For the past 20 years or so, Jonathan Galassi, the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, has been pressing the renowned editor Robert Gottlieb to write a memoir. Over and over, Mr. Gottlieb refused. Writing about himself felt self-aggrandizing and unseemly.

“I had no interest in writing a memoir,” Mr. Gottlieb said during a recent interview at his airy Midtown Manhattan townhouse to discuss “Avid Reader,” his new memoir. “First of all, I dislike writing. I was never the editor who wanted to be a writer. Writing is hard.”

As the title of his book makes plain, Mr. Gottlieb, 85, is a voracious reader, even by the standards of his profession. But he is a deeply ambivalent writer, particularly when the subject is himself. “I don’t think about myself very much, which for someone who has written an endless book about himself, seems odd,” he said.

He finally relented when his daughter, Lizzie, a documentary filmmaker, badgered him to write about his life’s work. She wanted his grandsons, 13-year-old twins, to be able to read about his life and work — a career spent shepherding literary classics by John Cheever, Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison and Ray Bradbury, among others.