Gilbert Rogin
Gilbert Rogin was an American journalist and author. He worked in a variety of roles at Time, Inc., published many short stories, and wrote three works of fiction. As a fiction writer, he has been compared to Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and Bernard Malamud.
Time Inc. career
Rogin worked at Sports Illustrated for more than 30 years, eventually becoming the magazine's managing editor. Rogin's tenure was covered in Michael MacCambridge's The Franchise: A History of Sports Illustrated Magazine, which addressed the story that Rogin named Mary Decker the 1983 Sportswoman of the Year due to an infatuation. In 1984, Rogin became managing editor of Discover, another Time Inc. title. Rogin was not able to revive the magazine, which was sold by Time, Inc. in 1987, although Discover won a 1986 National Magazine Award for general excellence. Rogin then worked as a corporate editor for the company. In 1992, Rogin helped to launch Vibe; he claimed that the test issue was the first time the word "motherfucker" appeared in a Time, Inc. title. There was some controversy when Rogin decided to hire Jonathan Van Meter as editor-in-chief. Van Meter, a white man, was to oversee a magazine primarily about Black music and culture. Rogin retired from Time, Inc. at the end of 1992. Rogin also consulted and directed for Miller Publishing, which owned Blaze, a spinoff of Vibe, and Tennis, among other titles.Writing career
Rogin published many stories in The New Yorker, mostly in the 1960s, but was allegedly barred after the rejection of a couple of submissions. John Updike deemed Rogin's stories "amazingly surreal". Rogin's stories were acknowledged by the American [Academy of Arts and Letters] in 1972. In a review of The Fencing Master, the Oakland Tribune opined that "on a few occasions, the prose begins to take too much delight in itself, but a great deal of the book remains an intriguing adventure in tone." The [New York Times] considered What Happens Next? "a novel of the first importance." Time wrote that "Rogin shares Cheever's awareness of risk, his sense that to turn a corner of the banal may be to find oneself in a howling waste of strangeness."Mordecai Richler, in The New York Times, noted in his review of Preparations for the Ascent that Rogin "can be exasperating, unnecessarily oblique at times, but the confusions of his novel are more than redeemed by the literary pleasure of the journey itself." Frederick Exley considered Rogin to be the best writer in their age group. Rogin stopped writing fiction in 1980. In 2010, Rogin's novels were reissued as a single volume. In 2014, "12 Days Before the Mast", about a sailing competition, was listed as one of Sports Illustrateds 60 best articles.
Fiction
- The Fencing Master and Other Stories
- What Happens Next?
- ''Preparations for the Ascent''
Stories
| Title | Publication | Collected in |
| "To the Warm Islands" | Discovery 5 | - |
| "Ernest Observes" | October 26, 1963 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Fielding's Progress" | November 30, 1963 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "A Description of a Presumption" | January 18, 1964 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Anna Banana" aka "Night Talk" | Vogue | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Judging Keller" | March 14, 1964 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "1109 Klingenstein" | April 18, 1964 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Hello! Goodbye! I Love You!" aka "Wolf Whistle" | Vogue | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "A Blessed Day" | Mademoiselle | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Chico King, Popular Singer" | Esquire | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "At the Sea-Vue Arms" | October 24, 1964 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Them Apples" | December 19, 1964 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "Lesser Married" | February 27, 1965 | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "At the Tepid Baths" | The Fencing Master and Other Stories | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "The Fencing Master" | The Fencing Master and Other Stories | The Fencing Master and Other Stories |
| "A Short Novel" | January 1, 1966 | from What Happens Next? |
| "The Indoor Bird Watcher" | April 2, 1966 | from What Happens Next? |
| "The Players" | April 30, 1966 | from What Happens Next? |
| "An Uncompleted Investigation" | July 9, 1966 | from What Happens Next? |
| "An Uncompleted Investigation, Furthered and Annotated" | March 4, 1967 | from What Happens Next? |
| "Cheering Up Charley" | January 27, 1968 | from What Happens Next? |
| "The Something of the World" | March 2, 1968 | from What Happens Next? |
| "Two Men of Affairs" | May 25, 1968 | from What Happens Next? |
| "What John McGraw Said" | The Reporter | from What Happens Next? |
| "What We See Before Us" | July 6, 1968 | from What Happens Next? |
| "Solving the World's Problems" | July 27, 1968 | from What Happens Next? |
| "Time and Effort" | April 19, 1969 | from What Happens Next? |
| "You Say What I Feel" | July 12, 1969 | from What Happens Next? |
| "To the Fjord Country" | September 20, 1969 | from What Happens Next? |
| "How It Turns Out" | November 15, 1969 | from What Happens Next? |
| "Space Ant" | Cosmopolitan | from What Happens Next? |
| "Taking Stock" | August 2, 1970 | from What Happens Next? |
| "The Regulars" | November 7, 1970 | from What Happens Next? |
| "The Spanish House" | May 15, 1971 | from What Happens Next? |
| "Address to the Orgiasts" | June 5, 1971 | from What Happens Next? |
| "La-Dah-Dah-Dah-Dum" | December 18, 1971 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "Facing Reality" | September 2, 1972 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "The Sans Souci Launderama" | April 28, 1973 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "Night Thoughts" | September 2, 1974 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "Splitting Up" | September 1, 1975 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "Near Darkness" | May 3, 1976 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "The Hard Parts" | November 20, 1978 | from Preparations for the Ascent |
| "In the Abyss" | Harper's | from Preparations for the Ascent |