Robert B. Silvers
Robert Benjamin Silvers (December 31, 1929 – March 20, 2017) was an American editor who served as editor of The New York Review of Books from 1963 to 2017.
"Robert Silvers" redirects here. For the American lawyer and government official, see Robert P. Silvers. For the photomosaic artist Robert Silvers, see Photographic mosaic.
Robert B. Silvers
Raised on Long Island, New York, Silvers graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947 and attended Yale Law School, but he left before graduating and worked as press secretary to Chester Bowles in 1950. He was sent by the U.S. Army to Paris in 1952 as a speechwriter and press aide, while finishing his education at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po. He soon joined The Paris Review as an editor under the guidance of George Plimpton. From 1959 to 1963, he was an associate editor of Harper's Magazine in New York.
Silvers was co-editor of The New York Review of Books with Barbara Epstein for 43 years, until she died in 2006, and was the sole editor of the paper after that until his own death in 2017. Philip Marino of Liveright Publishing wrote of him: "Like a chemist pairing ingredients to induce a specific reaction, Silvers has built his career matching the right author and subject, in hopes of generating an exciting and illuminating result."[1] Silvers edited or co-edited several essay anthologies. He appeared prominently in the 2014 documentary film about the Review, The 50 Year Argument.
Silvers' awards and honorary degrees include the National Book Foundation's Literarian Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Award for "Distinguished Service to the Arts", the Ivan Sandrof Award for Lifetime Achievement in Publishing and a National Humanities Medal. Among other honors, he was a Chevalier of the French Légion d’honneur and a member of the French Ordre National du Mérite.
Legacy[edit]
At the time of his death, Silvers left the Review with a circulation of more than 130,000,[53] its book publishing operations, and a reputation as "the country’s best and most influential literary journal. ... It's hard to imagine that Hardwick ... would complain today that book reviewing is too polite."[50] The 50 Year Argument, a 2014 documentary film about the Review, co-directed by Martin Scorsese,[54] is "'[a]nchored by the old-world charm' of its editor, Robert Silvers".[55][56] Silvers appeared in other documentary films: Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself (2013),[57] Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold (2017)[58] and Oliver Sacks: His Own Life (2019).[59]
In 2019, Silvers' estate created the Robert B. Silvers Foundation to support writers of in-depth political, social, economic, and scientific commentary, long-form arts and literary criticism, and intellectual essays. Daniel Mendelsohn is the foundation's director, and Rea Hederman is its president. It awards annual prizes, called the Silvers-Dudley Prizes, recognizing outstanding writing, including the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Journalism; the Robert B. Silvers Prize for Criticism; and the Grace Dudley Prize for Writing on European Culture. Prizes are in the amounts of $30,000 each for writers over 40, and $15,000 each for those under 40.[60][61] The first prizes were awarded in 2022.[62][63]
Besides serving as a trustee of the New York Public Library, Silvers was "personally, and very discreetly, involved in the struggle to keep neighbourhood libraries open in the poorest precincts of New York."[2] The annual Robert B. Silvers lectures at the New York Public Library were established by Max Palevsky in 2002 and are given by experts in the fields of "literature, the arts, politics, economics, history, and the sciences."[64][65] The event has included lectures given by Joan Didion, J. M. Coetzee, Ian Buruma, Michael Kimmelman, Daniel Mendelsohn, Nicholas Kristof, Zadie Smith, Oliver Sacks, Derek Walcott, Mary Beard, Darryl Pinckney,[64] Lorrie Moore,[66] Joyce Carol Oates,[67] Helen Vendler,[68] Paul Krugman,[69] Masha Gessen,[70] Alma Guillermoprieto,[71] Mark Danner,[72] Sherrilyn Ifill,[73] and Justice Stephen Breyer.[74]