Sidney Offit, "the affable son of a Baltimore bookie who became a fixture in the New York literary establishment and whose work supporting authors and journalists extended beyond his friendships with luminaries such as Kurt Vonnegut," died October 3, the New York Times reported. He was 97.
Offit was the author of more than a dozen books, including two memoirs and two novels (He Had It Made and The Other Side of the Street). His children's books include Cadet Attack, illustrated by Peter Burchard; The Adventures of Homer Fink, illustrated by Paul Galdone; and The Boy Who Made a Million, illustrated by Mercer Mayer.
He was also a guiding force to other writers. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert A. Caro called him "the central figure in the world of writers in New York for 40 years.... He knew every writer in New York. I remember when I didn't have a place to write, he helped me find a little office space. When I'd sometimes be discouraged about my work, he'd always have the helpful, perfect word to keep me going, and he did that for writer after writer."
Offit was a founder of the Authors Guild Foundation, the educational and charitable arm of the Authors Guild, and was the foundation's president for more than 10 years. He was also a v-p of the PEN American Center. From 1972 to 2009, he served as curator of the George Polk Awards, and taught writing at the New School and New York University. During the 1970s and 1980s, he was a familiar face on WNEW-TV's 10 O'Clock News, as half of a current-events debate segment opposite conservative commentator Martin Aben.
Offit was introduced to Kurt Vonnegut years earlier by legendary publisher Roger Straus. Vonnegut wrote him into his semi-autobiographical novel Timequake (1997). A four-volume set of Vonnegut's novels and short stories for the Library of America, published after his death, lists Offit as the editor. He also wrote the foreword to Look at the Birdie (2009), a collection of Vonnegut's stories.
His father was one of Maryland's biggest bookmakers, and in Memoir of the Bookie's Son (1995), Offit described watching his father fight off a gang of kidnappers, an episode that Hal Goodman, reviewing the book in the New York Times Book Review, said was "terrifying at the time but terrific in the retelling."
Offit attended Valley Forge Military Academy, where he met future playwright Edward Albee. Years later Offit wrote in his other memoir, Friends, Writers and Other Countrymen, that in the late 1990s--after Memoir of the Bookie's Son had come out--he had run into Albee, who asked: "When am I going to read your next book? Has it been more than five years since that very good memoir?" the Times wrote. Offit said that one of his former students overheard the exchange and remarked: "I suspect that you, like me, would be a more productive writer if you didn't go to so many parties."
He wrote for the student newspaper at Johns Hopkins University, where the editor was future Times columnist Russell Baker. In a 2022 interview, Offit recalled that "everybody at Hopkins had thought I should be a stand-up comic or an actor." He moved to New York in 1950 after graduation, and became friends with the talk-show host Joe Franklin. "I'd go around with him, and he'd introduce me as 'the leading entertainer in the country,' " Offit recalled. "But I didn't want to be an entertainer--I wanted to be a writer."