Robert Giroux, the editorial architect who jazzed up the
works of some of the most important writers of the 20th century and
helped Farrar, Straus and Giroux become one of the most valued publishing
houses in the world, died on September 5 at an assisted living facility in Tinton
Falls, New Jersey. He was 94.
The cause of death was not immediately disclosed.
As Mr.Giroux managed the works of numerous authors who
received the Nobel Prize for Literature and discovered dozens of writers at the
beginning of their career, he was followed by many of the big names of modern
literature when he left Harcourt, Brace & Co. to join Farrar, Straus in
1955.
Robert Giroux discovered or developed the works of Jack
Kerouac, Flannery O’Connor, Jean Stafford, Bernard Malamud, William Gaddis,
John Berryman, Susan Sontag, Thomas Merton, Larry Woiwode and Randall Jarrell.
In addition to this, he edited seven Nobel laureates: T.S. Eliot, Isaac
Bashevis Singer, Derek Walcott, Nadine Gordimer, Seamus Heaney, William Golding
and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Explaining his way of cultivating talented authors, Mr.
Giroux said: “Patience is a large part of it, and judgment and loyalty. You
have to have a commitment to the author. If you believe in the author, you are
willing to wait.”
The youngest of five children, Robert Giroux was born April 8, 1914, in Jersey
City, New Jersey to Arthur J.
Giroux, a foreman for a silk company, and Katharine Lyons Giroux, a
grade-school teacher.
During World War II, Mr. Giroux worked for the Navy as an
intelligence officer, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Commander.
Among the honors he received for his work were an honorary
doctorate from Seton Hall
University in 1999, The Mayoral
Award of Honor for Art and Culture from the City of New
York in 1989 and the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award in Arts
and Letters from New York University
in 1988.
