Middlewomen: Laura McGrath on the 25 People Who Control American Fiction

**Andrew Keen** (0:00)
Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.
Hello, everybody. At the beginning of the year, we had the literary historian, Gayle Feldman, on the show, not on the phone, talking about the man who made books random, the founder of Random House, Bennett Cerf. She had a book out back then. It was very well reviewed within the literary community.
Nothing Random, Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built. It's taken for granted, of course, that publishers shape literature. When we want to understand how to get a book published, or why some books get published and why some don't, we think of publishers. But my guest today has another way of thinking of it. Laura McGrath teaches English literature at Temple University. She's the author of an intriguing new book, took her 10 years to write. Middlemen, Literary Agents and the Making of American Fiction. Laura is joining us from Philadelphia. Is that right? Tell Laura where you are.

**Laura McGrath** (1:34)
That's correct. I'm just outside of Philadelphia.

**Andrew Keen** (1:37)
At Temple University. I know that there are some birds outside your window, so apologies if there are any bird sounds during this conversation. Laura, should we compare the influence of guys like Bennett Cerf and the kind of middlemen and indeed middlewomen that you deal with in your book?

**Laura McGrath** (1:56)
I think that's a really fair comparison. Publishing in the early 20th century that focused on these storied publishers, people like Bennett Cerf, is really a bygone era. Now we have large-scale conglomerated publishers where individual editors might have really excellent taste, but they're not houses that are built around the taste of a few individuals any longer.
But for literary agents who are really the key, central gatekeepers for publishing, their taste is really central in terms of how they are evaluating manuscripts, signing new clients, and promoting the literature that they believe should be in the world.
And so I think that the taste of the literary agent now in the 21st century operates in a way that is really similar to the way that the taste of a veteran publisher, someone like, say, Alfred or Blanche Knopf, might have worked at the beginning of the 20th century.

**Andrew Keen** (2:47)
I'm guessing, Laura, there's going to be two reactions to what you just said. And indeed, you hear this, I'm sure, a lot in the talks you give about the book. On the one hand, people will say, well, this is still a good thing. We have tastemakers, people who are steeped in literature who are doing the physical thing, the human thing, that enables culture.
On the other hand, the argument that I'm sure you also hear is that this is a really bad thing, that it's controlled by a group of upper-class, powerful New York literary figures, mostly men, mostly white. And this accounts for the fact that most literature doesn't really reflect popular opinion or popular culture, and often it's extremely unfair because really talented writers don't get a shot. Is that fair, the two classic responses to this increasing centrality of the literary agent in the publishing world?

**Laura McGrath** (3:46)
I think the two responses, you know, on the one hand, there's people that care about literature. On the other hand, this is controlled by an elite group. I think that's fair. I do, though, would like to clarify that about 80% of literary agents are women. The book's title is very tongue-in-cheek and draws on the memoir of the first literary agent in the United States, Paul Revere Reynolds.
His son wrote a memoir called The Middle Man about his father's life and career.
And so I want to clarify that 80% of agents are women, and the profession has historically been dominated by women. But I think, you know, that aside, I do think that that's a fair characterization of the debate on both sides of this particular issue. I, for one, am in favor of more gatekeepers existing in the publishing industry, of more people that are not only evaluating and determining which books are worthy of our time and attention, but also, and I think this is an important dynamic about gatekeeping, are also promoting and advocating for the writers and the books that they believe are worthy, that they believe should have access to a readership. And while I think the critique that you paraphrased here, that often these gatekeepers are an elitist cabal, I think that is bandied about often, I also think that many agents have taken a very activist stance in terms of the writers that they seek to promote and the work that they champion. And so I'm grateful for the work of those particular agents.