Dan Franklin: 'I am a tart. I am deeply shallow'

[Dave Monroe]

Dan Franklin: 'I am a tart. I am deeply shallow'

He is the publishing colossus behind Britain's superstar authors. How
does Dan Franklin stay ahead? He talks to Susanna Rustin about McEwan,
Amis – and the death of the boozy lunch

Susanna Rustin
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 14 March 2010 22.00 GMT


[...]

As the boss of Jonathan Cape, Franklin has one of the most prestigious
jobs in publishing, but puts a good deal down to luck....

[...]

But Franklin's favourite Cape author is Thomas Pynchon: Franklin
emerged from an "amazing" experience at the University of East Anglia
in the 1960s "without having read Middlemarch, but wanting to read
Gravity's Rainbow, which is probably not ideal". He remembers how, as
a sales assistant working for a small publisher, he stood behind a
Jonathan Cape rep at a London bookshop, and watched him sell two
copies of Pynchon's novel to them. "It was the book I was longing to
read more than any in the history of the world. If you'd told me in
1970, 'You could end up publishing Pynchon', I wouldn't have believed
you."

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/mar/14/dan-franklin-jonathan-cape