Hollywood has missed its chance. Despite filmtown's longtime fascination with women editors, no screenwriter has created a Nan Talese character, that is, a powerful editor/publisher whose acumen and professional clout are equally matched by glamour and panache. Svelte and elegant, with limpid blue eyes like porcelain saucers and a Jackie Kennedy-esque soft-spoken voice, Talese has since 1990 headed her own imprint at Doubleday. After almost four decades in the publishing industry, her enviable record of author loyalty and prize-winning books is legendary.
On a recent day in the Doubleday offices, she is discussing one of her most faithful authors, Tom Keneally, who has paid warm tribute to Talese's skill in crafting "early, inchoate" versions of his books into readable form. The Nan A. Talese imprint has just issued Keneally's new nonfiction work, American Scoundrel, a lively account of one of the most charismatic and controversial figures in U.S. history; in his acknowledgments, she "made the editorial process a delight." The seeds for their collaboration were sown when Talese was an editor at Simon & Schuster. In 1976, she was eager to publish Gossip from the Forest, but the deal included another book, which she didn't want, so she passed on the opportunity. A spark was struck, however, and in the early '80s, Keneally contacted Talese after his encounter with a Schindler survivor in a Beverly Hills luggage store. After much difficulty in signing the contract for Schindler's List (because a lawyer was involved, not an agent), Talese did buy the book, but without high expectations. "I paid $60,000 for world rights," Talese recalls. "I thought the story was extraordinary and needed to be told, but I had no idea of the market," she admits.
In a circuitous way, Schindler's List led to The Great Shame, in which Keneally chronicled the Irish diaspora in England, Australia and the U.S. When the film was released, Keneally teamed with director Steven Spielberg in making appearances at high schools and other community forums to talk about the Holocaust. "He was in New York, we were all having dinner, and he turned to me and said, 'You have no idea how many Jews have thanked me for validating their history,' " Talese says. "And he said that he felt terrible that he hadn't written the history of his own people. I said to him: 'Will you write it?' He said to me, 'Will you publish it?' "
The current book grew directly out of Keneally's previous foray. While researching the career of Civil War general Thomas Francis Meagher, a central figure of The Great Shame, Keneally also encountered the brilliant, imprudent and emotionally flamboyant Dan Sickles, a New York congressman and Civil War general, whom Meagher defended during Sickles's trial for murder. Sickles's contributions to his nation's welfare were almost overshadowed by his caddish behavior toward his wife and daughter, and by his cold-blooded murder of his wife's lover, a crime for which Sickles was never convicted. That his victim was Philip Barton Key, the son of the composer of the national anthem, contributed to the sensationalism.
After Talese (gently, one is sure) informed Keneally that the manuscript of The Great Shame had to be cut down from 2,000 to 800 pages, the material on Sickles was condensed to several paragraphs. But Sickles was a larger-than-life figure impossible for Keneally to ignore, so he decided to devote another book to this astute Tammany politician, companion of prostitutes, genial rogue and wartime hero. Talese speculates that perennial interest in the Civil War, in which Sickles played a decisive part, and echoes of the adulterous scandals of the Clinton administration should add new readers to Keneally's customary large audience.
The task of describing a man whose flagrant promiscuity and cold neglect drove his wife into another man's arms, and whose deliberate flaunting of orders during the battle of Cemetery Ridge either almost lost the battle for the Union or proved him a brilliant tactician (controversy still surrounds the incident) might prove daunting to some writers. But after long association, Talese knows what flies Keneally's literary kite. "Tom delights in bad behavior," she says. While Keneally's sympathy for Sickles's wronged wife, Teresa, is strongly manifest, he also conveys his fascination with the swashbuckling Sickles. "Tom can hold two contrary ideas in his mind at the same time and get them across to the reader," Talese says with a fond smile.
Paradoxical contrasts are not confined to Talese's authors. While the editor serenely projects her persona as cultured literary editor, the neon lights of Broadway flash luridly through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind her desk. The location of her office in the new Bertelsmann building seems bizarrely incongruous. Dressed on the day we see her in a chic pin-striped suit adorned with striking silver jewelry, a meticulously arranged beige scarf complementing a blouse of the same color, Talese displays the sort of ladylike calm and aplomb one expects of a social doyenne rather than a woman who manages renowned writers, a staff and a significant budget. She has the knack of looking totally rapt when she discusses a particular author, as though she herself is in awe of the talent she guides.
Keneally is only one of a constellation of stellar writers to whom Talese says she's committed. Margaret Atwood sold only about 7,000 copies of her books in the U.S. when Talese first published her; Ian McEwan did about the same. "What's exciting is that I've published so many authors for 20 years or more, and they've slowly built a readership. It's so satisfying because you put your faith in a writer's excellence, and then readers catch up." This season, in addition to the recent publication of McEwan's highly praised new novel, Atonement, Talese is riding high with Peter Ackroyd's London and a biography of Marie Antoinette by Antonia Fraser. Another U.K. luminary, Barry Unsworth, has embarked on a new novel. That so many of her writers have British roots strikes Talese as merely coincidence. "I don't think of them as being British," she says. "They are storytellers, they do language brilliantly, and they're passionate about what they write. Obviously, I have a sympathy with them. On the other hand, Pat Conroy is flagrantly American." She gives a little shrug, a moue of a smile.
In a list consisting of 10-15 books a year, Talese makes a conscious attempt to balance literary icons with new young writers. She speaks of launching Aleksander Hemon's first short story collection last year. Though A Question of Bruno was "brilliantly reviewed," it had "decent but not huge sales." Talese has her tactics planned for his new collection coming out in the fall. She'll woo bookstores that sold his first book well and reviewers who liked it. "We really have to do it by hand," she says. "The problem is with expectations. If people get nervous and wonder if he's going to make it, then we're in trouble. The key to good publishing is not overpaying the advance. You really have to have a financial intelligence in this game."
Talese claims that she came by her canny business sense in small increments. As a young, naïve editor at Random House, she annually added up the money her books made and compared it to her salary. "I wanted to make sure I was carrying my own weight. Of course, I knew nothing about overhead or anything like that." Her father was a banker, however, and she had spent a year in London and Paris as a student training in foreign exchange. More importantly, she had an innate sense of publishing economics. "I've always been aware that if you're publishing too many prospectively low-sales literary books, you have to balance them with something that's going to take care of the overhead." To accomplish that with an imprint known for its literary excellence takes patience and cunning. "Guerrilla marketing" is the name of the game; relentless and personal. Establishing a presence is part of the package. Editor Sean McDonald's smartly designed Web site for Talese's imprint (www.randomhouse.com/nanatalese/about.html) is a model of the art, boasting 2,000 subscribers, some as far away as Japan. A monthly newsletter also recommends books from other publishers she and her staff think their readers will enjoy.
Having her own imprint, Talese says, is an advantage only in the literary community. Readers generally are not aware of the significance. It's the author who builds the audience, she says. "If you've been publishing a certain author for a long time, bookstores have a sense of your standards, especially with new writers. They're more willing to take a chance on an unknown voice." All true, but there's an essential factor that she doesn't mention: the zest she brings to the task, and a personal sense of commitment that embraces her writers with a fond and ferocious grip.
