Schiffrin, Andre 1935–

PERSONAL:

Born June 12, 1935, in Paris, France; son of Jacques (a publisher) and Simone Schiffrin; married Maria Elena de la Iglesia, 1961; children: Anya, Natalia. Education: Yale University, B.A. (summa cum laude), 1957; Cambridge University, M.A., 1959.

ADDRESSES:

Home—New York, NY. Office—The New Press, 450 W. 41st St., 6th Fl., New York, NY 10036; fax: 212-268-6349.

CAREER:

Writer, editor, and educator. New American Library, New York, NY, editor, 1959-63; Pantheon Books, New York, NY, editor, editor-in-chief, then managing director, 1962-90; Schocken Books (Pantheon subsidiary), publisher, 1987-90; the New Press, New York, NY, founder, and editor-in-chief, 1990—; visiting lecturer, Yale University, 1977 and 1979. Member, graduate faculty at New School University (visiting committee member, 1995—).

MEMBER:

New York Council for the Humanities, New York Civil Liberties Union, Smithsonian Institute Council, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Mellon fellow, 1957; Fulbright travel grant, 1958-59; Clare College, Cambridge, honors scholar, 1959; Poor Richard's Award, Small Press Center, 2000; Grinzane Cavour Prize, Italy, 2002, for distinguished accomplishments in publishing.

WRITINGS:

(Editor) The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History, New Press (New York, NY), 1997.

The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read, Verso (New York, NY), 2000.

A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York (memoir), Melville House Pub. (Hoboken, NJ), 2007.

Author of numerous articles published in Chronicle of Higher Education, New Republic, New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, Travel Holiday, and various international magazines. "The Corporatization of Publishing" appeared in the Nation. A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York has been published in French.

SIDELIGHTS:

Andre Schiffrin is a renowned publisher, social critic, and writer who cofounded the New Press, a not-for-profit organization, with Diane Wachtell in 1992. Previously, Schiffrin spent twenty-eight years as the managing director of Pantheon Books. Schiffrin published Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre, among numerous others. His forced resignation from Pantheon in 1990 received extensive attention from the literary community as well as the media. In March of 2000, the Small Press Center honored Schiffrin with the Poor Richard's Award. Schiffrin has taught at Yale University and at the New School University. He served on the boards of the New York Civil Liberties Union and the New York Council for the Humanities.

Jacques Schiffrin, Andre's father, introduced his son to the publishing industry. Jacques founded La Bibliotheque de la Pleiade in Paris and edited it at France's Editions Gallimard. Schiffrin's family fled France in 1941 during the Nazi occupation. After settling in New York, Jacques began working for Pantheon Books. Shortly after Pantheon's sale to Random House in 1961, Andre Schiffrin went to work for the firm. During its first years, Pantheon published European works such as The Tin Drum by Günter Grass and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Within one year, Schiffrin was promoted to editor-in-chief, and he was named managing director in 1969. During his term with Pantheon, Schiffrin was invited to Cuba, China, and numerous European countries to discuss the publishing situations in those countries.

In 1980 Pantheon was sold to S.I. Newhouse, owner of Conde Nast. In an apparent disagreement with C.E.O. Alberto Vitale over the profitability of Pantheon titles, Schiffrin resigned from Pantheon on March 15, 1990; eight other editors followed him. Approximately 350 writers, editors, and others protested the new leadership in front of Random House offices. Novelist Kurt Vonnegut was among them.

The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read is a memoir of Schiffrin's time at Pantheon and a critique of late twentieth-century publishing standards. A reviewer in the Economist wrote that Schiffrin "recounts the rise and fall of Pantheon, a small house specializing in literature and politics, which he joined in 1962 and ran until pushed out amid corporate manoeuverings in 1989." Most reviewers recognized that The Business of Books nobly confronts a publishing industry that has pushed aside diverse and worthy books for financially profitable memoirs by figures like Hillary Clinton and Ronald Reagan. A Business Week contributor stated that Schiffrin "gives forceful evidence that corporate insistence on higher profits has been cultural and business folly." A writer for Publishers Weekly called The Business of Books "a salutary and sensibly written reminder of the ideals that drew so many into publishing, and that, if he is right, are so seldom reflected in it today." The book went on to appear in fifteen editions worldwide.

Immediately after his resignation, Schiffrin began drafting plans with Diane Wachtell, also a former Pantheon editor, to open the New Press, a not-for-profit organization that would embody the publishing ideals they believed Pantheon and Random House had abandoned. Of the New Press, Schiffrin noted in Publishers Weekly: "The more we looked at the problems facing publishing today, the more we realized that what was needed was a different kind of structure…. We wanted an independent structure that couldn't be bought and sold and would put us in a position where not just ourselves but our successors would be able to publish the kinds of books that need to be published."

The New Press opened in 1992, receiving funding from thirteen grant foundations. Initial backers included the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. The City University of New York donated the Manhattan press's office space, and W.W. Norton distributed for the fledgling house. Unlike most houses, the New Press sought to publish educational materials. Schiffrin also chose to market his press nontraditionally by publicizing in libraries, community groups, and schools. The first list of publication had "a decidedly Pantheon-like tone of highbrow cultural and political analysis, popular culture and works aimed at a general but knowledgeable reader," according to a Publishers Weekly contributor. Schiffrin also voiced his intention to provide training opportunities through the New Press, especially for minorities.

The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History is a collection of essays edited by Schiffrin and published in 1997 by the New Press. Some of its writers include leftist intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky, Ira Katznelson, Richard Lewontin, David Montgomery, Immanuel Wallerstein, and Howard Zinn. Hanna Holborn Gray, in her article in Foreign Affairs, united these essayists by a common theme: "They tend to regard the university as an instrument of the power structures that control the world and one that perpetuates its oppressions and repressions. They believe that universities were complicit in the Cold War and that, while continuing to claim to be places of intellectual freedom, in reality they further a conservative agenda." On the other hand, Elaine Harger, writing in College & Research Libraries, found the book to be "an important, thoroughly engaging, and much-needed collection of essays on the influence of the Cold War on the growth and direction of higher education in the years following World War II." Reporting on the details of the essays, Harger noted, for example, that Ira Katznelson's essay is important, "not only for what it reveals about the Cold War and political science, but also for the opportunity it provides political activists today to understand the extent to which our ideas concerning politics, representative democracy, electoral activity, interest groups, and the—both real and imagined—roles and responsibilities of political players have been shaped by a class of intellectuals that mistrusts and fears ‘the people.’"

Schiffrin was inspired to write his 2007 memoir, A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York, while in Paris organizing the publication of his father's letters to writer André Gide. In an interview with Geeta Sharma-Jensen for Pop Matters, Schiffrin noted that he discovered that "there were a lot of things about my own past that I had not known," adding: "I had felt I was becoming completely American. But my parents hadn't felt like Americans. It was very hard on them. I also was discovering how they had kept things from me."

A Political Education recounts the author's life within the framework of his being divided between two destinies: one a life as an immigrant and American following his parents flight from Nazi persecution; the other his calling to his parent's European culture and way of thought. In his book, the author recounts how, during the publishing project of his father's letters, he discovers the deep despair that both his parents suffered due to their separation from a world of friends and culture that they loved. In contrast, the author, who grew up in America and assimilated American culture, ponders what might have been as he finds himself increasingly drawn to European thought and culture. According to New York Times Book Review contributor Matthew Price, in A Political Education the author "looks back on his early years and his abiding faith in socialist ideals." Schiffrin also presents in great depth his highly successful publishing career as well as other aspects of his life in America and Europe. "What does surprise is that Schiffrin, who mourns publishing as it once was but not his personal choices along the bookish way, now spends half of each year teaching, writing, and thinking in the Paris to which his father never returned," noted John Leonard in Harper's magazine.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Schiffrin, Andre, A Political Education: Coming of Age in Paris and New York, Melville House (Hoboken, NJ), 2007.

PERIODICALS

Biography, summer, 2007, Florence Noiville, "Allersretours Paris-New-York, Un Itineraire Politique [A Political Education]," p. 444.

Booklist, February 1, 1997, Mary Carroll, review of The Cold War and the University: Toward an Intellectual History, p. 911.

Business Week, September 18, 2000, "Reading Books Only for the Bottom Line," p. 30.

Chicago Tribune, January 14, 2001, "Inside the Book-Publishing Business."

Chronicle of Higher Education, June 23, 1993, Liz McMillen, "A Publisher Attempts to Fill the Niche between Commercial and Academic Publishing," p. A8.

College & Research Libraries, September, 1997, Elaine Harger, review of The Cold War and the University.

Economist, September 9, 2000, review of The Business of Books: How the International Conglomerates Took over Publishing and Changed the Way We Read, p. 105.

Foreign Affairs, March-April, 1997, Hanna Holborn Gray, "Cold War Universities: Tools of Power or Oases of Freedom," pp. 147-151.

Harper's, April, 2007, John Leonard, "New Books," p. 89.

Mother Jones, January-February, 1991, Tom Englehart, "Books You'll Never See," pp. 61-63.

Nation, April 24, 2000, "Publishing with Andre," p. 5; December 25, 2000, Daniel Simon, "Keepers of the Word," p. 25.

New Statesman, November 13, 2000, John Binias, review of The Business of Books, p. 56.

New York Times Book Review, August 26, 2007, Matthew Price, "Nonfiction Chronicle," review of A Political Education.

Publishers Weekly, March 9, 1990, Madalynne Reuter, "Schiffrin to Leave Pantheon Books," p. 10; March 16, 1990, Madalynne Reuter, "Protests Mount over Events at Pantheon," pp. 8-9; November 23, 1990, Michael Coffey, "Schiffrin Says ‘Corporatization’ Shrinks Book Trade Choices," p. 14; January 13, 1992, Calvin Reid, "Andre Schiffrin Returns, with New Ideas and a New Press," pp. 8-9; December 9, 1996, review of The Cold War and the University, p. 55; August 21, 2000, review of The Business of Books, p. 56; July 1, 2002, "Italian Praise," p. 10.

Times Higher Education Supplement, September 29, 2000, Lucy Heller, "The Business of Books," p. 25.

ONLINE

Campaign for America's Future,http://www.ourfuture.org/ (March 14, 2001), biography of Andre Schiffrin.

Democracy Now,http://www.democracynow.org/ (March 28, 2007), "Andre Schiffrin on 50 Years in Publishing World, from Corporate Consolidation to Founding Independent Non-profit."

French Book News,http://www.frenchbooknews.com/ (June 10, 2008), "Interview with André Schiffrin."

Pop Matters,http://www.popmatters.com/ (April 10, 2007), Geeta Sharma-Jensenm "An American Publisher Discovers Deep Down He's a European," interview with author.

Publishing Industry Network,http://publishing-industry.net/ (April 3, 2007), David Barsamian "The Business of Books: An Interview with Andre Schiffrin."