Bob Loomis, who spent most of his long career as an editor at Random House, died on Sunday, April 19. He was 93.
In a letter to staff, Gina Centrello, president & publisher of Random House, called Loomis "one of the greatest editors Random House, and our industry, has ever known." He had retired in 2011, at age 85, and began his career at Random House in 1957, "in the days of our founders, Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer," Centrello wrote. "Bob edited Maya Angelou (every one of her more than 30 books), William Styron, Edmund Morris, Robert Massie, Shelby Foote, Calvin Trillin, and hundreds of others whose literary careers he guided, assisting them in the creation of many works that have been and will be read for decades....
"I was just one of many who adored and learned from Bob, who inspired several generations of editors and publishers. His values and work ethic are permanently embedded in the Random House DNA."
The New York Times called Loomis "an editor who bloodlessly transformed embryonic manuscripts by a pantheon of 20th-century American authors into award-winning and best-selling books....
"He was so solicitous that, at first blush, an author might be lured into believing that his manuscript, gingerly sprinkled with rhetorical questions, was virtually complete--only to be invited to a rigorous line-by-line copy-editing tutorial at Mr. Loomis's desk, or a broader conversation over two double Jack Daniels's at lunch."
The Times quoted Loomis as likening editing to a quasi-religious function: "You have to turn your collar around like a priest," he said. "You offer a lot of praise, you have confession and you have faith, and pretty soon they might trust you enough to know that you're not trying to make the book in your own image. It's their book."