Agent Provocateur [1]

Bettina Korek
[ Sun. Nov. 6. 2016 ]

HOW A BANKER-TURNED-LITERARY AGENT GOT HIS START IN THE UNDERGROUND ART SCENE
 

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Portrait by Ogata [5]

Best known as a literary agent, Brockman’s career has spanned art, science, film, theater, and digital media. For more than 50 years, he has served as a steady intermediary between disciplines, working with everyone from Stewart Brand, creator of The Whole Earth Catalog [6], to curator Hans Ulrich Obrist [7]. He specializes in science literature and represents a roster of authors—including Jared Diamond and Steven Pinker—who are more widely known than he is. But Brockman’s preference has always been for the perimeter. He founded edge.org [8], a foundation with the mission of connecting people “working at the edge” of a wide range of disciplines. In his own writing, he advocates for a “third culture,” a synthesis of science and the humanities, with no smaller a goal than “rendering visible the deeper meanings of our lives and redefining who we are.”

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