The Literary Mafia

April 25, 2022
The notion that a “Jewish literary mafia” served as postwar publishing gatekeepers is traced in this thorough study from English professor Lambert (Unclean Lips). Adherents of such an idea included Jack Kerouac and Truman Capote, who believed that “Jewish-dominated” quarterlies were engaged in “nefarious...control of U.S. publishing.” Lambert begins his takedown at the start of the 20th century, when it was “virtually impossible and virtually unheard of” for a Jewish person to be hired by a major publisher. He traces how that changed over the ensuing decades: Doubleday, Page, and Company’s decision to hire Alfred Knopf in 1912 was a turning point, as he went on to found his own house three years later. Many major houses in the next half-century were led by Jewish publishers, but Lambert shows that doesn’t give any merit to the pernicious complaints. Rather than a tight-knit cabal, the ascendent Jewish publising professionals were “members of different generations... socioeconomic strata, and some very little in common.” He concludes with ideas for the industry’s ongoing diversity efforts, suggesting that investing in “BIPOC-led new ventures” could benefit the literary landscape in a similar way as the inclusion of Jewish editors and publishers did. It’s a niche history, but Lambert covers it well. Readers with an interest in the industry will find plenty of insights.

June 1, 2022
A chronicle of the rise of Jewish editors to important positions in the literary establishment by the 1960s and how they shaped the book industry and the reading public. On one hand, the concept of a Jewish literary mafia rings antisemitic, especially as decried by predominantly Protestant male authors like Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac. On the other hand, the fact remained that in the early 1900s, the finest publishing houses began to be led by Jews, among the first being Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., founded in 1915, and Simon & Schuster, founded in 1924. Lambert, the director of the Jewish Studies Program at Wellesley College, begins by emphasizing that, until the turn of the 20th century, Jews were largely "literarily disenfranchised" from these positions (as were African Americans, Natives, and other minorities). They were also barred from faculty positions in English programs until the 1930s. The author shows how the next half-century marked enormous changes to Jews' socio-economic status in the U.S. As significant editors--including Irving Howe, book reviewer at TIME magazine; Barbara Epstein and Robert Silvers, co-founders of the New York Review of Books; and Gordon Lish at Esquire--came on the scene, the publishing industry, both in the U.S. and abroad, experienced an "unprecedented expansion." Exploring themes like kinship (responsibility to "fellow ethnics") and homophily (a kind of "cultural gatekeeping") Lambert, in prose best suited to academics, turns to specific texts to show how the literary establishment grew both nepotistic and meritocratic. Some of the author's illuminating case studies involve the winners of the National Book Award from 1954 to 1974; Columbia University academic Lionel Trilling's glowing blurbs for his students (their "shared Jewishness...clearly mattered in the relationships that developed between them"); "whisper novels" by women authors about their paternalistic editors; and the founding of Atheneum in 1959 by Alfred Knopf Jr. A multilayered scholarly argument for the continued study of "the development of ethnic niches."

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July 8, 2022

Canadian American scholar of modern Jewish literature and popular culture (literature, Wellesley Coll.; Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture) Lambert begins this book by demolishing the contention described in most detail in a 1974 tome by Richard Kostelanetz, but maintained by a wide variety of American authors in the 1960s and beyond including Truman Capote, Katherine Anne Porter and Mario Puzo: that the significant number of highly placed Jewish publishers, editors, book reviewers, and academics constituted a literary network collaborating and conspiring to favor certain Jewish writers to the detriment of U.S. literary culture. Lambert goes on to examine the very real advantages of access and promotion that some Jewish writers gained from their connections to Jewish publishers, editors and academics. He follows with an exploration of inheritance of varieties of capital in Jewish culture and concludes with the suggestion that American literature would benefit from the inclusion of significant numbers of more racially diverse editors and publishing decision makers. VERDICT Essential for readers interested in the history of 20th-century U.S. literature.--Joel Neuberg

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