Robert Daniel Menaker (September 17, 1941 – October 26, 2020) was an American fiction writer and editor. He worked with the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton and as a consultant for

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 ...

Bookstores.

Personal life

Menaker was born in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

to Robert Menaker — son of a Russian Jewish immigrant — and Mary R. Grace, who was the chief copy editor at ''

Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...

'' magazine. He attended Little Red School House in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

and Nyack High School in

Rockland County, New York Rockland County is the southernmost county on the west side of the Hudson River in the U.S. state of New York. It is part of the New York metropolitan area. It is about from the Bronx at their closest points. The county's population, as of ...

, studied philosophy and poetry at

Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a private liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeducational colleges in the United States. It was established as ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, and obtained a

master's degree A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in English from

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

. Menaker's father was a communist who was additionally alleged to be a Soviet intelligence agent, and Menaker described himself as an

anarcho-syndicalist Anarcho-syndicalism is a political philosophy and anarchist school of thought that views revolutionary industrial unionism or syndicalism as a method for workers in capitalist society to gain control of an economy and thus control influence i ...

. Menaker married Katherine Bouton in 1980. They had two children: a daughter, Elizabeth, and a son, Will, who is a co-host of the podcast ''

Chapo Trap House ''Chapo Trap House'' is an American left-wing political podcast founded in March 2016 and hosted by Will Menaker, Matt Christman and Felix Biederman with Amber A'Lee Frost as a recurring co-host. The show is produced by Chris Wade and formerly by ...

''. Menaker died from pancreatic cancer on October 26, 2020, at his home in

New Marlborough, Massachusetts New Marlborough is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 1,528 at the 2020 census. New Marlborough consists of five villages: Clayton ...

Career

Menaker was a fiction editor at ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'' for twenty years and had material published in the magazine frequently. In 1995 he was hired by

Harold Evans Sir Harold Matthew Evans (28 June 192823 September 2020) was a British-American journalist and writer. In his career in his native Britain, he was editor of ''The Sunday Times'' from 1967 to 1981, and its sister title ''The Times'' for a year f ...

as Senior Literary Editor at

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

and later became Executive Editor-in-Chief, working with such writers as

Salman Rushdie Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (; born 19 June 1947) is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and ...

Colum McCann Colum McCann is an Irish writer of literary fiction. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in New York. He is a Thomas Hunter Writer in Residence at Hunter College, New York. McCann's work has been published in over 40 languages, and h ...

, Elizabeth Strout, and

Nassim Taleb Nassim Nicholas Taleb (; alternatively ''Nessim ''or'' Nissim''; born 12 September 1960) is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist whose work concerns problems of randomness, ...

. After leaving Random House in 2007, he became the host for a web-based book show called "Titlepage" in 2008.

Awards

*PEN/O. Henry Award for Short Fiction: "The Good Left" 1984 *PEN/O. Henry Award for Short Fiction: "The Good Left" 1982 *New York Times Notable Book: "The Treatment" 1998

Publications

*"The African Svelte: Ingenious Misspellings that Make Surprising Sense" - 2016 *"The Committee: The Story of the 1976 Union Drive at the New Yorker Magazine" - (article, audiobook) 2015 *"My Mistake: A Memoir" - 2013 *"A Good Talk: The Story and Skill of Conversation" - 2011 *"The Treatment" - 1998 *"The Old Left and Other Stories" - 1987 *"The Worst" (with Charles McGrath) - 1979 *"Friends and Relations: A Collection of Stories" - 1976

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Menaker, Daniel 1941 births 2020 deaths 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers 21st-century American male writers 21st-century American non-fiction writers American editors American male journalists American people of Russian-Jewish descent American short story writers Anarcho-syndicalists Deaths from cancer in Massachusetts Deaths from pancreatic cancer Johns Hopkins University alumni Journalists from New York City Little Red School House alumni Nyack High School alumni People from Manhattan Swarthmore College alumni The New Yorker people Writers from Manhattan