How Potok’s novel found its name

To the Editor:

Allegra Goodman correctly chides the editor of Chaim Potok’s The Chosen for letting Potok repeat some of his descriptions. Ironically, the editor was the great Robert Gottlieb, who in his autobiography Avid Reader tells an amusing anecdote about the genesis of the novel’s title. According to Gottlieb (if memory serves), this future Simon & Schuster bestseller was originally saddled with a very flowery, literary title – pretentiously biblical, perhaps – that no one at the publishing house liked. But no one could come up with anything better, the deadline was approaching, and they were going to have to use the unsatisfactory title. With the planned cover on his desk, catalogue copy to write, and just minutes to go, Gottlieb walked down the hall toward the men’s room. On the way, he passed the office of another editor, the elderly Arthur Sheekman, best known for his early work on Marx Brothers scripts. Sheekman’s door was open, and Gottlieb stopped in to explain that he was desperate for a title. He began laboriously describing the various strands of the novel – World War II-era Brooklyn, Jewish kids’ baseball leagues, the Holocaust, Orthodox rabbis, Hasids, the birth of Israel – and before he’d even finished what was going to be a long, complicated description, Sheekman shrugged and said, “Call it The Chosen.” Gottlieb instantly recognized that that was the perfect title, and remarks that if he hadn’t at that moment needed to take a leak, the book’s publishing history might have been very different.