When it came to agent Andrew Wylie’s successful pursuit of Salman Rushdie the verses were more sycophantic than satanic, according to Hothouse, Boris Kachka’s new history of New York publishing house Farrar, Straus and Giroux (FSG). Of Wylie, Kachka writes: “He signed Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto to impress Salman Rushdie, whom he later acquired.”
Presumably Rushdie had changed his tune since his 1983 novel Shame, in which he lampooned a character modelled on Bhutto as “Virgin Iron Pants”.
Kachka also reports that when Philip Roth heard about the $6 million advance Tom Wolfe got for A Man In Full, Wylie pushed for a $2 million, three-book deal. This didn’t impress FSG head Roger Straus: “He called Roth and told him, in exactly so many words, to ***k off.”
