Tyrant Style

Giancarlo DiTrapano was a friend, so take all this with a gram of salt. Gian had two arts at which he was preternaturally talented, what we’d’ve called his genius before that word just meant “smart guy.” One was, I guess you’d say, books. Sounds dumb, but that’s what he did and was good at. He found people who wrote, not always writers, and coaxed them into writing books that were wildly better than what the rest of the book world was crapping out in any given year. I know this probably sounds more like management than art. It’s hard to consider editing an art if you haven’t seen it being done, and publishing is full-well up the stairs at the sausage factory.