Tin House

If you care about contemporary fiction, odds are good that Daniel Menaker introduced you to some of your favorite writers. He was the first to publish an impressive number of notable authors during his time as fiction editor at the New Yorker, where, in a kind of highbrow literary bootstraps story, he worked for more than twenty-five years, beginning as a fact checker in 1969. His discoveries during that period include David Foster Wallace, Steven Millhauser, Jennifer Egan, George Saunders, Michael Chabon, and Michael Cunningham. He apprenticed under the distinguished editor William Maxwell, gaining experience that helped him edit many already well-known writers of modern literature, such as Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro.

Having worked under the editorial regimes of William Shawn, Robert Gottlieb, and Tina Brown, Menaker left magazine publishing in 1995 for Random House, where he held the title of vice president and senior literary editor. There, his stream of successes continued; the first book he edited for Random House was Primary Colors. As a book publisher, he cultivated a growing list of new writers, including Gary Shteyngart, Benjamin Kunkel, and Elizabeth Strout, while also working with established authors like Billy Collins and Salman Rushdie. After a sixteen-month stint as executive editor at HarperCollins, Menaker returned to Random House as editor-in-chief and then was named executive editor-in-chief, a post he held until last year.

In addition to writing journalism, humor, and reviews for many of the major magazines in America, Menaker has published two books of short stories, Friends and Relations and The Old Left, and a novel, The Treatment, which was made into a film in 2006.

When we spoke, Mr. Menaker had recently finished recording the first season of his online book show, Titlepage. He was also recovering from surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his lung, from which he anticipates a full recovery. This interview took place over the course of three days and three phone calls, totaling more than seven hours of audiotape.

Drew Smith: Your career seems to be a series of big segments: twenty-six years at the New Yorker, then on to Random House, a couple of years at HarperCollins, then back to Random House. And now, your book show, Titlepage. That first big move, from magazine editing to book publishing, must have felt like a huge change.

Daniel Menaker: In some ways the switch from magazine work to publishing was seismic. In some ways it was minor. Clearly, both kinds of work have to do with words and editing and trying to get good writers. There are many, many, many points of deep contact between book publishing and magazine work.

DS: Particularly your work, I’d think, since you were doing the most literary of magazine work.

DM: Publishing isn’t primarily literary.

DS: Fostering relationships with writers and doing the editing itself is.

DM: Well, the New Yorker didn’t really have to foster relationships with fiction writers, except perhaps with the biggest, topflight egos, because the New Yorker held and holds most of the cards with regard to getting the first look at all literary short fiction and many important novels, and even attracting the best nonfiction writers. But it was a big change in regard to the matter of selling. John Sterling said to me when I took the job, “You do understand that is basically a sales job?” And I said, “Yeah, well, maybe.” But he was quite right. The ratio of my editorial work to other work—meetings and positioning and so on—went from 80/20 at the New Yorker to 30/70. That’s 30 percent editing, 70 percent other stuff.

DS: Discovering new voices has been a trademark of your career as an editor, and it started at the New Yorker. How do you account for all those discoveries? Is it just that, as you said, the New Yorker got the best of everything?

DM: In 1987, when Robert Gottlieb arrived as editor, that’s when a good many of those new names began to appear, and the reason they began to appear is that the thumb of caution on the fiction department was lifted. Bob would read anything. He took the handcuffs off language and content in a way I thought was long overdue. Bob didn’t care. If he liked it, he’d say, “Let’s go ahead.” His sensibility about new voices happened to be similar to mine, and that was the most fun.