Richard Todd, an editor and writer whose "ability to be at once astute and reassuring... made him not only a celebrated writer--penning the 2008 book The Thing Itself: On the Search for Authenticity and articles for publications such as the New York Times and the Atlantic Monthly--but also a beloved editor," died April 21, the Daily Hampshire Gazette reported. He was 78.
Todd guided the careers of numerous writers, including his longtime collaborator Tracy Kidder, who met him in 1973 when Todd was an editor at the Atlantic Monthly and Kidder "a young writer hoping to land a spot in the magazine," according to the Gazette. Kidder said that Todd became "the most important person in my professional life," as well as a close friend. The two collaborated in 2013 on Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.
"I was almost tempted this morning to call him to ask how I should deal with his death," Kidder said. "It sounds bizarre, but it's true. It's a big hole in the world for me, and for many others."
Journalist and author Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx) said Todd was a remarkably patient editor who "truly understood the need for messy first and second and third drafts.... He never made you feel like you weren't a good writer. He just assumed everything about the confused draft to be an ordinary part of the process, and that was such a kind of profound giver of confidence."
Todd eventually left the Atlantic to establish his own imprint at Houghton Mifflin, where he edited Kidder, LeBlanc, Ann Patchett, James Conaway, Anthony Lake, Darcy Frey, Jonathan Hale, Alan Lelchuk and Adrian Nicole, among others.
As Todd was dying, he "was surrounded by two of his great loves in life, according to his daughters--family and words, read to him by his loved ones. Among other selections, his youngest of three daughters, Nell, read him lines from Moby Dick," the Gazette noted, adding that Todd was an editor until the end. While reading to her father, Nell said she didn't pronounce the word "vexatious" correctly, and "some of his last, clearest words were 'it's vexatious.' "