29 October 04

Paths Not Taken

Long ago and far, far away, I was an assistant editor at a major university press. (Hint: it’s in the same town as the team that just won the World Series.) Not a line or copy editor, the kind of editor that makes decisions about what gets published or not.

Times are hard in scholarly publishing right now; print runs have shrunk, nobody’s buying criticism, and the machine—the deeply flawed machine that goes by the name of publish or perish—is grinding to a halt. There are plenty of very smart people out there, some of whom can even write very well; but whether their books will sell or not is a very hard question to answer. Actually, it isn’t: they mostly won’t.

I used to move in these exalted circles, have intricate discussions about subjects I knew a lot less about than I appeared to (but so, always, did my interlocutors); travel to conferences, try and find the diamond in the rough—the hot new commodity everyone else was also on the lookout for. It was cut-throat and it made your heart beat fast. It was exhilarating, exhausting, and ultimately, too much for me.

Yesterday I got a call from someone who was visiting Davis—an editor I knew well from my conference circuit days. He was giving a talk to graduate students about how to get their work published. His hosts invited me along to dinner—the inevitable expense account dinner—and for an evening, before I went off to the shabby offices of the Yolo Beat Bush/Democratic Party HQ, waiting to get our Nevada assignment for tomorrow, I was transported back to the world of publishing. It was fun. I got to talk to people about their interesting work (and it IS interesting, it turns out, if unpublishable), enthuse, trade jokes, remember Edward Said making one of his grand entrances at MLA with a long black cape (fifteen thousand people would part like the Red Sea).

I’m not sorry I chose a different path. There’s too much posturing in that world, too much bullshitting. But the dinner was a reminder that my life could have been very different—and a great deal more stressful.

Posted by at 06:45 PM in Books and Language | Link |
  1. It is the posturing and the bullshitting that makes me so doubt my desire to make an all-out effort to become a writer (and also why I quit architecture and recently seriously doubt corporate graphic design). Part of me loves and needs the intellectual discourse and the nourishment of creativity, but the other part of me deeply distrusts and dislikes how cutthroat the publishing world is. My focus is on decency and community and living in harmony with one another and the land, so it always seems I am at odds with the medium I hope to use to express myself and to make a living. I don’t handle a lot of stress very well. So what course can I take to fulfill my needs while at the same time remaining true to my principles and sense of a balanced life? I think you’ve made a wise choice in your life. I think it is always best to follow the path where your heart lies at peace, no matter how hectic the daily grind.

    — butuki    30. October 2004, 03:50    Link
  2. Edward Said as Moses is an image I’ll have to mull on for a while!

    — dave    30. October 2004, 16:06    Link
  3. I knew you then, I know you now, and you are a much happier woman OUT of all that. You were good at it, even great—so much greater than most of those highsteppers whose work, ultimately, is for more important to them (narcissists, most of them) than to the world at large. The world at large is much more better off thanks to the work you’re doing now. And so are you, looking back into publishing from the outside, knowing what you know.

    — Doc Rock    30. October 2004, 19:43    Link
  4. Oops—“far” more important, of course.

    And they weren’t all worthless, the narcissists; my favorite memory from those years: Carol’s birthday party at L’s. The best ones were Characters, which is what made it worthwhile for you at the time, I suspect.

    — Doc Rock    30. October 2004, 19:48    Link
  5. Well, Pica, I’d love to have you be MY (sympathetic, intelligent, engaged, supportively critical) editor, but I’m glad you got out of the rat race and into work and a life that suits your spirit as well as intellect. It’s hard to change course but I’m glad you did.

    — beth    31. October 2004, 07:35    Link

  6. As the author of an admired but still unpublished dissertation, may I ask: Is there a profession that stimulates and rewards the intellect, but requires no “posturing and bullshitting”?

    If so, please alert me by email, since it must be a closely held secret. Can’t have everyone knowing..

    Peace, J


    — Jarrett    31. October 2004, 12:45    Link
  7. Butuki: the “hectic daily grind,” at this point, is almost totally self-imposed. But it feels, daily, like a choice still: which is what makes all the difference.

    Doc: There were good Characters and then there were PITAs, which I’m glad I don’t have to deal with anymore. (One of them went to grad school with you, as I recall.)

    Beth: Thanks for the kind words. It’s hard, though, because ultimately publishing is a business and it’s getting so much harder to sell books. (Library funding has been gutted, people read less or at least buy fewer books, which you can’t blame them for at $30 a pop.)

    Jarrett: No. There isn’t. But an awful lot of really smart people who are articulate and who have unpublished dissertations write blogs. (Hint, hint.)

    Having these really articulate and smart people working in OTHER fields that aren’t about being smart and articulate makes the other fields better, of course.

    — Pica    1. November 2004, 04:52    Link

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