Roger W. Straus, 87; Publisher Known for His Distinguished Roster of Writers

Roger W. Straus, the colorful founder and chairman of Farrar, Straus & Giroux whose company became one of the world’s preeminent literary publishing houses, has died. He was 87.

Straus, a publishing icon for more than half a century, died Tuesday at Lennox Hill Hospital in New York City, said company spokesman Jeff Seroy. Straus, who was on dialysis, had been hospitalized in recent weeks for pneumonia, Seroy said.

Until then, the feisty, outspoken Straus had still been a daily presence in his pale-blue, 11th-floor corner office overlooking Manhattan’s Union Square.

Teaming with John Farrar, Straus founded Farrar, Straus & Co. in 1946.

Robert Giroux joined the company as editor in chief and a vice president in 1955, becoming a partner in 1964.

Straus “was a creative and imaginative publisher -- and one of the best,” Giroux told The Times. “It was a pleasure working with him.”

In 1946, the fledgling company’s list of books included titles such as “Yank: The G.I. Story of the War,” a collection of articles from the Army magazine Yank; and “Francis,” David Stern’s comic novel about a talking Army mule.

But in time, the firm earned a reputation as one of America’s most distinguished literary publishers.

Part of Germany’s Georg von Holtzbrinck publishing group since 1994, Farrar, Straus & Giroux is home to 21 Nobel laureates, 17 Pulitzer Prize winners, 23 National Book Award winners, 16 National Book Critics Circle Award winners and numerous Caldecott and Newbery medalists.

Among the authors Straus has published are Carlos Fuentes, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, John McPhee, Nadine Gordimer, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Susan Sontag, Joseph Brodsky, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott.

“Roger Straus was a venerable redwood of American publishing,” said Steve Wasserman, editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. “His taste was infallible, his commercial instincts nearly unerring, and his palpable joy in the culture of authors and readers was infectious.”

Wasserman, who was publisher and editorial director of Farrar, Straus & Giroux’s nonfiction and paperback imprints in the late 1980s, said Straus was “never remote.”

“He answered his own telephone, his language was colorful, and to the end of his life he was full of zest and opinion,” Wasserman said. “Above all, it might be said that Roger was a collector: a collector of writers. He loved their company, he loved their gossip, he loved their work.”

Bestselling author Tom Wolfe said Straus was his publisher “for every book except one.”

“He was the only publisher who would touch my first book, a collection of magazine articles by an unknown writer -- ‘The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby,’ ” Wolfe told The Times on Wednesday.

When he first arrived in New York City, Wolfe recalled, “I came thinking that everybody was going to be dynamic and sparkling and full of life and colorful.” Instead, he found that most New Yorkers merely shuffled down the sidewalk with their heads down.

“Roger was one of the few who lived up to New York’s advance billing,” the writer said.

Straus, Wolfe added, “really put his heart” into publishing.

“One of the most amazing things was how often he would publish esoteric, unknown European writers and then 10, 12 years later, they win the Nobel Prize,” the author said. “He also was just, in person, so colorful.”

Wolfe also recalled how, in the 1970s, Union Square was a hangout for drug addicts.

“In those days, Roger had a tan Mercedes convertible at a time when Mercedes were not nearly so common as they are now, and he’d have a scarf around his neck,” Wolfe said. “The winos and the ‘heads and the dopers would all stop in sort of admiration as he pulled up.

“They wouldn’t think of touching him, because he added so much to the landscape.”

Born Jan. 3, 1917, in New York City, Straus was the son of two prominent Jewish German families: His father was a member of the R.H. Straus family that owned Macy’s department store, and his mother was a Guggenheim.

Straus, who attended private schools, studied at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., before earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Missouri’s journalism school.

He was a reporter and feature writer for the White Plains, N.Y., Daily Reporter before his World War II service in the military, where he worked in the New York office of the Magazine and Book Section of the Navy Office of Public Relations.

After the war, he reportedly borrowed $30,000 against his future inheritance and $100,000 from a number of acquaintances to launch his publishing house.

“In many ways he was the last of the great personal publishers,” company President Jonathan Galassi told The Times. “He forged these very intense, loyal relationships with authors that were very, very personal.”

Bestselling author Scott Turow, who has been published by Straus since 1987, said that “it was an enormous honor to be on his list.”

“He was a gentleman in every sense and a great man and an absolutely courageous publisher who never, ever confused publishing and commerce,” Turow said. “He regarded it as his job to publish fine books. And he did it in the belief that if you publish fine books, they will find an audience.”

Straus continued to serve as president of Farrar, Straus & Giroux until 2002, when he became chairman.

He is survived by his wife of 66 years, Dorothea; his son, Roger; three grandchildren; his brother Oscar; and his sister Florence Hart.