An Unhinged History of American Publishing, Episode 2: W.W. Norton, or: a Song of Wonder and Ghosts

Fly high, you craggy old seagull. You're the most beautiful thing in the sky.

This is the second installment in my Unhinged History of American Publishing. (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read my series preamble here.)

This week, we’re covering W.W. Norton, last of the great independent midsize publishers.

We’re doing this mainly because I went to Norton’s 100th birthday party last week and am still ridin’ that bonhomie tsunami.

I’m going to be up front with you here and admit I have a big boner for Norton.

It’s 70% rational and 30% not. They just happen to ring their classy little mallet on every bar of my heart’s glockenspiel:

• They (or more specifically Tom Mayer, their executive editor and one of my oldest industry friends) bought the first book I ever sold

• That book became an instant New York Times bestseller

• They’ve bought seven more books from various clients since and done a great job publishing each (aside from the one that hasn’t come out yet, but I have faith)

• They also published my favorite novel—one that kind of derailed my life, in a good way

There are also some wonderful things about the company that AREN’T about me.

(I know - what? How?)

Look, pobody’s nerfect. Like all big publishers, Norton’s hit the odd deer on its journey down the road of American letters.

Yes, and: on the whole, as far as I know, they’ve hit fewer deer than most, and they haven’t ever tried to pull a hit and run. Metaphorically.

Sigh. I love them. I LOVE them, okay? It’s just…their vibes. My heart.

Walk with me, and I’ll show you what I mean.

*

We begin with a love story.

To quote the classic “Sk8er Boi” by Avril Lavigne: She was a 29-year-old violinist and German literature stan, educated at home in the whole-ass microbiology lab her scientist father installed in the rafters of the family’s Manhattan brownstone.

He was 31 years old, educated at St. Paul’s, mustachioed and almost manic to learn about the world through reading and travel, latest in a long line of genteel conservationists and Quakers.

They were also both Old Money.

🎶 CAN I BE ANY MORE OBVIOUS? 🎶

According to W. Drake McFeely—former president of W.W. Norton and author of the just-published Books That Live, a history of the company and my source for basically this whole newsletter—no one knows exactly how William Warder Norton and Margaret “Polly” Dows Herter met. By 1922, however, they were happily married, reveling with a large group of friends in the intellectual life of 1920s New York.

There hasn’t exactly ever been a bad time to be a curious, attractive, brilliant, besotted, open-minded old-money white couple in Manhattan. Still: even by that standard, life for the Nortons at that time was pretty effing sweet.