Wellington Leg: As surely as Friday night bends before Monday morning the New York Times can be relied upon to clarify the most confusing crisis in recent publishing history, Motoko Rich writing in the January 5th edition has an article entitled Puttin’ Off the Ritz: The New Austerity in Publishing. My first thoughts? Do the kids understand Putting on the Ritz? Will people in Alaska think the article is about Vladimir Putin? Did the Times merge with Mad Magazine? Let’s tackle the small issues first.
Webcam vs. Flying to posh resort. Scary, but not Death Race scary. Annual sales meetings are held by telephone until dad gets the phone bill. Some IT wanker will be summarily fired; the party will be held in a bar on Jane Street. After that it’s back to the Coronado for a Billy Wilder retrospective.
Relentless string of recycled headlines: IT wankers fired en masse. No more bicycle messengers and take the subway unless it’s raining or something. This means you.
Binky Steals the Show: Amanda Urban who represents Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison cuts the problem to the quick with this observation: “Books can only support a certain retail price,” she said. “It’s not like you can have books that can be Manolo Blahniks and books that can be Cole Haan. Books are books. A book by James Patterson costs the same as a book by some poet.” The italics belong to me, yo. Even if armed with a minimal knowledge of shoes you can see where Ms. Urban is going here: James Patterson and some poet? What is this Soviet Russia? Someone might point out that a painting by Goya costs the same as a sprayer compressor. Who would you want painting your apartment?
Poetry Prices Remain Stubbornly High: Like the Times and the Wall Street Journal I take a dim view of stagflation. The solution? Let’s send these poets some chin music. With Borders struggling and midtown restaurants empty let’s show the poets what deep discounting really means.