Sol Stein
Sol Stein was a best-selling novelist and the publisher of works by James Baldwin and Che Guevara. He also worked with David Frost, Jack Higgins, Elia Kazan, Dylan Thomas, and W.H. Auden.
Stein and Baldwin met as students at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where they worked on the literary magazine.
Stein served in the Army during World War II. In 1949 he received a master’s degree in English literature from Columbia University.
In the 1950s Stein worked at Voice of America, wrote plays, and moved into publishing. He established his own publishing company, Stein & Day, in 1962 with his then-wife. Stein used other publishers for his own novels so he would not be competing with the authors that Stein & Day published.
Stein & Day closed after 27 years, and Stein wrote the nonfiction A Feast for Lawyers as a result of the bankruptcy.
Stein went on to write books about writing, and he taught in colleges. He also helped create WritePro, software to teach fiction writing to its users.
“It can be said that one slip of point of view by a writer can hurt a story badly, and several slips can be fatal.' Stein on Writing”
“I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.”
“In our not-yet-acknowledged secret garden lie the seeds of some of our best not-yet-written stories”