10:25, 4 Jun 08
Keith: I was reminded, however, that I used to often buy books from Vintage Contemporaries sometimes just because of the cover art
10:28, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: Oh, Vintage Contemporaries had great art. Terrific graphic design.
10:28, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: And I still have a soft spot for Dell Yearling paperbacks.
10:28, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: I often wish someone would bring the old cover art back. The new Yearlings are spiffy, but I miss the old format.
10:31, 4 Jun 08
Keith: Okay, I need to go hunt down some late breakfast.
10:33, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: What a coincidence. I have to hunt down some late lunch.
10:33, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: Enjoy yours, sir. Will see you ‘round the campus, I’m sure.
10:33, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: Later, Br.
13:52, 4 Jun 08
e: ah. that’s what happened to my publishing caree, too, a couple of careers back
13:53, 4 Jun 08
e: alberto something or other, head of bantam when they were merged with us, only had eyes for tom wolfe
13:54, 4 Jun 08
e: but when i mentioned maumauing the flak catchers, he looked at me as if i had two heads. i went freelance within a year or so then, eventually, left new york…
13:55, 4 Jun 08
e: and that was the end of publishing
15:27, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: Ahhh, I think I remember that guy, e. I keep wanting to say Alberto Manguel, but I know that can’t be right.
15:27, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: Alberto Manguel wrote A History of Reading, and I’m positive he knows all about Maumauing the Flak Catchers.
15:27, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: But I can’t wrap my mind around the BDD guy’s last name.
15:59, 4 Jun 08
e: alberto..alberto..do es it start with a g?
16:03, 4 Jun 08
e: no, here you go:
16:03, 4 Jun 08
e: “‘I WAS sitting around one Friday afternoon with our president, Alberto Vitale, discussing this hard-cover venture we had just embarked upon,’’ Stuart Applebaum, Bantam Books’ vice president for publicity, reminisced. ‘’It was a summer afternoon; nothing was going on. I observed that business books seemed to sell well in hard cover ...”
16:04, 4 Jun 08
Bakerina: Vitale! That’s it! Sorry, do continue.
16:04, 4 Jun 08
e: alberto vitale, illiterate marketer, THAT was the book that sold our 100 year old publishing firm…
16:21, 4 Jun 08
e: after the merger the switchboard was moved from our park ave digs (inexplicably undocumented chrysler bldg spire right outside my window) to the bantam bldg further north
16:22, 4 Jun 08
e: ony day i called it to see how it would henceforth be answered, this telephone to the new BDD
16:23, 4 Jun 08
e: and i swore she said “bubblety bubblety bell...”
16:24, 4 Jun 08
e: (ah, the stories, the stories!)
16:24, 4 Jun 08
e: there was the time i narrowly avoided informing isaac asimov that the space shuttle exploded...(i already told that one; i recently,online, ran into my fellow asst.ed. from then, his young editor then, now gaiman’s at another house...)
16:26, 4 Jun 08
e: the time i expressed concern that, as it seemed everybody was suddenly and en masse turning republican, that jackie, surely,couldn’ t be? (which somehow was received with the utmost distaste....
16:31, 4 Jun 08
e: the time my eccentric art director swept into the employees’ full dining room--not the exec one, the one like in the devil wore prada--and announced “what SHALL we do with poor booth?” (meaning tarkington, whom she apparently figured was due for a revival, no doubt with one of her all-type jacket designs…
16:40, 4 Jun 08
e: the time i filed a contract card for the latest shari lewis tome right after the one for elmer gantry (as far as i know, bubblety bubbelty bell pulped all those old contract cards, which i, and others, used reverently to peruse for their wealth of association, imagining ourselves a future link in the lineage: helen keller advanced $25 in the early part of the last century, etc....
16:45, 4 Jun 08
e: going to (and you’ll recognize this annual pilgrimage from the other side) Sales Conference at corporate headquarters, which was privately held, and, as we descended the train at the Garden City Station into what looked like Dolly Levi’s yonkers, my (jewish) boss calling out “here come the jews!” (after dinner we danced hedonistically to born in the usa, while outside the news was of chernobyl…
16:46, 4 Jun 08
e: im outdoing orionoir here, recording all this on scrinechat…