Roger W. Straus, at 87; publishing icon
LOS ANGELES -- Roger W. Straus, the colorful founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, one of the world's preeminent literary publishing houses,died Tuesday at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City. Mr. Straus, who had been hospitalized for pneumonia, was 87.
Until recently, the feisty, outspoken Mr. Straus continued to be a daily presence in his pale-blue corner office on the 11th floor overlooking lower Manhattan's Union Square.
Teaming with John Farrar, Mr. Straus founded the publishing house in 1946. Robert Giroux joined the company as editor in chief and a vice president in 1955 and became a partner in 1964.
Mr. Straus "was a creative and imaginative publisher -- and one of the best," Giroux told the Los Angeles Times yesterday. "It was a pleasure working with him." In 1946, the fledgling company's list of books included titles such as "Yank: The G.I. Story of the War," a collection of articles from the Army magazine Yank; and "Francis," David Stern's comic novel about a talking Army mule.
In time, the company became one of America's most distinguished literary publishers.
Part of Germany's Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group since 1994, Farrar, Straus & Giroux has been home to 21 Nobel laureates, 17 Pulitzer Prize winners, 23 National Book Awards winners, 16 National Book Critics Circle Awards winners, and numerous Caldecott and Newbery medalists.
Among the authors Mr. Straus has published are Carlos Fuentes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, John McPhee, Nadine Gordimer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, Joseph Brodsky, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Seamus Heaney, Scott Turow, and Derek Walcott.
"Roger Straus was a venerable redwood of American publishing," said Steve Wasserman, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "His taste was infallible, his commercial instincts nearly unerring, and his palpable joy in the culture of authors and readers was infectious."
Best-selling author Tom Wolfe said Mr. Straus was his publisher "for every book except one," a textbook on New Journalism.
"He was the only publisher who would touch my first book, a collection of magazine articles by an unknown writer -- `The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,' " Wolfe said yesterday.
When he first arrived in New York City, Wolfe recalled, "I came thinking that everybody was going to be dynamic and sparkling and full of life and colorful." Instead, he found most New Yorkers merely scuffled down the sidewalk, with their heads down.
"Roger was one of the few who lived up to New York's advance billing," said Wolfe.
Born in New York City, Mr. Straus was the son of two prominent Jewish-German families: His father was a member of the RH Straus family that owned Macy's department store, and his mother was a Guggenheim.
Mr. Straus, who attended private schools as a child, studied at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., before earning a bachelor's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism.
He was a reporter and feature writer for The Daily Reporter of White Plains, N.Y., before serving in the Navy during World War II. After the war, he reportedly borrowed $30,000 against his future inheritance and $100,000 more from acquaintances and launched the company."He was a gentleman in every sense and a great man and an absolutely courageous publisher who never ever confused publishing and commerce," said Turow. "He regarded it his job to publish fine books. And he did it in the belief that if you publish fine books they will find an audience."
