Richard Baron, Who Published Baldwin and Mailer, Dies at 98
As the risk-taking publisher of the Dial Press, he also released the
satirical hoax “Report From Iron Mountain,” a “leaked” government report
on the dangers of peace.
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Richard Baron in 2014. “If anyone was the perfect publisher for
the 1960s, it was Richard Baron,” E.L. Doctorow said. “He
was totally fearless, and he backed us in every crazy thing we wanted to
do.”
Richard Baron in 2014. “If anyone was the perfect publisher for the
1960s, it was Richard Baron,” E.L. Doctorow said. “He was totally
fearless, and he backed us in every crazy thing we wanted to
do.”Credit...via Baron family
Sam Roberts <https://www.nytimes.com/by/sam-roberts>
BySam Roberts <https://www.nytimes.com/by/sam-roberts>
NYT,June 14, 2021UpdatedJune 15, 2021,8:45 a.m. ET
Richard Baron, the contrarian publisher of the Dial Press, had boundless
audacity when he wanted to prove a point.
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Diners at his all-white country club in Purchase, N.Y, were said to have
been mortified when Mr. Baron brought James Baldwin as a guest to lunch
one day — until Mr. Baldwin received the imprimatur of a hearty embrace
from another prominent club member, the publisher Alfred A. Knopf.
Mr. Baron defied convention again by prominently displaying an author
photo ofFrank Yerb
<https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/08/arts/frank-yerby-writer-76-is-dead-novels-of-the-south-sold-millions.html>y,
who, like Mr. Baldwin, was Black, on the jacket of Mr. Yerby’s
historical novel “The Foxes of Harrow” in 1947. He published other
hot-button authors likeThomas Berger
<https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/22/books/thomas-berger-little-big-man-author-is-dead-at-89.html>(“Little
Big Man” in 1964) and Norman Mailer.
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Mr. Baron died on May 6 at 98 at his home in Manhattan, his wife, Carole
Baron, said.
Image
This 1967 bombshell report — a secret government study about the
desirability of conflict as a way to maintain political power —
was actually a satirical hoax published by Mr. Baron.
This 1967 bombshell report — a secret government study about the
desirability of conflict as a way to maintain political power — was
actually a satirical hoax published by Mr. Baron.
Ironically, among his biggest best sellers was a satire that Mr. Baron
and his editor in chief at Dial,E.L. Doctorow
<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/22/books/el-doctorow-author-of-historical-fiction-dies-at-84.html>,
conspired, more or less successfully, to market in 1967 as a secret,
suppressed 109-page government study. The purported study — leaked, the
story went, by someone within the government — warned of the dangers of
peace and concluded that a state of war, the threat of conflict or some
credible substitute, like an attack by aliens from outer space, was
vital for governments to maintain power.
The book, “Report From Iron Mountain,” was conceived by Victor Navasky,
Richard Lingeman andLeonard C. Lewin
<https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/30/us/l-c-lewin-writer-of-satire-of-government-plot-dies-at-82.html>and
embraced by Vietnam War-era conspiracy theorists as it leapt onto
nonfiction best-seller list in The New York Times.
“Richard published it as a protest to the Vietnam War,” Ms. Baron said
in an email.
Despite Mr. Lewin’s confession inThe New York Times Book Review
<https://www.nytimes.com/1972/03/19/archives/report-from-iron-mountain.html>in
1972 that the report was a hoax, it was revived decades later by
right-wing paramilitary groups as evidence of ongoing government
skulduggery.
At Mr. Baron’s 90th birthday party, Mr. Doctorow, whose own novels had
by then entered the American canon, recalled the tempestuous 1960s as “a
terrible time but also a wonderful time.”
“If anyone was the perfect publisher for the 1960s, it was Richard
Baron,” Mr. Doctorow added. “He was totally fearless, and he backed us
in every crazy thing we wanted to do.”
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Richard Warren Baron was born on April 4, 1923, in Manhattan to Samuel
T. Baron, president of the Royal Paper Corporation, and Mabel (Levy)
Baron. He attended P.S. 166 until he punched a student who had pushed
him from behind during a fire drill and was shipped by his father to
Manlius St. John’s Military Academy in upstate New York, where he
graduated in 1940.
He enrolled in the University of North Carolina, enlisted in the Army
infantry to fight in World War II and attended Officer Candidate School
in Fort Benning, Ga. He apparently didn’t graduate, after being caught
gambling across the Chattahoochee River in Alabama.
Mr. Baron was sent to North Africa as a lieutenant in 1943, wounded at
Anzio in Italy and captured in Germany, where he was held for four
months in a prisoner of war camp. There, American troops made an
abortive attempt to rescue General George S. Patton’s son-in-law, an
incident Mr. Baron recounted in a book titled “Raid” (1981), written
with Abe Baum and Richard Goldhurst.
When the war ended, he went to Paris, where he ran into Drew Middleton,
The Times’s military correspondent, who informed Mr. Baron’s parents
that their son had survived the war. He returned home to join his
father’s paper business and developed an interest in publishing when he
started a division to sell paper to book companies.
Image
James Baldwin finished this 1962 novel in Mr. Baron’s home in
Westchester County, N.Y., to escape the distractions of Manhattan.
James Baldwin finished this 1962 novel in Mr. Baron’s home in
Westchester County, N.Y., to escape the distractions of Manhattan.
In 1960, he bought into half-ownership of Dial Press, found himself in
charge when his partner died and surrounded himself with a talented
staff that included the editorsJames Silberman
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/books/james-silberman-dead.html>;
Charlotte Sheedy, who went on to become a prominent literary agent;
andChristopher Lehmann-Haupt
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/obituaries/christopher-lehmann-haupt-dead.html>,
a future senior book critic for The Times.
Mr. Baron published Mr. Baldwin’s novel “Another Country” (1962) after
spiriting the author from Manhattan to Mr. Baron’s home in Westchester
to spare him from distractions and let him finish writing it there.
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And, among other books, he released “The Armies of the Night” (1968),
Mr. Mailer’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, National Book Award-winning
“nonfiction novel.” (The Baron and Mailer families vacationed together
for a time in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, where publisher and author were
sailing competitors.)
He sold Dial in the late 1960s to Dell, which ended the imprint in 1985.
It was revived in 1993 by his wife, Carole Baron, an editor at Knopf
whom Mr. Baron married in 1975.
Mr. Baron started his own imprint, the Richard W. Baron Company, which
published, among others, Thomas Berger, Eleanor Craig, Nat Hentoff and
Julius Lester. He retired to Shelter Island, off the East End of Long
Island, in 1980 to sail and fly his own plane.
His marriages to Pamela Stearns and Virginia Olsen ended in divorce. In
addition to his wife, he is survived by his children from his first
marriage, Susan Trimpe, Wendy Frank and Vicki Lauterbach; his children
from his second marriage, Amy Brourman and Tom Baron; his stepchildren
Lee Riffaterre, Jon Park and Geoff Park; 15 grandchildren; and one
great-grandson.
ImageIn his younger days, Mr. Doctorow, left, was editor in chief at
Dial Press under Mr. Baron. Here the two men greeted each other in about
2013.
In his younger days, Mr. Doctorow, left, was editor in chief at Dial
Press under Mr. Baron. Here the two men greeted each other in about
2013. Credit...via Baron family
Mr. Baron was an idiosyncratic boss. Mr. Doctorow recalled “a wonderful
sense of indeterminacy floating through that place,” including
unbusinesslike 60-hour weeks that included lunchtime chess games with
Mr. Baron that would extend long past lunch.
“People would be waiting outside the door,” he toldThe New York Times
Magazine
<https://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/20/magazine/the-myth-maker.html>in
1985. “There were decisions to be made, and we’d be in there, playing
the game.”
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Mr. Lehmann-Haupt recalled inThe Shelter Island Reporter
<https://shelterislandreporter.timesreview.com/2014/07/28/a-lot-of-history-in-one-man-who-calls-shelter-island-home/>that
when he accepted a job offer from Mr. Baron in the 1960s, his former
employer warned that he’d be “working for Captain Bligh.”
Unfazed, Mr. Lehmann-Haupt replied, “I don’t plan to sail with him.”
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