Jonathan Galassi
Jonathan Galassi
Jonathan Galassi born 1949 in Seattle, Washington, is the President and Publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, one of the eight major publishers in New York. He began his publishing career at Houghton Mifflin in Boston, moved to Random House in New York, and finally, to Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He joined FSG as executive editor in 1985, after being fired from Random House. Two years later, he was named editor-in-chief, and is now President and Publisher...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPublisher
CountryUnited States of America
gather italian mainly nearly poet published slow starter though work
I was nearly 40 when I published my first book. I was a slow starter - or rather, I was slow to gather my work together, though I had published translations, mainly of the Italian poet Montale, by then.
acts authors biggest concern force market
My biggest concern about the market is the force that acts to drive down price, because I think that's destructive to authors as well as publishers. Our biggest battle is to underline the value of intellectual property.
deal poetry
I think poetry was always where I went to deal with my deepest feelings.
except poetry
I think poetry should be read very much like prose, except that the line breaks should be acknowledged somehow.
books finding helping publishers work writers
I think publishers need to be the ones that publish the books and control that process: finding writers, helping them with their work, finding readers. I think writers need that.
published
John Updike's first published book was a collection of poems.
authors books both bounce deal dealing foreign foreigners people talking time visit work
I deal with the authors I work with, agents, and other departments of the company, talking about both the books that I'm working on and everyone else's. Then there's dealing with foreign publishers: foreigners visit all the time. People want to bounce things off the publisher, and a lot of it is encouragement.
analyse dig evoke poetry state trying
Poetry is really about your mental state or intellectual, and where you are, and you're trying to evoke that, explain it to yourself, whatever, you're trying to dig into it, analyse yourself.
art mainstream neither particular poetry serious
Poetry is not mainstream, but then neither is serious fiction, really. But I don't think there's a lot to worry about in this particular 'problem'. Why does art have to be mainstream to be significant?
endlessly gets life poems renewable whatever
Poems are endlessly renewable resources. Whatever you bring to them, at whatever stage of life, gets mirrored back, refracted, reread in new ways.
author decide intense noticed younger
One thing I have noticed is that when you're a younger editor, you're more intense about it. As you go along, you relax a little. More and more, I feel that the book is the author's. You give the author your thoughts, and it's up to him or her to decide what to do.
endlessly
I feel that there is not an endlessly expandable universe of fiction readers.
The only thing you can really say in a poem is what you really, really deeply believe.
That's one thing about fiction: you can make the world be the way you think it should be.