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IMPORTANT PEOPLE (339 pp.-Robert Van Gelder-Doubleday...
Almost two years ago, big, amiable Robert Harlan Van Gelder quit his job as editor of the New York Times Book Review to write his first novel. On the strength of his name, an opening chapter and an outline of what was to come, his publishers had given him an unprecedented advance of $20,000. For all of three days (a long life for that kind of gossip), it was the talk of the trade...
Author Van Gelder calls Important People "a kind of Currier & Ives of the current scene" and his publishers promise "a savage and deeply probing novel of the rich and frightening influential society of our time." He tells the story of Hero Dixon West, a rich kid but nice, who comes back from combat in the Pacific anxious to use his wealth constructively but not sure how to go about it. Grandfather West, crusty and conservative owner of a powerful chain of magazines, looks at first to Dixon like a threat to the good life, and finally seems like...
Editor Robert van Gelder in his book Writers and Writing (TIME, July 22) quotes Novelist [Sinclair] Lewis thusly...
...cases, including geniuses and college sophomores, enjoy the process; writers as a group have to drive themselves to it. As a group they have always been spiritual hypochondriacs, professional sufferers who manage -(frequently) to make a living out of their suffering. No one knows this better than Robert van Gelder, editor of the New York Times Book Review, who has interviewed dozens of authors during the past few years. About 90 of his interviews are now collected in Writers and Writing. Sample testimony...