Knopf was generally unimpressed with current literature, though he admired John Hersey, John Updike, Jorge Amado, and a few other contemporary authors. In "Publishing Then and Now" he wrote: "Frequently... our American author, whatever his age, experience in life, and technical knowledge, simply can't write. I don't mean that he is not the master of a prose style of elegance and distinction; I mean that he can't write simple straightforward and correct English. And here, only an exceptional editor will really help him." American authors are not very durable, he said in 1964, and "there are no giants in Europe now." Though twelve Knopf authors had won Nobel Prizes, Knopf acknowledged that "some Nobel Prize books aren't very good," calling "Doctor Zhivago," for example, "incredibly tedious ... If Krushchev had banned it for dullness instead of its political implications, he might have been in the clear."