Theodore "Ted" Solotaroff (October 9, 1928 – August 8, 2008) was an American writer, editor and literary critic.

Life and career

Born into a working-class Jewish family in

Elizabeth, New Jersey Elizabeth is a city and the county seat of Union County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.New J ...

, Solotaroff attended the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

, graduating in 1952, and did graduate work at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

, where he became friends with

Philip Roth Philip Milton Roth (March 19, 1933 – May 22, 2018) was an American novelist and short story writer. Roth's fiction—often set in his birthplace of Newark, New Jersey—is known for its intensely autobiographical character, for philosophicall ...

and dedicated himself to literature. He was an editor at ''

Commentary Commentary or commentaries may refer to: Publications * ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee * Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...

'' from 1960 to 1966, then in 1967 founded '' The New American Review'', which was an influential literary journal in paperback, not magazine, format for the decade of its existence. After it folded, he became an editor at

Harper & Row Harper is an American publishing house, the flagship imprint of global publisher HarperCollins based in New York City. History J. & J. Harper (1817–1833) James Harper and his brother John, printers by training, started their book publishin ...

, where he edited works by

Russell Banks Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usua ...

, Sue Miller,

Robert Bly Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement. His best-known prose book is '' Iron John: A Book About Men'' (1990), which spent 62 weeks on ' ...

Bobbie Ann Mason Bobbie Ann Mason (born May 1, 1940) is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and literary critic from Kentucky. Her memoir was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Early life and education A child of Wilburn and Christina Mason, Bobb ...

, and others. "In 1989, when

Rupert Murdoch Keith Rupert Murdoch ( ; born 11 March 1931) is an Australian-born American business magnate. Through his company News Corp, he is the owner of hundreds of local, national, and international publishing outlets around the world, including ...

bought

, Solotaroff began to do less editing and more writing. He left the book business with a parting shot at what he labeled 'the literary-industrial complex.'"Joe Holle
Obituary
latimes.com; accessed November 10, 2014. He said of the effect of the 1960s on him and his work:

e market for serious writing cracked open in the Sixties and soon became a kind of howling forum where all manners of ideas, styles and standards contended for attention. As the literary climate altered radically, there was a distinct shift among writers and editors from a preoccupation with values as the ground of experience to a preoccupation with experience as the ground of values—a shift that was, of course, to be felt everywhere in America as the decade of opposition and revision careened along. For those, like myself, who entered the Sixties wedded to their values, the more or less standard ones of academic liberalism and humanism, but quite out of touch with their own experience, this breaking of the ice was alternately exhilarating and dismaying: one felt stirred but also swamped.

Death

He died at his home in

East Quogue, New York East Quogue is a hamlet and census-designated place (CDP) in the Town of Southampton in Suffolk County, on Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 4,757 at the 2010 census. History East Quogue originally settled in 1673 a ...

from complications from

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severity ...

, aged 79. He was survived by his fourth wife (of 28 years), Virginia Heiserman Solotaroff, as well as four sons, and his brother, Robert.

Awards

*1999 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir for ''Truth Comes in Blows''

Bibliography

* * * *

References

External links