London, Sept. 25: America's most distinguished literary editor, Robert Gottlieb, has written in singularly unflattering terms about two authors to whom he acted as midwife - the knights Sir Salman Rushdie and Sir Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul.

Gottlieb has criticised Rushdie's decision to persevere with The Satanic Verses and described Naipaul as a "narcissist" and a "snob".

This has emerged from a New York Times interview with Gottlieb, who has reluctantly given in to pressure and brought out his memoirs, Avid Reader: A Life (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $28).

The article by Alexandra Alter points out that "Mr Gottlieb has been the editorial midwife to works by writers like Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller and Robert Caro. In his new memoir, he writes about the editing life."

Gottlieb, interviewed at his airy Midtown Manhattan townhouse, said: "I had no interest in writing a memoir. First of all, I dislike writing. I was never the editor who wanted to be a writer. Writing is hard.... It's inappropriate for editors to be glamorised and revered."

He has edited works by Bob Dylan, Rushdie and Michael Crichton, who "wasn't a very good writer", according to Gottlieb. It is said that "without his nudging and tinkering, Morrison's Sula would have an entirely different opening chapter, Heller's Catch-22 would have been titled 'Catch-18'... but Gottlieb feels weird acknowledging that".

Gottlieb's book won't appear in the UK until October but the literary shock waves are already spreading outwards from New York.

"A highlight reel of Gottlieb's juiciest revelations includes swipes at the Nobel laureate Naipaul (a narcissist and "a snob")... John Updike ('I was disturbed that he wouldn't accept advances') and Roald Dahl (an 'erratic and churlish' author who made 'immoderate and provocative financial demands' and anti-Semitic remarks)," the New York Times reported.

"When describing his relationships with living authors, Gottlieb treads more carefully around eggshell-thin egos. An exception is his savaging of Rushdie in a section where he describes a heated exchange the pair had about the controversy surrounding The Satanic Verses," the newspaper said.

The paper got in touch with Rushdie who lives in Manhattan. "Rushdie said Gottlieb's depiction of him in Avid Reader was 'quite unpleasant in parts'."

will always be grateful to Bob for publishing Midnight's Children and Shame, and for allowing me into the ranks of New Yorker writers when he took over the editorship of the magazine, and for being a brilliant and helpful editor when we worked together. To my mind, these things are the things worth remembering."

A friend of Naipaul said the author was unlikely to respond - not immediately, anyway. Naipaul has weathered harsher treatment in his biography by Patrick French, The World Is What It Is.

Gottlieb is not the only editor with whom Naipaul, now 84, has had differences.

Back in 2010, Diana Athill, one of London's best-known literary editors, had revealed on BBC Radio 4 how she had once deeply offended Naipaul.

This happened in 1975 when Athill was literary editor at Andre Deutsch and was about to publish Naipaul's eighth work of fiction, Guerrillas, which concerned political psychopaths in Trinidad.

Athill, now 98, acknowledged Naipaul's manuscripts were invariably so perfect that they scarcely needed any "editing" on her part.

"The one time when I was foolish enough to be critical about the book, he left us - but then he came back," she said, adding that it was "so unlike anybody in his experience not to like his book that it shook him very much".

She admitted it had been "terrifying" telling Naipaul that "I had this reservation about the book. He said, 'Oh, dear, I have done it as well as I can, there's nothing I can do about it.' He seemed sad and I was so relieved that he wasn't angry when he actually left my office."

However, "there was a telephone a minute later from his agents that he was leaving. As I had never ever criticised anything of his before, I thought he wouldn't mind but he minded terribly."

In her memoirs, Athill has confessed that whenever she felt depressed, she would remind herself that, at least, she wasn't married to Naipaul. Her immediate response when Naipaul walked out was: "It was as though the sun came out. I didn't have to like Vidia any more."

As far as Rushdie is concerned, Gottlieb is only settling scores.

A review of Joseph Anton: A Memoir, Rushdie's third-person account of how his life was changed by the reaction to The Satanic Verses, said the following: "Further evidence of Rushdie's failure to ever be quite as tough on himself as he is on others is provided by his amused recollections of his American and British publishers' behaviour during the fatwa. Peter Mayer, head of Penguin, and Sonny Mehta, at Knopf, published the hardback editions of The Satanic Verses, but equivocated over and finally backed out from publishing the paperback.

"That both of them had responsibility for the safety of large staff - men and women who were included in the terms of the fatwa, but who did not have the benefit of round-the-clock police protection - does not strike Rushdie as a sufficient justification for their decisions and he has much comic sport with what he regards as their 'spineless' conduct."

The review disclosed: "Gottlieb, the former editor-in-chief at Knopf, with whom Rushdie published Midnight's Children, is also chastised for having once suggested that Rushdie would not have written his book if he had known it was 'going to kill people'. Rushdie was so disgusted by this comment, he tells us, that he never spoke to Gottlieb again."