Correspondence

To the Editor:

In his review (Book Review, Feb. 25), Richard Seaver does not review my book but attacks me instead. He has invited all those with whom I take issue to give their responses and then accepts their versions uncritically, without the barest effort to probe or question their motives. Curiously, Alberto Vitale and Fred Jordan-both instrumental in the evisceration of Pantheon Books-put forward accounts that completely contradict eyewitness reports and verbatim notes taken at the time of the events and on which I based my book.

Seaver would have you believe that Pantheon’s six editors and I left the jobs we loved in response to the eminently reasonable position that Vitale now maintains was his at the time. Any reviewer applying some critical faculty would surely question the obvious contradiction here, but not Seaver.

What is ludicrous when applied to my own story is shocking when Seaver uses the same technique to rewrite and distort my father’s experience during the German occupation of France. Seaver has the gall to insist that he knows my family’s history better than I do. Thus he says that my father “left one step ahead of the Nazis” when I make it very clear in my book that we lived in Nazi-occupied France for over a year, a year during which my father, a Russian Jew, had every reason to fear that our family would end up in concentration camps rather than in the United States.

Seaver further states that my father was not removed from his position at the French publishing house Gallimard in 1940, and he cites Gallimard’s grandson’s denial as evidence of my “playing fast and loose with the facts.” Yet my account is fully substantiated. I have in my possession the letter Antoine Gallimard wrote at the beginning of the German occupation dismissing my father. Moreover, this event is independently verified in the standard history of French publishing under the German occupation and in Alice Kaplan’s essay in the Yale French Studies. As I say in my book, I sent Antoine Gallimard photocopies of the letter his grandfather wrote in the vain hope that he would admit what had happened. For all that, I do not accuse the Gallimard family of being anti-Semitic, as Seaver falsely asserts. I simply say that like many French people during the Vichy years, they gave in to Nazi pressures. It’s understandable, though unfortunate, that Antoine Gallimard should continue to deny what his family did. It is inexcusable, however, that Seaver should use his self-serving account as proof that I am the one who is lying. And it is a profound shock and disgrace to see these denials appearing in the pages of the Los Angeles Times Book Review, of all places.

Seaver is of course free to disagree with the arguments in my book-though, amazingly, he chooses not do to so. He has no excuse, however to distort the past in this shameless way.

Andre Schiffrin New York

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To the Editor:

On Ash Wednesday, I read Richard Seaver’s double review of books on the business of books. The first was Jason Epstein’s take, the second Andre Schiffrin’s. If there is a touch of religiosity to this note, I hope you’ll understand.

Seaver’s approach to Epstein’s work was one of reverence, of awe approaching worship. It had a churchly feeling; that of a genuflecting altar boy. Suddenly, as he switched to Schiffrin’s Satanic Verses, Seaver was transmogrified into a butcher boy gone berserk, his meat cleaver slashing away at the culprit. It was only a brief moment after he had attended mass at St. Jason’s Cathedral. Wow!

I don’t recall any review in years that came close to this one as a premeditated hatchet job, ad hominum all the way. It was a relentless assault on Schiffrin’s honesty and reputation; every pejorative was called upon by the Lord’s avenging angel. I’m afraid it approached burlesque in the study of loathing. The boy didn’t know when to quit.

Credit must be given to Seaver for his assiduousness in this pursuit. He even went so far as to call Paris in re Schiffrin’s father and Gallimard. He scoured the index of the book with a gimlet eye for any slip he could uncover. It was Seaver’s energy as well as dedication that was astonishing. Inspector Seaver was out to get his man in a manner Javert hadn’t dreamed of. I was impressed.

If ever I were out to get someone I regarded as my bte noir, I’d hire Richard Seaver in a New York minute. That boy is really good. I appreciate the L.A. Times Book Review for putting me on to him.

Studs Terkel Chicago

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Richard Seaver replies:

Andre Schiffrin is of course upset at my review of his book, “The Business of Books” and claims that my attack was on him personally rather than on the book itself. Nothing could be further from the truth.

My autocratic father, who ruled not only at the breakfast table but at most other tables, sternly instructed his offspring that if you can’t speak well of someone you’d better say nothing, which made an early and deep impression on me. Any critical remarks I made related solely to the contents of the book itself.

In seeking to verify the accuracy of the author’s many allegations and accusations, I did indeed check with several of those involved. But to say I accepted their remarks uncritically is nonsense: Where there were “obvious contradictions,” in all instances I further checked with a number of other knowledgeable sources to satisfy myself that the refutations were accurate. If there was any lingering doubt in my mind on any issue or event, I let the matter rest, for future publishing historians to sort out. But where there was what I considered undisputed clarity, I stated the facts, however at variance with the author’s version.

Schiffrin takes special umbrage when it comes to my one-paragraph remark about his father, Jacques Schiffrin, whom I never knew but about whom I have never heard anything but the highest praise. In his book Schiffrin writes that his father joined Gallimard in 1936 and was fired (‘dismissed’) “shortly after the French defeat on Aug. 20, 1940, [when] he received a two-line letter from Gallimard informing him that he was no longer in their employ. Though the act was committed under direct pressure from the German occupying forces, the Gallimard family understandably preferred to forget it .... “

In fact, Jacques Schiffrin joined Gallimard not in 1936 as the author states but in 1934, under a three-year agreement. A new contact was signed on July 31, 1936, again for three years, but unlike under the earlier agreement, Schiffrin no longer received a monthly draw against future profits on the Pleiade volumes. That contract expired in 1939, and from June of that year there was no editorial contact concerning the Pleiade, either direct or by correspondence, between Gallimard and Jacques Schiffrin.

There was indeed a letter from Gaston Gallimard dated Nov. 5, 1940, formally ending that relationship, but in fact it had been nonexistent for more than 15 months. Further, the author fails to note that that letter predated by only four days the Nazis’ shutting down the entire Gallimard company on Nov. 9, 1940.

Andre Schiffrin terms my account of this event as “shocking,” adding that “Seaver has the gall to know my family’s history better than I do.” Obviously I make no such claim. But it would seem that even when it comes to his family history, Schiffrin cannot get the dates right or uses partial information to make a point.

My intent was not, as Studs Terkel-whose loyalty to Schiffrin (his longtime publisher) is as unwavering as it is admirable-maintains, that I was “out to get my man.” It was only when the unsettling number of errors in the book surfaced that I was led to question some of the author’s other allegations. In truth, the blame for the book’s many and often egregious errors, its misstatements and rewrites of history, rests solely on Schiffrin’s shoulders.

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To the Editor:

Your double issue on the reputed death and actual ongoing life of American trade publishing featured many interesting and informed opinions and one glaring omission. While author after author wrote (some with more hope, others with more anxiety) that the future of the industry rested on its ability to create a new generation of readers, none of them dealt with the segment of publishing whose mission it is to do just that: publishers of books for children and teenagers.

Fortunately, others outside of the industry are not so myopic. A recent (released March 1) Peter Hart study done for the National Education Assn. shows that teenagers view reading quite positively and that 68% of them disagreed with the notion that it was boring or old-fashioned. That is good news for those of us who publish books for those readers, but it also shows that it is nearly senseless to be pondering the future of publishing without discussing our segment of the industry.

Children and teenagers read actively, in a wide variety of genres and with real passion. But the aesthetic, intellectual and social dimensions of children’s publishing are largely ignored by the surrounding world. The blind spot shown by your commentators-many of whom work for houses in which the children’s divisions are the most profitable and all of whom must surely have tried to make sense of the success of Harry Potter-is a mirror of the attitude of the adult literary community. “Children’s books,” you can almost hear them say, “should be sold and not discussed.”

Publishing for younger readers is a central part of American publishing, as books for younger readers are an important contribution to American literature. The more we recognize these obvious facts, the better chance we have of making meaningful statements about books, reading and the future.

Marc Aronson Chicago