Archive for February, 2017
“If you are pro Black, pro Hispanic, or pro Asian, why don’t you say so … ?”
After we got back in touch with each other in 2009, Lorraine sent me the correspondence below – between me and a ‘literary agent’ – which she had kept after leaving Prometheus Books decades before.
Lorraine wrote me: “In one of my periodic cleaning binges, lo — my Prometheus ‘DO YOU BELIEVE THIS’ file re-emerged this week, after a disappearance of nigh onto twenty years! The attached provided me with a cascading set of giggles. I hope you will still find the exchange as amusing as I did.” I did, and do. Thank you, Lorraine.
(I’ve obscured my antagonist’s information.)
Note #1 to my students: The approach I chose here is generally not recommended for your own workplace correspondence. Please stay courteous! Your goal, almost always, is to foster and maintain relationships.
Note #2 to my students: You also might want to avoid misspelling *your own job title* in workplace correspondence. I was the senior “Acquisitions” editor for a year before I remembered that “acquisitions” has a “c” in it. (That was around the same time I was shocked to see that “smooth” wasn’t spelled “smoothe.”)
PS – The “LMP” is The Literary Marketplace guide.
Lorraine Marshall
My old friend Lorraine passed away in her sleep yesterday. We worked together closely in the late ’80s and early ’90s, at Prometheus Books, where she was the Marketing Director. She was very funny (and very thoughtful); she was lovely.
Her Facebook page had this Lou Reed quote on it: “There’s a bit of magic in everything, and then some loss to even things out.”
Teaching
Early this morning I guest-lectured, via Skype, in Professor Frank Grasso‘s class on parapsychology at Brooklyn College, CUNY. The students were wonderful. I arrived prepared! Such a beautiful day.
Espresso
I did not realize that this was ‘a thing’ until I made a recent trip to Washington. This video is an excellent feature story on the phenomenon:
Nobility
From Clarissa:
For centuries, nothing was more meaningful or more defining than whether one was born to a noble family. One’s entire existence was influenced in every single aspect by the accident of birth into a certain social class.
After WWI, the titles of European nobility started to lose their value. Save for a couple of Windsors or Borbons, the rest of the “nobles” accepted that their titles’ place was on the trash heap of history. I’m sure it wasn’t pleasant for the antiquated aristocrats to see how “nobodies” were stripping them of importance but that’s the march of history for you.
Today the same is happening with citizenship. And people are just as unhappy that the accident of birth that used to give them so much good stuff is becoming meaningless. Like the nobles of 100 years ago, they can’t believe that the lottery win they thought they had gained just by being born in the right place is losing its value.
Of course, their loss is somebody else’s gain. Just like 100 years ago.
All of Clarissa’s posts on Liquid Capital and the end of the nation-state are compelling.
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