circle Awards in March 2012
Born Robert Benjamin Silvers
December 31, 1929
Mineola, New York
Education University of Chicago, 1947
Occupation Editor
Notable work The New York Review of Books

Robert Benjamin Silvers (born December 31, 1929) is an American editor who has served as editor of The New York Review of Books since 1963. According to John Richardson in a 2007 Vanity Fair article, "Jason Epstein's assessment of Silvers as 'The most brilliant editor of a magazine ever to have worked in this country' has been 'shared by virtually all of us who have been published by Robert Silvers'".[1]

Raised in Long Island, New York, Silvers graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and attended Yale Law School, but he left before graduating and worked as press secretary to Chester Bowles in 1950. He was sent by the Army to Paris in 1952 as a speechwriter and press aide, while finishing his education at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po. He soon joined the The Paris Review as an editor under the guidance of George Plimpton. From 1959 to 1963, he was an associate editor of Harper's Magazine in New York.

Silvers was co-editor of the Review with Barbara Epstein for over 40 years until her death in 2006 and has been the sole editor of the magazine since then. "Like a chemist pairing ingredients to induce a specific reaction, Silvers has built his career matching the right author and subject, in hopes of generating an exciting and illuminating result."[2] Silvers has edited or co-edited several essay anthologies and supervises the Review's book publishing arm, New York Review Books. He appears prominently in the 2014 documentary film about the Review, The 50 Year Argument.

Among other awards and honorary degrees, he has received the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Award for "Distinguished Service to the Arts", the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing and a National Humanities Medal. Among other honors, he is a Chevalier of the French Légion d’honneur and a member of the French Ordre National du Mérite.

Life and career

A portrait of a teenage Silvers standing behind seated family members
Silvers (standing), with brother Edwin (l), mother Rose and father James (r), about 1944

Silvers was born in Mineola, New York and grew up in Farmingdale and then Rockville Centre, New York, the son of James J. Silvers (1892–1986), a salesman, sometime farmer and entrepreneur, and Rose Roden Silvers (1895–1979), a music critic for the New York Globe and one of the first female radio hosts for RCA. He had one brother, Edwin D. Silvers (1927–2000), a civil engineer.[3][4] He graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 (at age 17) and briefly attended Yale Law School.[5][6]

Silvers worked as press secretary to Connecticut Governor Chester Bowles in 1950, who was campaigning for reelection.[7] During the Korean War he served in the U.S. Army, which sent him to the SHAPE Headquarters in Paris in 1952 as a speechwriter and press aide.[8] At the same time, he attended the Sorbonne and Paris Institute of Political Studies (best known as Sciences Po), eventually receiving its certificate.[9] In 1954, he met and befriended George Plimpton, and upon his discharge from the Army a few months later,[8] he joined editorial board of Plimpton's The Paris Review, as managing editor,[10] while continuing his studies.[4] He was promoted to Paris editor of The Paris Review in 1956.[9] From 1959 to 1963, Silvers was associate editor of Harper's Magazine, in New York,[3] where he edited an issue on the state of writing in America, engaging Elizabeth Hardwick to contribute her essay "The Decline of Book Reviewing"; this would become an inspiration for the founding of The New York Review of Books.[2] He also edited the book Writing in America and translated La Gangrene, which describes the brutal torture of seven Algerian men by the Paris Security Police in 1958, shortly after Charles de Gaulle came to power.[11][12]

For 43 years, beginning in 1963, Silvers and Barbara Epstein edited the New York Review of Books together, until 2006, when Epstein died of cancer.[13] Since then, Silvers has been the sole editor. He has described his motivation for continuing to edit the Review as follows: "I feel it's a fantastic opportunity – because of the freedom of it, because of the sense that there are marvelous, intensely interesting, important questions that you have a chance to try to deal with in an interesting way. That's an extraordinary opportunity in life. And you'd be crazy not to try and make the most of it."[5] Asked in December 2007 about who might succeed him as editor, the 78-year-old Silvers demurred, "It's not a question that's posing itself".[14] When The New York Times renewed the question in 2012, Silvers said, "I can think of several people who would be marvelous editors."[15]

Silvers has also edited or co-edited several essay anthologies, including Writing in America (1960); A Middle East Reader: Selected Essays on the Middle East (1991); The First Anthology: Thirty Years of the New York Review (1993); Hidden Histories of Science (1995); India: A Mosaic (2000); Doing It: Five Performing Arts (2001); The Legacy of Isaiah Berlin (2001); Striking Terror (2002); The Company They Kept (vol. 1, 2006; vol. 2, 2011); The Consequences to Come: American Power After Bush (2008); and The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage (2013).[16] In 2009, he wrote the essay "Dilemmas eines Herausgebers" ("Dilemmas of an editor") appearing in the Austrian journal Transit – Europäische Revue.[17] He also served on the editorial committee of La Rivista dei Libri, the Italian language edition of the Review[18] until it closed in 2010.[19]

A Financial Times interviewer, Emily Stokes, wrote in 2013 that Silvers views editing as "an instinct. You must choose writers carefully, having read all of their work, rather than being swayed by 'reputations that are, shall we say, overpromoted', and then anticipate their needs, sending them books and news articles" while seeking greater clarity, comprehensiveness and freshness in the writing.[7] Stokes commented that Silvers "radiates a genial warmth [but told her that] it is part of the editor's role ... not to be swayed by friendships with authors but to let reviewers express their genuine views."[7] Silvers described some of the diplomatic aspects of the job: "The act of reviewing can have a deep emotional effect. People get hurt and upset. You have to be aware of that, but you can't flinch. [You must also reject reviews] sometimes. You say, 'No, I'm terribly sorry, I can't visualise that in the paper. I don't think it's adequate to the subject.'"[4]

Silvers, linked romantically in the 1960s with Lady Caroline Blackwood,[20][21] has lived with Grace, Countess of Dudley (b. 1923; widow of the 3rd Earl of Dudley)[22] since 1975,[7] with whom he shares a passion for opera.[3][5] Silvers commented that Dudley's "fineness of mind and spirit has been the center of my life."[10] A long-time pescetarian, Silvers "was struck by the essays of ... moral philosopher Peter Singer, who has written extensively about animal rights."[7] The 50 Year Argument, a 2014 documentary film about the Review co-directed by Martin Scorsese,[23] is "'[a]nchored by the old-world charm' of its editor, Robert Silvers".[24][25]

Reputation

Silvers in New York in 2012

The New York Times described Silvers as "the voracious polymath, the obsessive perfectionist, the slightly unknowable bachelor-workaholic with the colossal Rolodexes and faintly British diction."[3] Author Louis Begley wrote, "the ideal editor of my — and I would guess every writer’s — dreams is ... Robert B. Silvers, the editor, brain, and heart of the NYRB. When I write a piece for his magazine, of course I have the immeasurable good luck to be edited by him. There is no experience quite like it. Bob knows everything that's worth knowing, a consequence of his unflagging curiosity."[26] "Bob's edits are scrupulous, comprehensive, and precise. They are frequently aimed at saving the reviewer's face."[27]

Claire Messud wrote in 2012 that she was impressed, when submitting reviews for novels to the Review, that Silvers had "read the novel at hand, and sometimes with more sensitivity than I had ... he pointed out, delicately, that I'd attributed a quotation to the wrong character, and upon another occasion, that I'd summarized an event in a misleading way ... [but] Bob is unfailingly generous and kind, someone who carefully suggests rather than commands alteration. He is an extraordinary editor in part because he is always respectful, of even the least of his contributors, or the least contribution."[28] Jonathan Miller said of Silvers' work habits: "He isn't just conscientious beyond the call of duty. He defines what duty is. You will often find him working until two in the morning in the office, with his little assistants from Harvard around him. He never stops. He's always meeting people, and talking".[9]

In a 2012 profile of Silvers, The New York Times noted: "His greatest pleasure ... is simply good writing, which he talks about as others talk about fine wine or good food. Speaking about writers he likes, he sometimes flushes with enthusiasm. 'I admire great writers, people with marvelous and beautiful minds, and always hope they will do something special and revealing for us.'"[15] The University of Chicago Magazine commented: "Like a chemist pairing ingredients to induce a specific reaction, Silvers has built his career matching the right author and subject, in hopes of generating an exciting and illuminating result. ... 'he puts a writer together with material that even the writer might not have thought was appropriate,' says Daniel Mendelsohn".[2] Charles Rosen explained Silvers' success at finding reviewers:

"Bob [has not] sunk his personality into his profession; rather... he has found a means of transforming his profession into a fundamental way of being human. Extracting reviews from writers is not, in his case, a métier, or even a way of life, but a genuine form of self-expression, and he exercises it with dignity, tact and what sometimes feels like excessive sympathy. He has made writers feel that producing articles for him is not a business transaction or even process of communication, but simply a reciprocal act of friendship."[9]

According to a 2004 feature in The Nation, Harvard professor Stanley Hoffmann observed that, in publishing some of the earliest criticisms of the Vietnam and Iraq wars, Silvers realized what other commentators missed: "In both instances, Bob Silvers was, in effect, whether deliberately or not, compensating for the weaknesses of the more established media. ... It was important that a journal which has the authority of the Review in a sense took up the slack and presented viewpoints which were extremely hard to get into the established media."[29] The Nation added, during the Iraq war:

One suspects [the editors of the Review] yearn for the day when they can return to their normal publishing routine – that gentlemanly pastiche of philosophy, art, classical music, photography, German and Russian history, East European politics, literary fiction – unencumbered by political duties of a confrontational or oppositional nature. That day has not yet arrived. If and when it does, let it be said that the editors met the challenges of the post-9/11 era in a way that most other leading American publications did not, and that The New York Review of Books ... was there when we needed it most.[29]

Silvers has said: "The great political issues of power and its abuses have always been natural questions for us".[15] In his 1974 book The American Intellectual Elite, Columbia University sociologist Charles Kadushin interviews "the seventy most prestigious" American intellectuals of the late 1960s, including Silvers. The Time magazine review of the book expresses surprise at Silvers' position near the top of the list: "Robert Silvers, the editor of the New York Review of Books, the magazine that [Kadushin] indicates is favored by intellectuals who want to reach other intellectuals ... is an able editor but an infrequent writer; it must be assumed that his ranking at the top ... is due to a power not unlike that of the maitre d' of an exclusive restaurant."[30]

Silvers has a reputation for hiring and developing assistants who have become prominent in journalism, academia and literature. In 2010, New York magazine featured several of these, including Jean Strouse, Deborah Eisenberg, Mark Danner and A. O. Scott.[31] In the same magazine, in February 2011, Oliver Sacks identified Silvers as his "favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional", saying that the Review is "one of the great institutions of intellectual life here or anywhere."[32]

In reference to his editorial approach at the New York Review of Books, Silvers has said, "We do what we want and don't try to figure out what the public wants."[12]

Honors and awards

The annual Robert B. Silvers lectures at the New York Public Library were established by Max Palevsky in 2002 and are given by experts in the fields of "literature, the arts, politics, economics, history, and the sciences."[33][34] The lectures have been given by Joan Didion, J. M. Coetzee, Ian Buruma, Michael Kimmelman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Nicholas Kristof, Zadie Smith, Oliver Sacks, Derek Walcott, Mary Beard, Darryl Pinckney and[33] Lorrie Moore.[35] The 2014 lecture is set to be given by Joyce Carol Oates.[36]

On November 15, 2006, Silvers, together with Epstein, received the National Book Foundation Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.[37] With Epstein, he also received in 2006 the Award for "Distinguished Service to the Arts" from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. The National Book Critics Circle honored Silvers with the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing for 2011,[38] and in 2012, he was honored with the Hadada Prize by The Paris Review[8][39] and a "N.Y.C. Literary Honor" "for contributions to literary life" in New York City.[40] At the N.Y.C. Literary Honors, readings were given, and, "in what may have been the most moving reading, [Silvers] excerpted architecture critic Martin Filler's rhapsodic review of the 9/11 Memorial designed by the young architect Michael Arad, which appeared in the NYRB last year.[41] In 2013, the French-American Foundation honored him with its Vergennes Award.[42] Also in 2013, he received a 2012 National Humanities Medal "for offering critical perspectives on writing. ... [H]e has invigorated our literature with cultural and political commentary and elevated the book review to a literary art form."[43]

Among other honors, Silvers has been a member of the executive board of the PEN American Center, the American Ditchley Foundation and the American Academy in Rome, as well as a trustee of the New York Public Library since 1997. He is also a Chevalier of the French Légion d’honneur and a member of the French Ordre National du Mérite. In 1996, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[42] and in 2007 Harvard University awarded him an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters.[44] In 2013 he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the British Academy.[45] In 2014, he received honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from both the University of Oxford[46] and Columbia University.[47]

Silvers is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations[42] and the Century Association.

Notes

  1. ↑ Richardson, John. "The Silvers Age", Vanity Fair, June 1, 2007
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Marino, Philip. "Book Smart", The University of Chicago Magazine, University of Chicago, May–June 2012, accessed June 25, 2014
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Scott, Janny. "Ideas: One Mind, But What A Mind; Defining the Passions Of the Liberal Elite For Over 2 Decades", The New York Times, November 1, 1997
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Cooke, Rachel. "Robert Silvers interview: 'Someone told me Martin Scorsese might be interested in making a film about us. And he was'", The Observer, The Guardian, 7 June 2014
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Kolhatkar, Sheelah. Profile of Robert Silvers, The New York Observer, December 18, 2005
  6. ↑ Danner, Mark. "Editing the New York Review of Books: A Conversation with Robert B. Silvers", April 28, 1999 Interview at U.C. Berkeley; and "Robert Silvers on The Company They Kept", The Book Show, September 20, 2006, accessed April 20, 2009
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Stokes, Emily. "Lunch with the FT: Robert B Silvers", Financial Times, January 25, 2013
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Gevisser, Mark. "Robert Silvers on the Paris and New York Reviews", The Paris Review, March 20, 2012
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 9.3 Brown, Andrew. "The Writer's Editor", The Guardian, January 24, 2004
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Silvers, Robert. "The Revel: 8, rue Garancière", Remarks made on April 3, 2012 at The Paris Review, printed May 7, 2012
  11. ↑ Church, Christopher. "Testament to Torture: The Gangrene Affair", Journal of Undergraduate Research, Vol. 8, Issue 3, January/February 2007
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Haffner, Peter. "We Do What We Want", 032c, Issue #23, Winter 2012/2013, accessed July 21, 2014
  13. ↑ McGrath, Charles. "Barbara Epstein, Editor and Literary Arbiter, Dies at 77", The New York Times, June 17, 2006, accessed April 20, 2009
  14. ↑ Neyfakh, Leon. What's New at The New York Review of Books?" The New York Observer, December 13, 2007
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 McGrath, Charles. "Editor Not Ready to Write an Ending", The New York Times, March 16, 2012
  16. ↑ Books published by the NY Review; and "The New York Review Abroad: Fifty Years of International Reportage", Publishers Weekly, February 4, 2103
  17. ↑ "Charismatic megafauna". Eurozine, January 13, 2010 review of articles including "Dilemmas of an Editor" in Transit – Europäische Revue, vol. 38 (2009)
  18. ↑ Freedlander, David. "Bloomberg Names Winners of Inaugural NYC Literary Awards", Politicker.com, April 26, 2012
  19. ↑ Erbani, Francesco. "la Rivista dei Libri ha Deciso di Chiudere ma Torna Alfabeta", la Repubblica, May 12, 2010, accessed February 5, 2013 (in Italian)
  20. ↑ Brubach, Holly. "Their Better Half". The New York Times, 17 August 2010
  21. ↑ Gaines, Steven. "Ivana Lowell, Sober Guinness Heiress Raised by Poet, Says What Happened". New Yorker magazine, September 19, 2010
  22. ↑ Lundy, Darryl, ed. "Grace Maria Kolin". ThePeerage.com, 28 September 2010
  23. ↑ Cooke, Rachel. "Robert Silvers interview: 'Someone told me Martin Scorsese might be interested in making a film about us. And he was'", The Observer, The Guardian, 7 June 2014
  24. ↑ Dalton, Stephen. "The 50 Year Argument: Sheffield Review", Hollywood Reporter, June 7, 2014
  25. ↑ Knelman, Martin. "Scorsese takes a break from the Mean Streets in The 50 Year Argument", Toronto Star, January 20, 2015
  26. ↑ Begley, Louis. "Robert B. Silvers, Super Nanny, The Paris Review, March 22, 2012
  27. ↑ Banville, John. "The Rescue", The Paris Review Daily, April 2, 2012
  28. ↑ Messud, Claire. "The Wizard of West Fifty-seventh Street", The Paris Review Daily, March 29, 2012
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 Sherman, Scott. "The Rebirth of the NYRB", The Nation, May 20, 2004, p. 5
  30. ↑ Sheppard, R. Z. "The American Intellectual Elite by Charles Kadushin". Time magazine, September 2, 1974, accessed June 3, 2010
  31. ↑ "The Amazing Human Launching Pads". "Who Runs New York", New York magazine, September 26, 2010
  32. ↑ Salisbury, Vanita. "Oliver Sacks Has Luxuriant Eyelashes". New York magazine, February 9, 2011
  33. ↑ 33.0 33.1 "Past LIVE Programs", New York Public Library, accessed November 21, 2011
  34. ↑ "The Robert B. Silvers Lectures", New York Review of Books, accessed October 28, 2013
  35. ↑ "Lorrie Moore: 'Watching Television'", New York Public Library, accessed October 7, 2013
  36. ↑ "Robert B. Silvers Annual Lecture: Joyce Carol Oates", New York Public Library, accessed August 25, 2014
  37. ↑ "Robert Silvers and ... Barbara Epstein to Be Honored", Press release from The National Book Foundation (2006)
  38. ↑ Burke, Jeffrey. "Harvard, Yale Historians, Edith Pearlman Stories Take Book Critics Awards", Bloomberg News, March 10, 2012
  39. ↑ Columbia, David Patrick. "Spring Revel", New York Social Diary, April 4, 2012
  40. ↑ Bosman, Julie. "Week After Pulitzer Controversy, City Gives Writers a New Award", The New York Times, April 25, 2012
  41. ↑ Nazaryan, Alexander. "NYC Literary Honors: Bloomberg lavishes book community with new award", New York Daily News, April 27, 2012
  42. ↑ 42.0 42.1 42.2 "Robert B. Silvers", French-American Foundation, accessed June 12, 2013
  43. ↑ "President Obama Awards 2012 National Humanities Medals", National Endowment for the Humanities press release, July 10, 2013
  44. ↑ Aaron, Daniel. "Honorary degrees awarded at Commencement’s Morning Exercises", Harvard Gazette online, June 7, 2007, accessed April 20, 2009
  45. ↑ "Alcock made fellow of British Academy", Brown University, July 2013
  46. ↑ "The Episcopal Church's Primate honoured by Oxford University", Anglican Communion News Service, February 7, 2014
  47. ↑ "Columbia’s 2014 Honorary Degree Recipients Announced", Columbia News, Columbia University, April 10, 2014

References

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