democracy.

♪ peter: charles scribner, author of this book, “scribners,", five generations in publishing. there are two towns in nebraska. what is their connection to your family's publisngistory? charles: the connection is mr. john blair w was the father in law of the first charles scribner, my great-great-grandfather and i think it is fair to say without him who built the railroad and

named two of the stops, one of them after his own family, blair, and the other nicely after his son-in-law family, if it weren't for him, i don't think i would be here talking with you because he kept the firm afloat during those difficult civil war years. as one historian, the archivist at the princeton university library did a nice three volume reference, illustrated history of the company, he put it simply at the beginning. he said if you're going to start a publishing company, it helps to have at the time one of the richest men in america is your father-in-law. my great-great-grandfather married the right girl i think is fair to say and he had a very helpful and devoted father-in-law whom he addressed in all of his letters as father. his father died when he was quite young. i think john blair of blair,

nebraska -- he sort of took the place. it was not just a financial boon . it was also a personal one. i might add that john blair probably is the only american in history to have the and donated -- tha built and donated 100 ures throughout the country. every railroad stop of his ilroad line and he owned more road track than anyone in history. up to 2 million acres of land in america to build those tracts and lines. every stop he believed should have a church. so he built a church. blair, nebraska, scribner, nebraska and so forth. peter: why did your great great grandfather charles scribner go into publishing in 1846?

why did he choose publhi? charles: i think the first answer is poor health. he originally started at new york university and transferred to princeton. they were a developed presbytery and family so i think he felt at home in princeton in those days. he was class of 1840. he originally read and studied the low. he wanted to be a lawyer, but he suffered from some sort of poor health afterwards. went to europe to recuperate and when he came back, he was told the law was to taxing a profession. he should find something a little less demanding on himself . and so he decided to start a publishing company instead. peter: where there enough american authors in 1846 to work with? charles: there were. we can think of nathaniel

hawthorne and edgar i. they were not scribner -- i growl and. they were not scribner authors. the main business of american publishers in those days was to publish additions for american readers of english novels. they could do so like pirates on the high seas because there was no such thing as an international copyright law. the son of the first charles scribner, my great-grandfather, he was very active in getting congress to pass an international copyright law to protect his authors royalties. and really to protect their copyrights in america. it was a free-for-all then. the founding scribner, he wanted to do something rather

different. he did not set up a printing plant. he did not get into it as a bookseller primarily. he wanted to publish new works by new authors and predominantly american authors. later on, they would have many famous english authors like rudyard kipling, robert louis stevenson and the most famous of all in our history, at least the one i am most proud of is winston churchill, but that was many decades later. his first book was a religious work called the puritans and their principles. you can imagine it was no bestseller, but he was very serious about his religious publishing. it was followed -- the clergyman who wrote it was their hometown clergyman.

the scribners originally came from norwalk, connecticut. the author of puritans and their principles was the clergyman from norwalk. the author of the first bestseller, the second clergyman that i mentioned was the reverend jt headley and he wrote to a two volume biography of napoleon -- around 19 -- i'm betraying my own life. 1850. it was a runaway bestseller. it went through many printings. how much historical accuracy there was -- don't know. it was an immensely popular biography at a time when a lot of americans think of this as a generation after napoleon's death. many americans were rather entranced by napoleon. they had little busts of him in

their offices. there was an interest in him at the time. peter: you write in your book of course nothing does more for a fledgling publishing house than its first bestseller. i might not be writing this account today we not for the big sale at thbenning of our hisry of a two volume work entled napoleon and his marshals by the reverend jt headley. all accounts, it was far from being a model of historil accuracy, but how many bestsellers are? more to the point, itatisfied a widespread interest among americans in napoleon a generation after his death. do you know why americans were so fascinated by napoleon at that time? knowing charles: i can only guest. i am not an american historian. america is the land of self-made

successes. is it not? as opposed to inherited titles from the former mother country, britain. napoleon has got to be one of the world's most spectacular self-made men. when you think of coming from the little island of elba and what he accomplished. he met with a set end but like so many people and even people in finance, he stretched a bit too far. in his case, russia. he was not only an enormous success story, but think of the napoleonic law code, reforms to european governments. he really was -- he was a great politician. a great self-made leader.

a great man of ideas. i think that is what appealed to american businessmen at the time . peter: you talk about your great-great-grandfather's innovations including subscription books, magazines, a dictionary series, the encyclopaedia britannica. these were unique at the time should charles: he was the first publisher to bring the encyclopaedia britannica to the united states. it was the ninth edition. it was a success. it sold four times as many copies as sold in the mother country. and it was such a success i think the britannica business in the u.k. said enough of this. if scribner can sell all these sets, the advertising department bragged that if they were all lined up end to end, each volume of the series, it would stretch

from new york city to beyond omaha, nebraska. that is an aspiring thought. they took the business under their own umbrella. from then on, encyclopaedia britannica has been published by itself in the united states. but at least we gave it the start. peter: you write in your book nepotism was a family business. how many charles scribners or scribners have been involved i over the generations? charles: i was the last to do it for a regular paycheck. i am the fifth in the line. no middle names. we are very unoriginal. very redundant. charles scribner. quite difficult in the book to write about these different generations without making them sound like kings. i say that because that last we

have a king charles the third. we had a charles the second. not we -- yes, we in america. he was our king too. usually i refer to him as my great-grandfather. it was a little awkward but my son charlie who is an environmentalist conservationist in birmingham, alabama keeping the drinking water for the city of birmingham clean by suing polluters, he as a college student worked summer jobs in the reference division of the company. you could say actually six charles scribners got to know the publishing company and contributed towards the books. the seventh is all of seven years old as we speak. it is too early to rule him in

or out. peter: when you look back at your ancestry, who really moved the company forward in your view? charles: i guess the founder has always got to be given first place. of any institution. but i would say largely as a function of longevity as much as anything else, it was his son, the second charles scribner. he took over the company at the ripe age of 25 because his elder brother who was named after the grandfather, john blair scribner, he took over at age 21. he did not graduate from princeton because his dad, the founder, died at age 50 of

typhoid fever in switzerland. he was on vacation to recuperate in switzerland. that left a 21-year-old -- he only world the company for seven years. he literally died of overwork. he was i think 28 years old. you have read the book more recently than i wrote it but i think he was 28 at the time he died. his younger brother charles who did graduate from princeton and had gone to work for the company all of a sudden at age 25 found himself in charge. that was to be a half-century at the home. -- the helm. he was the one who really launched so much. scribners magazine in 1887 which

had a 50 year run. it finally went out of business in 1939 but that is a pretty good run. it launched a lot of good writers. edith wharton, henry james, theodore roosevelt was a close friend of the second charles and a -- probably the most prolific president in our history in terms of his book output. he was a very active and productive scribner author. he also was a bit of an ego test. my great-grandfather was very fond of him. he used my great-grandfather as his eyes and years in the new york business community. at one point in one of roosevelt's books, his publisher had to send out to the foundry -- in those days, books were

pointed with lead type, it was all typeset. they had to send out for several hundred, maybe thousands of more capital letter i's because we did not have enough for roosevelt. roosevelt used it quite heavily. we owe him a huge debt in an area we later got into in a big way. that was children's books because my great-grandfather wanted to turn down the window in the willows, which came to him from england. president roosevelt said absolutely not. it is going to be a classic. you must publish it and we did. that was followed by peter pan, which also had a good long run and i think -- both books are still read today. peter: we are going to throughout this discussion look at some of the scribner authors throughout history. here is a couple. henry adams who wrote history of

the united states in 1889. edith wharton, her first book with the decoration of houses. it was a harvard philosopher named george santayana. robert louis stevenson. jm barrie. richard kipling -- rudyard kipling. edith wharton did not gain fame from the decoration of houses. charles: no, she did not but she liked to live in fancy houses. she was a terribly successful and wealthy author but she always outspent her royalties. finally i'm afraid was lured away from scribners because she was too much in debt from our advances. she was lured away to appleton. she wrote her early novels for scribner. the decoration of houses was co-authored with a man named

ogden cog did jr.. she had great taste. she wrote a book of italian villa was for example. she was an expert on european gardens. she is not primarily known for her decorating. she is known for her fiction. ethan from, which i read as a student. it was assigned reading when i was a high school student. peter: i wanted to ask you about george santayana, the harvard philosopher. he was quite well known in his day. charles: very well-known. i wish i could know as much about them as i should, but i must say i am not terribly well versed in his books, but he was probably the most successful --

what do we call it? crossover artist? he was a very prominent philosophy professor at harvard, but he also wrote some best-selling fiction. peter: mr. scribner, as a profession, your an art historian. what exactly did you do at scribners publishing and why did you choose art as a profession? charles: i chose art history as may major in princeton and stayed on to do my phd for a very simple reason. i always thought coming from my background and the family influence i was destined to be an english major. i was a very slow reader. the amount of pages assigned by the princeton english department except for my favorite course which was shakespeare, that was not so bad. plays have to be rather concise

because they have to be performed within three hours or so. most of the english classes had huge reading lists. i was interested in history via kenneth clarke's wonderful series on pbs. i guess my sophomore year or the beginning of princeton. cold civilization -- called civilization. i took a course in medieval art and i was hooked. i thought this is the way i want to learn history. through the images. i would rather study the images, the architecture, the paintings, the sculpture, the manuscript illuminations and leave the long reading assignments to others. i was not an artsy type. i am not an artist myself, but i thought art as a mirror of

history. i really got that through in the clark's soup -- through kenneth clark's civilization. that is the way i wanted to study history and i loved every minute of it. the book i wrote just before this one was a distillation of 50 years of study. it was called sacred music, a preface to christian art and music. her short. you can be read -- very short. can you be read in 40 minutes. why is it so short with such a broad subject? because i was in florida for vacation for two months with my wife and i did not have a project. i only had my iphone. if you want to guarantee a book be short like the old man and the sea right it on your iphone. digit by digit. peter: you have written books on bernini, paul reubens and others including the triumph of the eucharist. religion plays a theme throughout your history. charles: it does.

it is a theme throughout scribner's history. it started as a religious publishing house, but it did not give it up. in the 20th century, it really broadened -- in the 19th century, the greatest reference project was massive. i cannot remember how many volumes. huge. biblical commentary. it was by a german protestant theologian and it was a multi volume commentary on the bible that scribners in partnership with a scottish firm published. and it took decades. i cannot imagine such a project being done today when publishing houses are owned by public corporations. the shareholders would not have the patience or endurance to wait that long.

that was one advantage of being a family company back then. one could take on very long projects. in the 20th century, we published the great german theologians paul tillich, i suppose the most famous to her audience here would be the theologian reinhold newport who is still widely read today and wrote a great deal about politics and religion. the great jewish mystical theologian martin blubaugh. the catholic theologian jock ameritech. even bishop sheehan who is up for canonization. we may be the only publisher who has an author who is being considered for sainthood. and so forth.

i don't want to be listing lists. peter: we do have a strong episcopalian presbyterian background but you right that catholicism is your chosen faith. charles: i was raised in the episcopal church and at princeton became a roman catholic. i think that probably fed into my love of art history because my specialty was the renaissance and baroque. i did -- might dissertation was called the triumph of the eucharist. which was a great church commissioned by rubens. the largest tapestry commissioned in history. i followed that with bernini who really transformed rome under his bosses, several popes. it is the room we see today. -- the rome we see today. those two went hand in hand. catholicism and the specialty in these baroque artists.

i still remain very close to my family church. my episcopal roots. i am born a gemini and they are branches of the same religion. my wife is episcopalian. my son who is in birmingham is a develop is cappelli appeared younger son who is in the army as a captain, he just got married this past summer in the georgetown catholic chapel. we like to think we bridge those two branches. peter: from your book scribners five generations in publishing, from the chapterntled great scott. there is something magical about fitzgerald you write. much has been written and dramated about the jazz age personas of scott and zelda, but

the mac lies embedded in the pros and reveals itself in his amazing range and versatilit he is my literary candidate to stand beside the demigods bernini, rubens and mozart as artists of divine transfiguration. that is a pretty strong statement. charles: it is, but i think fitzgerald was at heart a poet. he wrote pros, -- he wrote a little bit of poetry when he was at princeton and some of them is in his first novel this side of paradise. what i think his love of language, of imagery -- think of all the different light imagery in the great gatsby. from the green light at daisy's dock to the kind of alights at coney island to the parties of gatsby he describes. gatsby's house lit up like a christmas tree.

but it goes back further than that for me personally because even though i was the fifth scribner -- the fifth generation to go to princeton. i had known it since my childhood being taken to football games by my dad i was not at home my freshman year my first term. it felt big and impersonal and these were the vietnam war years. there was a lot going on. i did not feel at home. i went home a lot for weekends and even during the middle of the week. for dinner i would go home. it was not until i read this side of paradise by fitzgerald that he literally transfigured my vision of the princeton campus. he gave it i think i said a soul , a spirits.

he gave it a magic and it stuck with me ever since. i stayed on for two more degrees . so never underestimate the power of pros or the power of a novelist. the power of fiction. i think oscar wilde got it right. life imitates art. not the other way around. peter: how did scribner get connected with fitzgerald? going to charles: thanks to a very patient, determined and brilliant young editor from harvard i might stress. not all came from princeton. maxwell perkins. i think the next chapter is called editor maximus because he was probably the most famous editor of the 20th century. maxwell perkins. he got fitzgerald's manuscript.

it was sent to him on recommendation of another author, shane leslie. fitzgerald at the time was in the army. he had left princeton before graduation. actually he flunked out. he flunked chemistry. it was called a romantic egotist . my great-grandfather turned it down and perkins kept working with fitzgerald and fitzgerald kept rewriting it. fitzgerald was a great rewriter. he was like a sculptor like bernini. he would polish, polish until it finally had the form that satisfied him. the second time it was turned down. but perkins did not give up and other did fitzgerald. the third time it was submitted, he gave it a very poetic title, this side of paradise, which comes from the beloved british poet rupert brooke.

that was published to great acclaim and launched fitzgerald's fame as a very young writer. peter: was the great gatsby a success immediately? you write in your book more copies are sold today every two weeks then the cumulative total in fitzgerald's lifetime. that is a pretty astounding figure. charles: yes, it is tragic. it got some very good reviews. there were writers who saw its genius. among them the scribner author marjorie canning rawlings. i think hemingway admired it. hemingway came to scribners thanks to fitzgerald. fitzgerald if nothing else served as a scout for ernest hemingway in paris.

it got some good reviews. it got some poor reviews too. it sold ok but it was not a great bestseller. the irony is that it was adapted to a play for broadway by owen davis the next year and it was a hit on broadway. think about it. it was made into a silent film which has been lost except for a small clip you can see on youtube. from a little remnant of the silent film. fast-forward post-world war ii, no fewer than four major hollywood films have been made of the great gatsby. when fitzgerald died -- very young. he was 43 in 1940. he left behind in our warehouse on 43rd street copies of the 1925 printing of the great

gatsby. it never was out-of-print. the truth is even sadder. the copies were there in our warehouse. nobody was ordering them. it was world war ii and the program of sending paperbacks for free to our gis -- in this case the great gatsby was sent to the gis at the end of the war when they were occupying germany. the great fitzgerald scholar, the late matthew brickley estimated the copies changed hands because a soldier would read it and it would pass on to another soldier. it probably got a million new readers of the next generation. the world war ii generation. not fitzgerald's generation. after the war, that is when its apotheosis took off. it gained sales and became

assigned reading in school. . it was when i was in high school. it went into paperback. the movie came out. i think it was 1949. it starred alan ladd as gatsby. it was going gangbusters by the time i came into scribners the year after the robert redford mia farrow film was made in 1974. that is probably up until the latest one with leonardo dicaprio was the most famous. designed by ralph lauren. it really gave him his start too. we were selling mainly to the schools. to students to read in class. about a quarter of a million copies a year. there were many sold abroad in translation. the english-language editions abroad. by the time i left scribners, 30

years later, the sales had doubled. i think it sells now in america alone half a million copies a year. amazing. peter: does scribners through whatever machination still get revenue from the sale of fitzgerald's book yet underlie -- fitzgerald's book? charles: yes, to the philly members. -- the family members. i worked with his only child, his daughter scotty. who was a delight at a talented person herself. she run introductions to her ther's book. she inherited some of his talent. and zelda for all of her crazines was very gifted as an artist with sort of surrealist pictures and she wrote too. i think fitzgerald helped her a

bit but in the 90's, professor brickley by commission put together the collected writings of zelda fitzgerald and they are not bad. they are not mozart. they are more salieri but they are good. the grandchildren now are the generation that are alive and still getting some royalties. these books and the main one which made the bulk of the world peace is now in the public domain. if you look on amazon, there are probably dozens of additions -- dozens of editions. some quite corrupt and others more faithful. sadly on those, the heirs get nothing. peter: why is that? why did that most recently happened?

charles: it would have happened a good deal earlier. the original copyright law when i came to work at the ripe age of 24 in 1975 -- the length of copyright was 56 years after publication so help me. 56 years. it would've been 1925 and 56 would be -- peter: 81. charles: the year my son charlie was born. that would have been a happy year and a sad year. sad for us because we would have lost all publishing profits. happy because of the birth of our son. congress and we can thank mickey mouse for this. congress with the strong lobbying of the disney company extended the copyright law for another 19 years i think.

and then -- now my math is bad, but with the lobbying of disney that did not want to see mickey mouse and donald duck go into the public domain, it was extended i think another 10. anyway, it went into the public domain just shy of its 100th birthday. i think -- 2021 or 2022 thereabouts. peter:peter: some more scribner authors we want to note benito mussolini peed winston churchill. leon trotsky. thomas wolfe. marjorie rawlings of the yearling fame. a woman named marsha davenport. charles lindbergh who according to one of the earlier scribners said he was the fussy as to author he ever had to deal with. james jones who wrote from here

to eternity. and clarence darrow. i want to ask you about marsha davenport. she was a pretty well-known novelist in her day. charles: i think i have probably written more about marcia devon poor in this book because i was immensely fond of her and really wanted to get another novel out of her. i never did but i was very fond of her in her later years. i met her when i was a teenager briefly. but got to know her i think the year she turned 75 and i was traveling back and forth to the west coast that year. she was living in carmel, california. i had read during that time because i was very close to a metropolitan opera singer i met. great soprano mary costa i had met before. mary had mentioned to me she had

been approached earlier in life to star in a movie of a book called alina geyer. she said your family published it should it was by marsha davenport. indeed we had. i had not read it. so i immediately read it because i was a huge opera fan. it absolutely hooked me. i think to this day, it is the finest book written about the world of opera. it is written as a novel, but it draws heavily from her own experience of being the daughter of a very famous in her day metropolitan opera singer. one of the first artists to sell a million copies of a record. that got me dressed in marsha davenport and then -- got me

interested in marsha davenport and then i decided i'm going to read all of her novels. i read all of her novels and her autobiography. one of the surprises in writing a book is -- novelist say they don't know what is going to happen to a character until they start writing should i thought i knew what i would be writing about in this history because i had lived a lot of it and i had heard most of it through my father. but i did not foresee that i would be getting as much attention to marsha davenport as to say you wharton or ernest hemingway. she deserved it. i'm so glad. it pleases me when friends say i have ordered a copy of her novel eastside west side where the valley of decision from amazon. that pleases me because if some people discover forgotten authors through this book, i

think that is a nice added dividend. peter: mussolini and churchill. how did those two become scribner authors yet conan went charles: i'm happy to say churchill was the firm report and author -- the far more important author. he was the only of the two who actually wrote his books. the mussolini book was a bit of a fraud. it was published in the late 20's before all the horrors of the nazis and so forth leading up to world war ii. american businessmen were sort of fascinated with him. what was the old saying? he got the trains running on time. our ambassador to rome interviewed him and he was the writer of the book. mussolini gave a lot of rviews. it was based on his stories, but he did not write it.

churchill was the author of his own books and probably one of the finest authors who ever lived in terms of historical writing. i did discover in writing this book that our ambassador -- his name was child. he wrote the forward to the book. my father told me when i found the book on the shelf in the library, i think dad would have been happier if i had not discovered it. he was not immensely proud of that book in our history. but we did published three years later the famous communist bolshevik leon trotsky. we were balanced i guess you could say. i did find out the ghostwriter was a young italian luigi barzini jr. who after the war came to america and wrote a

best-selling book in the mid 60's that really explained italian culture to americans. it was called the italians. so think of it should back in the 1920's, he was ghost writing mussolini's autobiography. the amusing thing about the biography and that struck me, it still had its jacket. on the jacket was script presumably in mussolini's own hand and it said there is no other autobiography by me, benito mussolini. and i thought he doth protest too much. peter: scribner advances kept winston churchill solid financially during his years in the desert or in the wilderness. charles: yes, when he was out of office. th is true. he really earn his livelihood

and it was an expeive livelihood. i think i mentioned the multivolume set of the history of world war i called the world crisis with the advance he got on that -- he bought a rolls-royce. it helped with the expenses of his country house. we did not earn out those advances. in today's dollars, we advanced churchill millions of dollars over the years. history of world war i did well. the book i am most enthralled with is his early memoir called my early life, a roving commission which was assigned reading. my ninth grade year, third form year at st. paul's school. it is one of the most wonderful

memoirs of an early childhood. his grandfather was the duke of mowbray. he did not earn out those advances so after the war, he sought fresh money and for his huge successes, the history of world war ii. the history of the english-speaking people. he went to another publisher. but i took solace in the fact a book that would hardly have been a bestseller -- it was a multivolume biography of his ancestor, the first duke of moberg, john turturro who won the battle of blenheim after which he was given a palace. churchill was born there. i looked back and i thought, we did not earn our advances back

but they were good books. they were well reviewed. most important, they kept this great man -- i would argue perhaps the greatest men of the 20th century -- that kept him afloat so that he was ready to assume the prime minister ship and become perhaps the greatest war leader who ever lived. i may have exaggerated but i do feel on some level it is true to say churchill helped win a world war with words. it was his eloquence that kept the british fighting and not giving up. not bad to have him in the history of our authors. peter: this is not charles scribner's first time on c-span. he appeared in 1999 on a panel. we want to show you a little bit of video. >> i do recall vividly the day he died.

it was coming over on the transistor radio. i remember it as vividly as the announcement of president kennedy being shot a couple years later. that is how important a role hemingway played in our family. and indeed the publishing company. we are a little over 150 years old. half of that history has been publishing without stop the works of ernest hemingway. they have never gone out of print. it is 75 years. without question in the 150 years, he is the most important writer the scribner's ever published. by many including robert louis stevenson, henry james, f scott fitzgerald. there were some others too. i think without question the towering figure of the 20th century. he is the picasso of american literature. peter: july 2, 1961. where were you yet conan might charles: july 2, in 601i was in new jersey playing ball with

my two young brothers. i remember over the transistor radio the announcement, sudden announcement that ernest hemingway had shot himself and was dead. it was just like hearing two years later in 1960 three a similar announcement over the lospeaker in our school room in new york at buckley school. hemingway with such a towering name in our family. my father was his last publisher. and was close to him. not a best friend like his own father, my grandfather had been. they really were riends. my fhewas a generation younger. he was his publisher during the difficult years of the 1950's when hemingway's health was beginning to fail. the poor man survived two near fatal plane crashes in africa.

he had a lot of challenges. but i tell the story and again, my father used to say to me writing is a heuristic experience. what he meant by that -- a greek word -- you make discoveries you are not aware of when you actually set them down on a page in writing. the discovery i made was a conclusion that had never been mentioned by my dad. he told a story that toward the end of hemingway's life, hemingway and trusted his handwritten last will to him. it was in a valise. hemingway was renting an apartment half a mile up fifth avenue from scribner's. he said lock it in your office safe. don't lose it.

it contains my will. the next day, he appeared unannounced at the office pretending to look up something in the valise. my dad immediately realized hemingway just wanted to make sure dead had not lost it -- or dad had not lost it. i suspect hemingway remit with the lost suitcase under the paris train station that had all of his manuscripts his first wife had lost. that had not lost it -- dad had not lost it. within a couple years hemingway was dead. my dad called up his lawyer who had been serving as his agent. and said i have got ernest hemingway's will here in the office. it was news to hemingway's lawyer. he did not know about it. he said i never heard about that. dad said i have got it in my hand. maybe you ought to come over.

he said i will be over right away. we may have to destroy it. you can imagine the bills that went off in my dad's inner ears and he thought i am not going to be party to a felony. he called up his lawyer. a publishing where. he arrived. the two lawyers arrived. they each held a corner of the will. it all turned out fine. rice heaved a sigh of relief and said he has left everything to his widow. rice would remain in charge as mary's lawyer. everything was fine. that was a dramatic story by dad had told me and i knew the story. what had not occurred to me until i put it down at the end of the chapter was the conclusion that dad never mentioned. i don't think he mentioned to anyone. perhaps he did not give it much thought himself. he was a very modest man despite

all his great intellectual and scholarly talents. the conclusion was this. hemingway had entrusted his will, a handwritten will not to his own lawyer who negotiated all his own contracts, took care of all his legal matters. not to a close member of the family. who did he entrust it to? he entrusted it to his young publisher who was just about 40 years old at the time. i thought, that speaks volumes about the relationship between hemingway and the sun of his best friend and publisher. the third charles scribner. peter: here is a little bit from ernest hemingway's leer to your father on e ath of your grandfather. i wl t try to write to you how much he met to me as a friend and as a publisher.

he was the best and closest friend i had and it seems impossible that i will never have another letter from him. it does not do any good to talk about it and there is nothing to say that makes it any easier. since he had to die, at least he has gotten it over with. there is a little bit of humor in their relationship. charles: that is classic hemingway. since he had to die at least he has gotten over it but then the letter goes on to say and my dad at the time -- i was an infant in washington. my dad had been called back to duty as a crypt analyst breaking naval foreign codes, enemy codes during the korean war as he had during world war ii. he had to commute one day a week back and forth to new york to the office because he was now in charge. hemingway went on in that letter in the most reassuring,

affectionate and thoughtful way. it was a side of hemingway the caricatures don't capture. the tough macho bully. no, he was extremely sensitive and thoughtful. he reassured my dad. he said he will never have to worry about my loyalty. you will never have to worry about my finances. you have so much with the navy and the house of scribner and the estate to manage. don't worry about me. at the end, he wrote a typical hemingway postscript. he said ps, don't know your reg so address this as a civilian -- your rank so address this as a civilian. peter: don delillo, salman rushdie, hillary clinton,

stephen king, jasmine ward. who owns scribner's now? charles: those names you have just mentioned really belong to the current administration post family ownership. we can take no credit for those. did you begin with reinhold niebuhr? the current ones. they belong to the current administration which is headed by nanogram. it is an imprint of simon & schuster which has just been bought by henry kravis organization. ironically, kravis together with the administration of mac millan, which my dad and i had orchestrated a very friendly and desired merger of scribner's

into mcmillan to give it a solid foundation in the 80's, it was bought by this pirate robert maxwell. he went overboard on his yacht three years later. henry kravis's company and the management of mcmillan, they lost out on that bidding. that was 1888 -- 18, please. 1988. here we are 35 years later. kravis's company buys not only scribner's and the mcmillan titles which are part of scribner but all of simon & schuster. which is where mcmillan and scribner ended up after maxwell went into bankruptcy. in his assets were sold. you just got to hang in there. history has a way of coming around. peter: any family connection

anymore to scribner's? charles: none. peter: we have one minute left. utility trick and story about the artwork on the front -- you tell an interesting story about the artwork on the front of your book. charles: the pastel. i would say the prime example of nepotism being a family is in this as well as publishing. that location, the famous one people today of a certain age will remember buying books in the scribner bookstore office on 48th and fifth. the building still stands. it is a new york landmark. our name is still on it because the name was in brick on the side and landmarks, anything you change -- landmarks will not let anything be changed. back in 1983, i saw this artist. very talented artist. he used to do the christmas cards for bush 41, for the white

house. very talented artist namely of buildings and landscapes. he had his easel setup right outside. it was my lunch break. i saw him doing a pastel of the building. i said i have got to buy this. i think he was just doing it for his own enjoyment and on spec. i bought the pastel, kept it at home and years later -- 40 years later, it is now on the cover of my book. i could not imagine a nicer image. i say family nepotism because the architect was my father's great uncle. ernest flag who is most famous perhaps today for designing the buildings at annapolis but he also did the scribner buildings. he once did -- it is torn down -- the tallest building in the world for one shining moment. the singer sewing machine tower

in lower manhattan. that was torn down i think in -- the late 1960's. once the tallest building in the world for a few moments. i'm so glad you mentioned that pastel because i was very fond of camille kubik. i later commissioned him to do a beautiful pastel of my family, my childhood church saint bartholomew's, now a national landmark on park avenue a few blocks away where my dad had been senior warden. peter: charles goodner the third is the author of this book, scribners, five generations in publishing. we appreciate you spending the last hour with us on c-span. charles: thank you so much. it has been such a treat to indulge in all of those happy memories with you. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2024] ♪

>> all q programs are available on our website or as a podcast on our c-span now app. now, i'm so pleased to introduce tonight's speakers is a professor of mathematics and, the director of the institute for math, genetics and democracy at wellesley college. his work has appeared in the hill condescend to you and education week. he is joined conversation tonight by andrew schultz. andrew is a professor