Norton, a challenging independent book publisher, celebrates 100 years

As smoke from the Canadian wildfires wafted through midtown Manhattan Wednesday night, hundreds of writers, publishers and book industry veterans thronged Cipriani’s cavernous ballroom on East 42nd Street to attend the Centennial celebration of WW Norton & Company, the nation’s oldest and largest independent publisher.

The authors hung out at the bar drinking the evening’s signature cocktail, the Norton Cranthology, a mojito named after “The Norton Anthology of English Literature,” the doorstop compendium It has been a part of university curricula since the 1960s.

The climax of the company’s seagulls was projected on the walls. The tables were decorated with classic Norton sinks. Titles like “The Feminine Mystique” by Betty Friedan and “The Perfect Storm” by Sebastian Junger. The cloth bags distributed to the attendees came with a stuffed animal of a baby seagull named Norty.

For those in attendance, Norton’s 100th anniversary meant something, because there is no other publisher like it.

Co-founded in 1923 by William Warder Norton, the company began as a printing company for science and philosophy books. As he grew older, he established himself with his canonical anthologies, the novel “A Clockwork Orange” by Anthony Burgess and “Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis” by Robert F. Kennedy.

Shortly after Mr. Norton’s death in 1945, his wife, Mary Dows Herter Nortonwho was known as Polly and ran the company with him, entrusted her to his employees, creating the spirit of independence that defines Norton to this day.

While other American legacy houses have been taken over by european companies and corporate consolidation, Norton has occupied an increasingly challenging space in the industry as the only major publisher owned by its employees. The centennial party at Cipriani was a celebration of the company’s refusal to capitulate.

To drive the message home, Norton asked five of his star authors to give speeches, and the firm’s president, Julia Reidhead, introduced each of them on stage. The first was michael lewiswho has been a Norton author since the publication of his first book, “Liar’s Poker,” in 1989.

“Thirty-five years ago, I had the crazy idea of ​​writing a book,” Mr. Lewis told the crowd. “I had never set foot in a publishing house. I visited seven, eight, nine of these places. One of them didn’t look much like the others.

Norton’s offices, he added, resembled “his grandmother’s attic, after she died.”

He ended by praising the company for choosing not to follow industry trends, saying, “I am grateful for your ability to resist temptation. Everyone else has been led down various paths and you haven’t.”

In his speech, Joy HarjoAmerica’s Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, recalled receiving a rejection letter from Norton in the 1980s, before forming a partnership with the company that has lasted 30 years.

neil gaiman praised Norton as a stable haven for its authors, before describing the publishing industry in general as a “healthy ecosystem” that had been consumed by “huge crepuscular creatures, somewhere between jellyfish and giant squid”. rita dove read a poem from her 1999 collection, “On the Bus with Rosa Parks.” AND richard powers he described his arrival at Norton as a third marriage that finally worked out.

Mr. Powers, who lives in the Great Smoky Mountains region of Tennessee, he had flown to New York for the party. “They are able to interact with the books without looking over their shoulder and thinking: What is the company going to think?” she said in an offstage interview as guests feasted on a lobster and fusilli salad served with eggplant and mozzarella. “As its own entity, Norton is essentially good old-fashioned 19th century socialism.”

“When I told my publisher I had a 560-page novel about trees, he didn’t flinch,” he added, referring to his Pulitzer Prize-winning work, “the top story.”

Amidst the pulsing jazz sounds of Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks, lake micahan editor who works for Harper’s Magazine and the driftdrank a whiskey sour.

“Now everyone worries about the bottom line, but Norton has persisted through it,” he said. “And that’s because of the great empowerment of the worker-owned workforce, which is something that emanates from the left.”

He expressed some skepticism about the big party.

“I mean, we’re here at Cipriani, so you can only imagine how much this all cost,” Mr. Micah said. “They are still a business. It could be said that they are doing the bare minimum in terms of what is right, because all workers should deserve what is fair.”

As the night drew to a close and the publishers filled the open bar for one last round, Alexia Norton Jones sat down on a sofa to watch the scene. Her presence represented a living link to the company’s legacy: she is the granddaughter of its founders.

“Some people here don’t even know who I am, but I don’t care,” he said. “When Grandma Polly died, she didn’t want a dynasty. She didn’t want the company to look nepotistic. I’m a Norton granddaughter, but they’re all Nortons, too.”

Ms Norton Jones took a pen and drew a seagull on a cocktail napkin, explaining that the logo was based on the pair of W’s in her grandfather’s signature. She also recalled visiting her grandmother at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where she watched her write in her journal in green ink.

One of Norton’s early presidents, george p brockwayonce saying that the house “It has never been for sale and is not likely to be.” When she was asked if that was still the case decades later, Ms. Norton Jones did not hesitate in her answer.

“I don’t think it’s ever for sale,” he said. “That would be the antithesis of everything Norton stands for.”