{{Short description|American writer, editor and literary critic (1928–2008)}} '''Theodore "Ted" Solotaroff''' (October 9, 1928 – August 8, 2008) was an American writer, editor and literary critic. As a book editor, he helped shape the works of several prominent authors. He also founded the literary journal, ''New American Review''.<ref name=LAT_obit />

==Life and career== Born into a working-class Jewish family in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Solotaroff served in the U.S. Navy from 1946 to 1948.<ref name=Solotaroff_papers>{{cite web |title=Ted Solotaroff papers |publisher=The New York Public Library{{snd}} Archives & Manuscripts |url=https://archives.nypl.org/mss/18153 |access-date=February 24, 2026}}</ref> He then attended the University of Michigan, where he was on the freshman basketball team, and earned a BA in English in 1952.<ref name=NYT_obit />

Solotaroff did graduate work at the University of Chicago, obtaining an MA in 1956, before entering the university's Ph.D. program. While there, he befriended fellow graduate student Philip Roth who recommended Solotaroff to ''The Times Literary Supplement''; its editor Alan Pryce-Jones wanted an essay on American Jewish writers.<ref>{{cite magazine |title=Promised Lands |last=Dickstein |first=Morris |author-link=Morris Dickstein |magazine=The Times Literary Supplement |date=April 15, 2016 |url=https://www.the-tls.com/literature/literary-criticism/promised-lands-2}}</ref> Solotaroff's essay, published in November 1959,<ref>{{cite magazine |title=A Vocal Group: The Jewish Part in American Letters |last=Solotaroff |first=Theodore |date=November 6, 1959 |magazine=The Times Literary Supplement}}</ref> was noticed by Norman Podhoretz of ''Commentary'' magazine. In 1960 he hired Solotaroff (who never completed his doctoral dissertation) as an associate editor.<ref name=NYT_obit /> He remained at ''Commentary'' for several years before joining "Book Week", the literary supplement of the ''New York Herald Tribune''. He was its editor-in-chief until the newspaper's demise in 1966.<ref name=Solotaroff_papers />

In 1967, Solotaroff founded ''New American Review'', which became an influential literary journal. Published three times a year, it "operated as a kind of open house for fiction writers and practitioners of the new journalism".<ref name=NYT_obit /> Its first issue featured works by 29 authors, including rising novelists like Philip Roth, William H. Gass, and Mordecai Richler, and nonfiction by Conor Cruise O’Brien, Stanley Kauffmann, and Theodore Roszak.<ref name=NYT_obit /> For the decade of its existence, Solotaroff took the unusual step of distributing ''New American Review'' (its name was later shortened to ''American Review'') as a paperback book, rather than in magazine format.<ref name=Solotaroff_papers /> When commenting on the 1960s literary ferment, he wrote:{{blockquote|[T]he market for serious writing cracked open in the Sixties and soon became a kind of howling forum where all manners of ideas, styles and standards contended for attention. As the literary climate altered radically, there was a distinct shift among writers and editors from a preoccupation with values as the ground of experience to a preoccupation with experience as the ground of values—a shift that was, of course, to be felt everywhere in America as the decade of opposition and revision careened along. For those, like myself, who entered the Sixties wedded to their values, the more or less standard ones of academic liberalism and humanism, but quite out of touch with their own experience, this breaking of the ice was alternately exhilarating and dismaying: one felt stirred but also swamped.<ref>{{cite book |last=Solotaroff |first=Ted |title=The Red Hot Vacuum and Other Pieces on the Writing of the Sixties |year=1970 |location=New York |publisher=Atheneum |lccn=70124982 |pages=viii–ix}}</ref>}}

After ''American Review'' folded in 1977, Solotaroff became a book editor at Harper & Row. He edited manuscripts by authors such as Russell Banks, Sue Miller, Robert Bly, and Bobbie Ann Mason. In a statement following Solotaroff's death, Mason called him "one of the last of the great editors" and someone who "cared about every line".<ref name=NYT_obit /> In 1989, the year that Rupert Murdoch bought Harper & Row, Solotaroff switched from senior book editor to a part-time position in order to concentrate on his own writing.<ref name=Solotaroff_papers /> In 1991 he retired fully from the renamed HarperCollins. As one obituary noted, "he left the book business with a parting shot at what he labeled 'the literary-industrial complex'."<ref name=LAT_obit>{{cite news |last=Holley |first=Joe |date=August 14, 2008 |newspaper=Los Angeles Times |title=Editor helped shape prominent writers' work |url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-aug-14-me-solotaroff14-story.html |url-access=limited}}</ref>

In his last decade, Solotaroff published two memoirs. The award-winning ''Truth Comes in Blows'' (1998) "described a sad, blue-collar American childhood, bracketed by the Depression and World War II; a fractured Jewish world that mirrored the breach between him and his father."<ref>{{cite web |website=Jewish Journal |title=When Marriage Sinks Into Madness |last=Lichtenstein |first=Gene |url=https://jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/8257/ |date=August 21, 2003}}</ref> His follow-up volume, ''First Loves'' (2003), chronicled his courtship and marriage to Lynn Ringler in 1950s post-war America.<ref>{{cite web |website=The Forward |title=A Literary Legend Spares Nothing in His Latest Memoir |last=Kriegel |first=Leonard |date=December 26, 2003 |url=https://forward.com/news/7373/a-literary-legend-spares-nothing-in-his-latest-mem/}}</ref>

==Death== On August 8, 2008, Ted Solotaroff died at his home in East Quogue, New York of complications from pneumonia.<ref name="LAT_obit"/> He was 79.

He was survived by his fourth wife (of 28 years), Virginia Heiserman Solotaroff, as well as four sons.<ref name=NYT_obit>{{Cite news |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 12, 2008 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/books/12solotaroff.html |title=Theodore Solotaroff, Founder of The New American Review, Is Dead at 80 |last=Grimes |first=William}}</ref>

==Awards== *1999 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir for ''Truth Comes in Blows''.<ref>{{cite web |website=PEN America |title=PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir (1998–2006) |date=September 11, 2025 |url=https://pen.org/literary-awards/pen-martha-albrand-award-for-the-art-of-the-memoir/}}</ref>

==See also== * Lynn Solotaroff * ''New American Review''

==Bibliography== * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=Writers and Issues |year=1969 |publisher=New American Library |lccn=70017994 |location=New York}} * {{Cite book |last=Solotaroff |first=Ted |title=The Red Hot Vacuum and Other Pieces on the Writing of the Sixties |year=1970 |publisher=Atheneum Books |lccn=70124982 |location=New York |author-mask=6}}<ref>{{cite news |last=Lehmann-Haupt |first=Christopher |author-link=Christopher Lehmann-Haupt |title=A Perspective on the Sixties |newspaper=The New York Times |department=Books of the Times |date=December 4, 1970 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1970/12/04/archives/books-of-the-times-a-perspective-on-the-sixties.html |url-access=limited}}</ref> * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=The Best American Short Stories 1978 |year=1978 |publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |isbn=978-0395271049 |location=Boston |editor-mask=6}} Co-edited with Shannon Ravenel. * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=Many Windows: 22 Stories from ''American Review'' |year=1982 |publisher=Harper & Row |isbn=978-0060909239 |location=New York |editor-mask=6}} * {{Cite book |last=Solotaroff|first=Ted|title=A Few Good Voices in My Head: Occasional Pieces on Writing, Editing, and Reading My Contemporaries |year=1987 |publisher=Harper & Row |isbn=978-0060390754 |location=New York |author-mask=6}} * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=A Discourse on Hip: Selected Writings of Milton Klonsky |year=1991 |publisher=Wayne State University Press |isbn=978-0814319727 |location=Detroit |editor-mask=6}} * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=Writing Our Way Home: Contemporary Stories by American Jewish Writers |year=1992 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0805241105 |location=New York |editor-mask=6}} Co-edited with Nessa Rapoport. * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=The Schocken Book of Contemporary Jewish Fiction |year=1996 |publisher=Schocken Books |isbn=978-0805210651 |location=New York |editor-mask=6}} Co-edited with Nessa Rapoport. * {{Cite book |last=Solotaroff|first=Ted|title=Truth Comes in Blows: A Memoir |year=1998 |publisher=W. W. Norton & Company |isbn=978-0393046793 |location=New York |author-mask=6}} * {{Cite book |editor-last=Solotaroff |editor-first=Ted |title=Alfred Kazin's America: Critical and Personal Writings |year=2003 |publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0066213439|location=New York|editor-mask=6}} * {{Cite book |last=Solotaroff|first=Ted|title=First Loves: A Memoir |year=2003 |publisher=Seven Stories Press |isbn=978-1583225820 |location=New York |author-mask=6}} * {{Cite book |last=Solotaroff |first=Ted |title=The Literary Community: Selected Essays, 1967–2007 |year=2007 |publisher=Sheep Meadow Press |isbn=978-1931357593 |location=Riverdale-on-Hudson, New York |author-mask=6}} Introduction by Russell Banks.

==References== <references/>

==Further reading== * Cryer, Dan (December 13, 1998). [https://www.proquest.com/docview/279179120/577AB26BFD8D468BPQ/1 "Talking with Ted Solotaroff"]. ''Newsday''. p.&nbsp;11 * Harris, McDonald (December 13, 1987). [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/1987/12/13/ted-solotaroff-an-editor-at-work/54ac7e5b-7fc5-43ec-b717-ca67267e22f5/ "Ted Solotaroff: An Editor at Work"]. ''The Washington Post''. pp.&nbsp;10–11 * Hentoff, Margot (August 16, 1971). [https://books.google.com/books?id=7eICAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA56 "New American Review"]. ''New York''. p.&nbsp;56 * Margolick, Dan (November 15, 1998). [https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/98/11/15/reviews/981115.15margolt.html "Review: 'Truth Comes in Blows: A Memoir'"]. ''The New York Times''. p.&nbsp;BR18 * Solotaroff, Ted (1950). [https://books.google.com/books?id=dbjOAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA2-PA16 "Evening Song"]. ''Generation''. pp.&nbsp;16–27 * Weisman, John (March 18, 1973). [https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=83062930 "Would-Be Hemingways Need Not Apply"]. ''Detroit Free Press''. p.&nbsp;45 * Winfrey, Lee (April 11, 1971). [https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=83063108 "If It's That Controversial, Send It to Ted Solotaroff"]. ''Detroit Free Press''. p.&nbsp;19

==External links== *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_HqYsoSAWbY Ted Solotaroff interview with Stephen Banker (1972)] on YouTube

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Solotaroff, Ted}} Category:1928 births Category:2008 deaths Category:20th-century American Jews Category:20th-century American essayists Category:20th-century American male writers Category:21st-century American Jews Category:American literary critics Category:American male essayists Category:Deaths from pneumonia in New York (state) Category:Jewish American non-fiction writers Category:People from East Quogue, New York Category:University of Michigan alumni Category:Writers from Elizabeth, New Jersey Category:Writers from New York (state)