Joel Conarroe, a "celebrated arts administrator and professor who headed the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for nearly two decades and served as a friend and confidante to a pride of literary lions, including his close friend Philip Roth," died May 5, the New York Times reported. He was 89.
A central figure in the world of letters for decades, Conarroe served stints as executive director of the Modern Language Association and the president of PEN American Center, as well as chairman of the National Book Award fiction jury, the Pulitzer Prize fiction jury, and other posts.
He was best known for his work with the Guggenheim Foundation from 1985 to 2003, where he was only the third president in the history of the organization. Current foundation president Edward Hirsch said, "He was attuned to changing cultural mores--the twists and turns in dozens of academic and artistic fields--while dealing with the financial challenges and working to raise the amount of fellowships so that people could do their own work."
Author Robert Caro, who served with Conarroe on the Guggenheim board, recalled his air of authority: "I had never seen meetings, sometimes with long, complicated agendas, run with such graciousness, and yet firmness. As I got a close-up of Joel in his professional life, I marveled again and again at the unchanging integrity with which he made decisions, and not just at the Guggenheim but on the many, many committees that award literary prizes."
Conarroe was on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania for nearly two decades, including eight years as a professor in the English department, rising to department chair. He spent two years in the 1980s as the dean of Penn's School of Arts & Sciences.
His contributions to literature "stretched beyond the accomplishments listed on his curriculum vitae," the Times wrote, adding: "Known to be gregarious, courtly and wickedly funny, he often threw parties studded with literary stars like Mr. Caro and Calvin Trillin at the Century club in Manhattan. And he frequently presided over de facto literary salons at restaurants in the West Village, where he lived on West 11th Street amid towering stacks of books with his two cats."
"Joel was the hub of the New York literary wheel," author and longtime friend Patricia Volk said. "He brought people together, fixed them up, and it always took. He knew exactly who would like who."
Perhaps none of his friendships "were as close--or as complicated--as his half-century-long tenure as a defender and confidant of Roth," the Times noted. Conarroe provided the author with "valued feedback on manuscripts for his novels, watched baseball games and shared gossip with him, and accompanied him to parties and awards dinners."
As a writer, Conarroe published analyses of the poetry of William Carlos Williams and John Berryman and edited multiple poetry anthologies, including Six American Poets, a 1993 survey of works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, and others. The anthology found unlikely fame when Joseph Brodsky, then the nation's poet laureate, spearheaded a program to include a copy alongside the Gideons Bible in thousands of hotel and motel rooms around the country.
"I told Joel that it was the most stolen book in the history of publishing," Volk recalled.