a particularly leggy photo of herself catching a fish with Ernest Hemingway and another laughing with Pablo Picasso. She also knew Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Richard Avedon, Henry Miller, and many, many other powerful men. She also knew Ledig, which was how she met Giangiacomo.
It was 1958 and he had just split from his second wife. On a trip to Switzerland to get a new yacht, he made a detour to Hamburg to visit Ledig, who threw a party in honor of his Italian friend and colleague. Inge, invited to the event to take pictures, came “dressed to kill” and sat herself at Giangiacomo’s table, where Ledig said they had “instantly taken to each other, and as they were leaving the party they hardly noticed anyone else.”
Although she wore nothing but designer dresses, her political sympathies lay with the far-left Giangiacomo. He loved her and so did the Italian press, but they couldn’t marry since he was still legally married to his second wife until he received permission in Italy to divorce (apparently he sought an annulment by claiming impotentia erigendi et coeundi or erectile and ejaculator dysfunction, which is how he ended his first marriage).
Inge quickly got used to living the high life (and her job in charge of relations with foreign publishers and authors) and didn’t want to leave her tenure up to the vagaries of Giangiacomo’s romantic interest. On a trip through North America in 1959, they got married in Mexico, but she needed something more solid than a south-of-the-border marriage certificate.
Enter Leo.
He became a consigliore to Inge in her quest to seal the deal with the radical publishing magnate. (Inge wound up playing a vital role in establishing and maintaining Feltrinelli Editore’s literary brand. For decades to follow, she would protect the publishing tradition they created together through personal diplomacy and loyal friendships, even amid the endless scrutiny of bankers and “advisors.” She did this first for her love of Giangiacomo but later for his heir apparent, their son, Carlo, who has been at the helm with the help of his mother since his father’s untimely death. Her diplomacy knows few limits. To this day, she knows the first name of most of the staff of the Feltrinelli bookstores that are in every major Italian city.)
It was surprising that an international socialite would enlist the help of an unemployed émigré in fixing her love life, but I understood it. I often turned to Leo for advice about love affairs when I was a teenager. Despite the cigarette ash down his front, Leo had a way with women.
Although he was married and had a mistress, Leo was always extraordinarily friendly with the agency’s secretaries. Fritzi, however, was one of those secretaries whose love went unrequited. Instead, she settled for Leo as an advisor. He told her to go to Europe and advance her studies in Renaissance literature, which she did. In Italy, she met a man who asked to marry her. Again, she asked Leo what to do, and he told her to marry him. So she married him. Later, when it wasn’t going so well, she turned to Leo once more. He said, “Divorce him. Come back to the States,” which she did . . . all the while carrying a flame for Leo.
In the time Fritzi had gone to Europe, Leo’s wife, Frida (sister of Lise Meitner, a prominent scientist who was part of the team that discovered nuclear fission), and his principal means of support, had died. To make matters worse, his mistress of long standing also died, so Leo was disastrously short of money. His landlord came to him and offered to buy him out of his rent-controlled apartment, which he did, taking the money to live at a hotel for a while. But when that money ran out, he had no place to live. Fritzi, twenty-five years his junior, offered that he move in with her, but on one condition: He had to marry her. That was what she wanted and he needed a place to live, so they got married.
Leo was the perfect person to give Inge advice on her relationship with Giangiacomo, for he took a straight-ahead approach to love as he did everything else in life. He told Inge to get pregnant—and that was exactly what she did, giving birth to Carlo in 1962.
Giangiacomo liked to push the limits of “decent” society when it came to women and books. He was an ardent supporter of the avant-garde and politically extreme. He illegally published and distributed Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, which was banned under obscenity laws. He also published Che Guevara and Hồ Chí Minh.
Like his romantic entanglements, Giangiacomo’s dangerous tastes in literature found their way into my dad’s office. The most hair-raising experience had to do with Fidel Castro. Having befriended Castro (in a photo with the Cuban leader, Giangiacomo looks every bit the revolutionary with his mustache, thick black eyeglasses, and vaguely military-style shirt), he signed him up to write his memoirs not long after the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Giangiacomo Feltrinelli with Fidel Castro
© Inge Schoenthal Feltrinelli/LUZphoto Agency
Because we were representing Feltrinelli in the United States, that meant we had become the American agents for Fidel Castro, which was like being Saddam Hussein’s agent after September 11. People thought our country was going to be destroyed because of this guy. So when we were putting together a deal with the legendary publisher Mike Bessie (who had edited writers such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Elie Wiesel as well as founded Atheneum Books, the last major literary house started in the twentieth century), we had to do everything in code.
These were the days when business was done by easily monitored cables and telegrams. We couldn’t have anyone figure out what was going on. If the word “Castro” appeared anywhere in the contracts, we would have been firebombed or who knows what else.
Fidel Castro’s code name at the Sanford J. Greenburger agency became Jesus Barth, which is German for “beard.” The contracts were signed by Feltrinelli and everything was going smoothly until one Saturday morning when my father and I got out of the elevator in front of the office, only to be met with ten men in dark suits, trench coats, and buzz cuts. These guys were definitely not looking to publish a book.
“FBI,” one said, flashing the biggest badge I’d ever seen. “Are you Sanford Greenburger?”
My father nodded his head. Clearly, they had cracked the code.
“We’ll need entry into your office.”
Childhood didn’t suit me.
I had to come up with a way to explain this to my high school guidance counselor sitting behind her desk. It was clear to my teachers at Stuyvesant that my attentions weren’t focused on school—I hardly ever showed up to my sophomore year classes and handed in homework even less—and now all this had come to the attention of the guidance counselor, who called a meeting in her office to discuss my performance.
“It’s a privilege to attend Stuyvesant,” the counselor said, glancing down at my appalling record. “This is one of the best high schools in the city and the country. Do you know how many kids would kill to be in your spot? You’re obviously not a stupid kid, but you seem to be throwing this away, which is pretty stupid.”
I’d been hearing the line about how great Stuyvesant was ever since I arrived. I had gained admission to the prestigious public Manhattan high school, even though I had missed part of my elementary school years, because I was good at arithmetic. Apparently,
