Dan Frank, 67, died last week. He was the editorial director of Pantheon Books, but when I knew him, in the late 1980s, he was a young editor at Viking Press working with me on The Most Beautiful House in the World and Waiting for the Weekend. This was still early days for me as a writer and I was lucky to have someone as patient yet demanding as Dan. And as supportive. After the success of Home and The Most Beautiful House in the World I might have specialized in domestic non-fiction, becoming a sort of literary Martha Stewart. Dan never pushed me in that direction, and when I proposed a book about the history of the weekend he was encouraging. When I dedicated my next book, an essay collection, to “My Editors,” I was thinking of Dan.
