Stephen Koch (writer)

Stephen Koch (born May 8, 1941) is a writer and teacher. He grew up in the college town of Northfield, Minnesota, the site of Carleton College and Saint Olaf College.

Stephen Koch
Born (1941-05-08) May 8, 1941
Saint Paul, Minnesota
EducationUniversity of Minnesota, City College of New York, Columbia University
Years active1964–present
SpouseFrances Cohen
Children1

Early life

Koch was born May 8, 1941 in Saint Paul, Minnesota.[1] His childhood was spent in Northfield. Stephen grew up in a middle-class home with his mother Edith Koch; his brother, the physicist Frederick Koch, and his maternal grandmother, Emma Pilling Bayard, a classic daughter of midwestern pioneers, who died at an advanced age when Koch was 16.[2]

Literary career

Koch was an instructor in the Department of English at the State University of New York at Stony Brook from 1965 to 1970. Yet in 1964, Koch had begun to write and publish literary essays and reviews. When his writing came to the attention of Susan Sontag, he became her protégé, and through Sontag his career was launched. His writing appeared prolifically for The Nation, The New Republic, Partisan Review, Esquire, and many other publications.[3][4]

In 1970, Koch published his first novel, Night Watch (Harper and Row, 1970). The novel was warmly reviewed in major publications in America, England, and Europe, and significant coverage in venues such as Life magazine and on PBS television.[5]

In 1971, he wrote his book on the films of Andy Warhol, Stargazer.

In 1972, Koch wrote and appeared as the on-camera host of Eye-to-Eye, a nationally broadcast PBS television series about art.[6]

In 1986, Koch published his second novel, The Bachelor's Bride. In 1994, Double Lives, a study of covertly managed political propaganda. In 2005, he published The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Pasos, and the Murder of Jose Robles.

Teaching career

Koch began teaching creative writing at Columbia University in 1977 and at Princeton University in 1978, continuing at Princeton until 1984, and at Columbia in 1995.[7] Between 1988 and 1994, he served as the chair of the graduate Writing Division in the School of the Arts at Columbia.

Peter Hujar

In 1987, when the photographer Peter Hujar died as a victim of the AIDS pandemic, he named Koch as the executor of his entire artistic estate. Since then, Koch has worked to usher Hujar's work out of an esoteric cult following into what he regards as its rightful prominence in twentieth century art. In Harper's Magazine, April 2018, Koch published an essay describing these efforts: "The Pictures".[8][9][10]

In 2017, a retrospective of Hujar's work, curated at the Morgan Library in New York, travelled to major venues in Europe and the United States. By then, the critical consensus numbered Hujar among the great American photographers.[11][12]

Bibliography

Books:

  • Hitler's Pawn: The Boy Assassin and the Holocaust San Francisco, Counterpoint Books. 2019.[13] 
  • The Breaking Point: Hemingway, Dos Passos, and the Murder of Jose Robles. New York, Counterpoint, 2005. (Paperback 2006; printed in London by Robson Books, 2006). Translations: [Adieu a l’Amitie, Hemingway, Dos Passos et la Guerre d’Espagne. Paris, Editions Grasset et Fasquelle, 2005; La Ruptura: Hemingway, Dos Passos, y el Asesinato de Jose Robles. Barcelona, Galaxia Gutenberg: Circolo des Lectores. 2006.
  • Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Münzenberg, and the Seduction of the Intellectuals. New York, Enigma Books, 2004. (Fully revised and updated edition)[14]
  • The Modern Library Writer's Workshop. New York, The Modern Library and Random House, 2003.[15]
  • The Bachelor's Bride. New York and London, Marion Boyars Inc., 1986. Translations: La Mariée des Célibataires. Paris: Stock, 1988; De Vrijgezellenbruid. Amsterdam: Meulenhoff, 1988; La Novia de los solteros. Barcelona: Editorial Anagrama, 1989.[16]
  • Andy Warhol: Photographs. New York, Robert Miller Gallery, 1986.
  • Stargazer: Andy Warhol's World and His Films. New York, Praeger, 1986. (Printed in UK by Calder and Boyars, 1974. Second Revised and Expanded USA and UK Edition in 1985 by Marion Boyars. Third USA and UK Edition in 1990, revised with a new introductory chapter). Translations: Hyperstar. Paris: Éditions du Chêne.
  • Night Watch. New York, Harper and Row, 1970. (Second printing by Calder and Boyers, 1971. Paperback by Harper and Row, 1973; Trade, 1975). Translations: Les Yeux de la Nuit. Paris: Editions Buchet/Chastel, 1971; Nachtwacke. Amsterdam: Mullenhof, 1973; Guardia Nocturna. Caracas: Monte Avila Editores, 1980.

Essays:

  • "Guilt, Grace and Robert Mapplethorpe" (Art in America, November 1986).
  • "Caravaggio and the Unseen" (Antaeus, 1986).
  • "The Secret Kafka" (The New Criterion, January 1984), translated into French as "Kafka Secret" (L'Infini, Autumn 1985).
  • "The Spirit of Soho" (Esquire, April 1975).
  • "The Guilty Sex: Man and Feminism" (Esquire, 1975).

References
  1. Wall Street Journal. February 8, 2019 https://www.wsj.com/articles/hitlers-pawn-review-who-was-herschel-grynszpan-11549639436
  2. Encyclopedia https://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/educational-magazines/koch-stephen-1941
  3. Art City. October 15, 2013 http://artfcity.com/2013/10/15/stephen-koch-peter-hujar-if-youre-vincent-youve-got-to-have-your-theo/
  4. Pif Magazine. April 2004 https://www.pifmagazine.com/2004/04/stephen-koch/
  5. The NYPR Archive Collections. February 14, 1982 https://www.wnyc.org/story/stephen-koch/
  6. The Paley Center for Media https://www.paleycenter.org/collection/item/?q=lawrence&p=36&item=T:11627
  7. Penguin Random House https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/16039/stephen-koch
  8. Harper's Magazine, May 2018 https://harpers.org/archive/2018/05/the-pictures/
  9. The New Yorker. January 29, 2018 https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/02/05/the-bohemian-rhapsody-of-peter-hujar
  10. The New York Times Style Magazine. April 17, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/17/t-magazine/culture-issue-editor-letter.html
  11. The New York Times. February 8, 2018 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/arts/design/peter-hujar-morgan-library-and-museum-review.html
  12. The New York Times Style Magazine. February 2, 2016 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/02/t-magazine/art/photographer-peter-hujar-lost-downtown-70s-new-york.html
  13. Smithsonian. January 9, 2019 https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-teenaged-jewish-boy-went-refugee-assassin-puppet-nazi-propaganda-180971204/
  14. New York Review Books https://www.nyrb.com/collections/stephen-koch
  15. Counterpoint Press https://www.counterpointpress.com/authors/stephen-koch/
  16. The New York Times. November 23, 1986 https://www.nytimes.com/1986/11/23/books/nudes-ascending-a-triangle.html


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