Lorin Stein: The Most Famous Literary Figure You've Never Heard Of

Lorin Stein is one of the most famous figures in literature today, and chances are, you have never heard of him. His fingerprints are all over the 2007 National Book Award for fiction, and yet, he is not the author of any of the nominated works.

Stein is an editor at the publishing house of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. In a remarkable show of literary muscle, three of the five nominees for fiction in this month's National Book Award competition were published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Even more remarkably, all three of those nominated books were edited by Lorin Stein. To put this accomplishment in perspective, try to imagine a single director capturing the Best Picture nomination from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for three separate movies in the same year.

The editing talent of Stein is evident in "Tree of Smoke," the highly praised novel by Denis Johnson which grapples with Vietnam, as well as "Fieldwork," a mystery set in Thailand by Mischa Berlinski, and "Varieties of Disturbance," a collection of short stories by minimalist Lydia Davis.

Who is this literary Superman? Stein is a 34-year-old who has been described as "an intense, slightly built man." He was raised in Washington, D.C. and attended the exclusive Sidwell Friends School, a private Quaker prep school known for its highly competitive admission process and its particularly strong English Department. Beltway alumni through the years have included Chelsea Clinton, Albert Gore III and Tricia and Julie Nixon. At Sidwell Friends, Stein joined the staff of the school literary magazine. After college graduation, he worked at Publisher's Weekly magazine. He joined Ferrar, Straus & Giroux in 1998 where perhaps three-quarters of the projects he works on are non-fiction, making his trio of National Book Award nominations all in fiction this year even more amazing. Stein is an occasional contributor to literary publications such as The New York Review of Books, The London Review of Books and Salon.com.

Stein has been described by unnamed, disgruntled bloggers as a "boat-shoe wearing schmuck" and a "notoriously arch shithead." The literary agent of French author Gregoire Bouillier told Stein he "didn't get" her client's novel, "The Mystery Guest." Just as you don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't accuse Stein of not understanding literature. He said, "I wanted to show her that I did get it." He did so by translating the book from its original French into a 2006 English language version. He then created an innovative promotion for the book by producing a video trailer which was posted on YouTube.

Stein demonstrated his human side at this year's Frankfurt Book Fair by ducking out of some of the more relentless marketing meetings to pick apples in the Rhone Valley with a publisher of avant-garde poetry books. Commenting on the commercial state of publishing at a New York book fair a few years ago, Stein said, "We need to publish books that we'll be proud of when we're old and fired." For the record, that's fired, not tired.