45. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
46. Ibid.
47. AAK notes, n.p., AP. Jewish childen, typically, are not named after the immediate previous generation, unless that person is deceased, but someone, either Alfred or Blanche, had insisted the baby be named after his father regardless. Hence the boy went by Blanche’s chosen nickname, although her reason for deciding on “Pat” is unclear. There was also an earlier intrigue over a possibly illegimate son of Sam Knopf’s, named Sam.
48. AAK notes, n.p., AP.
49. Angeles “Toni” Pasquale, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, October 6, 1974, AP.
3. A THIRD KNOPF
1. Amy Root Clements, The Art of Prestige: The Formative Years at Knopf, 1915–1929 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 99.
2. Edwin Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, circa late 1970s, AP.
3. Clifton Fadiman, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, circa late 1970s, AP.
4. Robert Josephy, Taking Part: A Twentieth-Century Life (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1993), 36.
5. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
6. Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 3, 1975, AP.
7. AAK notes, n.p., HRC.
8. Beatrice Leval, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 6, 1975, AP.
9. “Dearest Reuben,” May 11, 1919, AP.
10. BWK notes, n.p., AP.
11. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. A & B menage—4, AP.
15. Quote attributed to Edmund Wilson by Coyote Canyon Press, www.coyotecanyonpress.com/h-l-mencken-the-american-language/.
16. BWK, letter to AAK in Chicago, November 2, 1918, AP.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. Bruce Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 117; and Burton Rascoe, Before I Forget (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, 1937), 423.
20. Rascoe, Before I Forget, 422.
21. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
22. “1918,” from notebook, AP.
23. National Parks–5, AP.
24. Peter Prescott, “Biography of AAK” (working paper), 15, AP.
25. Geoffrey Hellman, in POP, vol. 2, 53; and B. W. Huebsch, in POP, vol. 2., 125.
4. A NEW WORLD OUTSIDE HER DOOR
1. AAK, “Recollections of Some Booksellers,” Publishers Weekly, May 19, 1975.
2. Robert Josephy, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.
3. Mark Schorer, Sinclair Lewis: An American Life (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), 309.
4. Cather-5, SS, AP.
5. Catherine Turner, Marketing Modernism Between the Two World Wars (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 87.
6. Amy Root Clements, The Art of Prestige: The Formative Years at Knopf, 1915–1929 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 85–86.
7. Edith Lewis, Willa Cather Living: A Personal Record (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953), 108.
8. Ibid., 115–17.
9. Ibid., 116; Peter Prescott’s file, about Cather’s One of Ours; and notes from Geoffrey Hellman, in POP, vol. 2, 53.
10. Joseph Lesser, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP. Clearly Cather didn’t care about the money as much as the praise: she once left a twenty-thousand-dollar royalty check in a bureau drawer for six months until Blanche called her about it.
11. Geoffrey Hellman, in POP, vol. 2, 101.
12. Andrea Barnet, All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913–1930 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books, 2004), 148.
13. Hermione Lee, Willa Cather: Double Lives (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 73.
14. G. Thomas Tanselle, “Sinclair Lewis and Floyd Dell: Two Views of the Midwest,” Twentieth-Century Literature 9, no. 4 (January 1964).
15. Mary Alden Hopkins, “A Boy Who Dreamed,” Publishers Weekly, December 18, 1920.
16. Ibid.
17. John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 3, The Golden Age Between Two Wars, 1920–1940 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1978), 332.
18. Alfred A. Knopf, ed., The Borzoi 1920: Being a Sort of Record of Five Years’ Publishing (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1920), foreword.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid., postscript.
21. AAK, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, July 5, 1974, AP.
22. Pat Knopf, letter to Peter Prescott, July 18, 1988, AP.
23. Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 21, 1975, AP.
24. AAK notes, n.p., HRC.
25. Schorer, Sinclair Lewis, 309.
26. Ibid.
27. Desmond Flower, Fellows in Foolscap: Memoirs of a Publisher (London: Robert Hale, 1991), 23.
28. Ronald Hayman, Thomas Mann: A Biography (New York: Scribner, 1995), 620.
29. See John C. Thirlwall, In Another Language: A Record of the Thirty-Year Relationship Between Thomas Mann and His American Translator, Helen Tracy Lowe-Porter (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966).
30. Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910–1960 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002), 238.
31. Lloyd Morris, Incredible New York (New York: Random House, 1951), 337.
32. Ibid.
33. Emily Bernard, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 12–13.
34. Along This Way: The Autobiography of James Weldon Johnson (New York: Viking, 1933), 383.
35. BWK, telegram to AAK at Hotel Blackstone, Chicago, November 30, 1921, AP.
36. Bruce Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 136.
37. AAK notes, n.p., HRC.
38. John J. Mullen, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, April 23, 1975, AP.
39. Edwin-2, AP.
40. Pat Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, November 20, 1995, AP.
41. Ibid.
42. William Koshland, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 2, 1975, AP.
43. Frances Lindley, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 18, 1975, AP.
44. Pat Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, November 20, 1995, AP.
45. Stephanie Coontz, e-mail, November 10, 2012. In response to the author’s inquiry about spousal abuse in the twentieth century’s early decades, Coontz says, “I am not sure it would be considered normal, but it was embarrassing, especially in respectable circles. And that’s a very telling word, right? It was a bad thing, but not normally so outrageous that one would risk confronting it, far less encouraging the woman to leave or sullying the name of an otherwise beloved or simply ‘good enough’ father.”
46. Decades after Blanche’s death, her sister-in-law, Mildred Knopf, remarked that “Blanche would only loosen up a show of affection to the dogs, and was never comfortable with demonstrative affection from others … as though she didn’t think she deserved it.” (Mildred Knopf, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.) Her close friends deny such stiffness, and probably Mildred wasn’t allowing for Blanche’s caution around the Knopfs, where she dared not be herself.
47. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, “Emily Dickinson’s Letters,” The Atlantic, October 1891.
5. WILD SUCCESS
1. BWK letter to H. L. Mencken, March 16, 1923, AP.
2. AAK notes, HRC.
3. Ibid.
4. Ross Wetzsteon, Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village; The American Bohemia, 1910–1960 (New York: Simon & Sc
huster, 2002), xiii.
5. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), page 11.
6. The Prophet consistently ranks in the one hundred overall “Best Sellers” on Amazon.
7. Irving Kolodin, In Quest of Music: A Journey in Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 231.
8. Sylvia Lovegren, Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (New York: Macmillan, 1995), 29.
9. Carl Van Vechten, The Splendid Drunken Twenties: Selections from the Daybooks, 1922–1930, ed. Bruce Kellner (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 97.
10. Undated photographs, #996.0016.0059, HRC.
11. Phyllis C. Robinson, Willa: The Life of Willa Cather (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 235.
12. John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 3, The Golden Age Between Two Wars, 1920–1940 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1978), 29, table 8.
13. Bruce Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 149.
14. Ibid.
15. Dorothy Herrmann, With Malice Toward All: The Quips, Lives and Loves of Some Celebrated 20th-Century American Wits (New York: Putnam, 1982), 17–18 and 23. Parker probably made the remark to Franklin P. Adams, known for his column “The Conning Tower,” syndicated in the New York Tribune, The (New York) World, the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Post.
16. Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, 150.
17. PT6 1923 diary, August and September, AP.
18. Carl Van Vechten, The Blind Bow-Boy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923), 143 and 253.
19. AAK notes, chap. 6, 154; and PT6 1923 diary, August and September, AP.
20. Hess would teach the piano to the jazz player Dave Brubeck’s mother, AP.
21. PT6 1923 diary, August and September, AP.
22. Recounted in several places, including Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference (New York: Little, Brown, 2000), 44–45; and Edward Jablonski and Lawrence D. Stewart, The Gershwin Years: George and Ira (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1958), 247. Leann Swims at Grove Park Inn, Asheville, NC, implies the men kept the visit a secret; e-mail to the author, January 6, 2013.
23. Jablonski and Stewart, The Gershwin Years, 247.
24. “Entertaining,” mem. 185, quoting AAK, notebook A–K, SS, AP.
25. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
26. Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, 156–57.
27. Ibid., 156.
28. Ibid., 160–62.
29. Van Vechten, The Splendid Drunken Twenties, 220.
30. Beatrice Leval, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 6, 1975, AP.
31. Harding Lemay, interviewed by the author (telephone), July 1, 2013.
32. Pat Knopf, letter to Peter Prescott, July 18, 1988, AP. “They had different bedrooms at 1148 Fifth. I was living with my father. I was in his bedroom, with him. I shouldn’t tell you.”
33. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
34. Ibid.
35. BWK notes, n.p., AP.
36. BWK notes, n.p., HRC.
37. Ibid.
38. Harry Ellis Dickson, “Gentlemen, More Dolce, Please!”: An Irreverent Memoir of Thirty Years in the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 40.
39. Abram Chasins, Leopold Stokowski: A Profile (New York: Hawthorn, 1979), 70.
40. Gloria Vanderbilt, It Seemed Important at the Time: A Romance Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), 51.
41. Chasins, Leopold Stokowski, 70.
42. Van Vechten, The Blind Bow-Boy, 143.
43. Pat Knopf, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 3, 1975, AP.
44. Joseph Lesser, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, May 22, 1976, AP.
45. Irving Kolodin, In Quest of Music: A Journey in Time (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), 215–36. Irving Kolodin in his memoir remarked that among Alfred’s closest friends were performers, with or without a baton.
46. Scotty Bowers, interviewed by the author, Los Angeles, January 31, 2013.
47. Ruth Levine Nasoff, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 3, 1975, AP.
48. Florence Vidor Heifetz, interviewed by Peter Prescott, n.d., AP.
49. Ibid.
50. Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades, 194.
51. Ibid., 196.
6. BOOKS OF THE TWENTIES
1. Jeffrey Meyers, D. H. Lawrence: A Biography (New York: Knopf, 1990) 296.
2. W. Charles Pilley in John Bull, September 17, 1921.
3. BWK, letter to D. H. Lawrence, May 2, 1925, AP.
4. D. H. Lawrence letter to BWK, May 23, 1925, AP.
5. Meyers, D. H. Lawrence, 296.
6. John Worthen, D. H. Lawrence: The Life of an Outsider (New York: Counterpoint Press, 2007), 379.
7. Clarence Darrow, letter to the Knopfs, January 9, 1925, AP.
8. H. L. Mencken and Sara Haardt Mencken, Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters, ed. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1987), 38.
9. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “Echoes of the Jazz Age,” Scribner’s Magazine, November 1931, 459; and Mencken and Mencken, Mencken and Sara, 38.
10. Letters of Carl Van Vechten, ed. Bruce Kellner (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1987), 75.
11. Ibid.
12. AAK, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.
13. File “Koussie to friends—film,” SS, AP.
14. Based on Peter Prescott’s interviews of AAK’s friends, all of whom supported Pat’s accounts of going with him to hookers; and on author’s interview of Scotty Bowers, who procured women and men for AAK, January 31, 2013, AP.
15. Mary Ellis, Those Dancing Years: An Autobiography (London: J. Murray, 1982), 48; and Edwin-2, AP.
16. Bennett Cerf, At Random: The Reminisences of Bennett Cerf (New York: Random House, 1977), 55–56.
17. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers, Mencken: The American Iconoclast; The Life and Times of the Bad Boy of Baltimore (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 215, 288.
18. Terry Teachout, The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken (New York: Harper, 2002); and H. L. Mencken, A Religious Orgy in Tennessee: A Reporter’s Account of the Scopes Monkey Trial, introduction by Art Winslow (Hoboken, NJ: Melville House, 2006), xvi.
19. Death certificate for Bertha Wolf, June 3, 1925, file no. 15043, State of New York, Department of Health of the City of New York.
20. Ralph Colin, interviewed by Peter Prescott, September 25, 1992, AP.
21. Last Will and Testament of Bertha Wolf, by the legal firm Arnstein and Levy.
22. Ralph Colin, interviewed by Peter Prescott, September 25, 1992, AP.
23. Ibid.
24. Harding Lemay, Inside, Looking Out: A Personal Memoir by Harding Lemay (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1971), 241.
25. Julia Child, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, n.d., AP.
26. File “A & B,” 6, AP.
27. William Koshland, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, February 2, 1975, AP. “[Blanche] had moments of insecurity—professional—she could get very shaky when she got scared. Didn’t want Alfred to see [Koshland] was B’s man, so Alfred and Pat always cold to him.”
28. Francis Brown, interviewed by Susan Sheehan, April 26, 1975, AP.
7. HARLEM
1. Cecelia Garrard, “Man and His Wife Chief Officers in Publishing Firm,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 18, 1925, 11.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. John Tebbell, A History of Book Publishing in the United States
, vol. 3, The Golden Age Between Two Wars, 1920–1940 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1978), 129.
5. Arnold Rampersad, e-mail to the author, January 22, 2015.
6. Langston Hughes, The Big Sea: An Autobigraphy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1940), 272; and Langston Hughes, The Weary Blues (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926).
7. Ibid., xxvi, 26.
8. Untitled, 74, AP.
9. Amy Root Clements, The Art of Prestige: The Formative Years at Knopf, 1915–1929 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), 76.
10. AAK notes, 198, AP; “Folie de grandeur,” AP.
11. “London Office” (working notes), SS, AP.
12. Alice Payne Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers, 1895–1965 (New York: R. R. Bowker, 1967), 7.
13. The New York Times, February 28, 1926; and Literary Review, July 3, 1926.
14. AAK notes, 206, HRC.
15. Notes of Ralph Barton 1, A–G, March 13, 1926, AP.
16. Geoffrey Hellman, Mrs. de Peyster’s Parties, and Other Lively Studies from “The New Yorker” (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 312.
17. Published in 1927.
18. Clements, The Art of Prestige, 76.
19. Nathan Irvin Huggins, Harlem Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 100.
20. AAK notes, 28, AP.
21. Knopf–Mencken correspondence, May 25, 1926, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, H. L. Mencken Collection.
22. Edwin Clark, “Carl Van Vechten’s Novel of Harlem Negro Life,” The New York Times, August 22, 1926.
23. Van Vechten file 102ff, 111–12, HRC.
24. Emily Bernard, Carl Van Vechten and the Harlem Renaissance: A Portrait in Black and White (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 189, and quoting Czesław Miłosz.
25. Carl Van Vechten, Nigger Heaven (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926), book jacket.
26. Ibid., 46–47.
27. Bruce Kellner, Carl Van Vechten and the Irreverent Decades (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), 139; and Susan Hertog, Dangerous Ambition: Rebecca West and Dorothy Thompson; New Women in Search of Love and Power (New York: Ballantine Books, 2011), 13.
28. F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 304.
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