How do I get this guy's life?

I know, I know, I said I was off memoirs, but who can pass up a book titled Eating: A Memoir?

Well, not me. The book is by a man named Jason Epstein, who is better known as the former editorial director of Random House and the man who was responsible for the (hugely successful) Vintage paperback line. He has written all about that life in a book titled Book Business: Publishing Past, Present, and Future (which I think I read a long time ago but would like to revisit), but in this book he describes his life in terms of food he has eaten and cooked during it. Early chapters about his youth in Maine and New England include family memories and recipes for things like chicken pot pie and linguine with clams; later he on describes meals that he has cooked most recently. Along the way he provides recipes,* which are more short stories than they are lists of ingredients and instructions; it's like your mom is telling you over the phone how to make a dish she's made for years ("I made a spciy marinara in a large porcelain cocotte by softening in olive oil some chopped onion, garlic, jalapeno, and celery, then adding a large can of San Marzano tomatoes...").**

But what really fascinated me about this book was Epstein's stories regarding his early days in publishing. Consider:

"In those pre-jet days, when all but the most intrepid transatlantic travelers sailed to Europe, book publishers went first-class. Book publishing has never been a very profitable business. To make money, you went to work in a bank. Book publishing was a vocation. Without money you might go hungry. Without books you would not know who you are or where you came from or where you might be going. For me and many others, the work we did in those years was its own reward. The annual three-week scouting trip to England and the Continent by sea was a traditional perquisite. First-class passage was compensation for monastic wages. Barbara and I were going to meet the important postwar European writers. We were twenty-five and fearless." (p. 67.)

Let's examine some things in that paragraph, shall we? Somebody working for a publisher got to go anywhere first class? They got to take weeks on a ship and in Europe doing their job? They got to do this when they were twenty-five? I'm pretty sure this guy was a publishing wunderkind who worked hard, but man, reading this, I know I was born at least fifty years too late. From what I can see of the publishing world now, you still get paid monastic wages (if you get paid at all) but you don't go anywhere first class. Sigh. I'll admit that after that I didn't have the heart to finish the book, which was actually quite good (it was making me too hungry, too, so I thought it prudent to stop reading).

*His recipes are interesting, but many involve things that aren't real practical for me, like lobsters, calamari, and duck.

**This is one of Epstein's recipes. My mother's narrative recipes more often begin with this phrase: "You take some hamburger..."

Comments

[Robin]

...add some cream of mushroom soup...

[Citizen Reader]

Robin,
Ha! "...then throw in some noodles..."

[Jessica]

Mine would be more like "Remove pizza from box and wrapper." Last night *I* had to give my *mom* a recipe over the phone.

[Citizen Reader]

Jessica,
Well, you'd be surprised how many people like to put the cardboard disk under the pizza in the oven too!

[Rachael]

Just please, no one add tuna or I might gag...

Yeah, publishing is not the genteel industry I thought it was when I was interviewing for assistant positions in 1996. I got hired and made all of $18,000 a year. In New York City. In 1996. It was brutal, but I learned a lot. Mostly that I didn't want to see how the sausage was made, since I wanted to still enjoy reading.

[Sarah]

Top with crushed (potato chips, chow mein noodles, french fried onions, breadcrumbs . . .)

[Citizen Reader]

Rachael,
Tuna and noodles? Nah, we've never made that in the Midwest. :)
God, 18 grand. And I'll bet no one was sending you first class anywhere. I hope you got out in time to still enjoy reading (and it seems like you did).

Sarah,
How sad that this thread is now officially making me hungry?

[Rachael]

I was ok until Sarah added the chips. Now I'm *really* craving tuna noodle casserole. Which I officially loathe and unofficially is the only form of fish I will eat. Mmmmmm.

[Marianne]

Sarah,
I don't mean to harsh on your dream of a golden past, because really I'm right there with you and sighing wistfully .... but I do question, when I start to think along those lines myself, whether some of that lackadaisy and cultured living was because publishing was still working on the old boys' club model at that time. Not that it was literally old boys, obviously, but how much of that old school publishing lifestyle (monastic wages, slow boats to Europe, and all) was a function of the class privilege of the people who were "allowed" into the business? It seems like new hires mostly had the same 3 or 4 sorts of upbringing, went to the same 8 or 10 colleges, etc. Modern workplaces are better because they're more equitable, but I think professional employees are possibly not treated with as much dignity when their higher-ups don't feel particularly collegial about them.

But I haven't *actually* made any kind of systematic study of that, and I've never *actually* worked in publishing. So I could be talking complete ridiculousness... I'm sure on most levels the determining factor is that the highest higher-ups are executives of enormous business conglomerates, rather than publishers who themselves grew up professionally in the publishing context.

Despite my rambling approach to the question, I really would like to know what you think the reasons are:).

[Citizen Reader]

Marianne,
I love your comment, because as Mr. CR could tell you, I emphatically do NOT believe in the "good old days." Whenever Mom tells me how great the 1950s were I point out there was lots of weird and violent stuff going on then too.

So yes, I probably did go a little overboard in thinking the publishing era of Epstein's time was golden good times for everyone. I'm biased to think that way because I love books on paper, and at the very least, Epstein and Co. didn't have to try and make sense of e-publishing and Kindles.

I don't know, actually, that modern workplaces are more equitable. I know more women are working, but I think that's due to the increasing economic demands on families more than it is to any true fairness. I also tend to believe that American society is still ridiculously class- and privilege-driven, but that is perhaps just because I read in the great book "Class Matters" that there is now more social mobility in Great Britain than there is in America.

I would agree with you that most publishing companies now are headed by CEOs who are completely divorced from the publishing business. But my grasp on the publishing world in general is tenuous--I've only ever worked in it as an editorial and indexing freelancer, so I am on the lowest possible rung of the ladder. (Well, and as an author, but that's for a specialty library reference company, which is a bit different than a trade publisher.)

Sorry, that's kind of a rambling answer. Does any of it make sense?

[Marianne]

It does! Thanks for your response. My own class background is extremely mixed, which I think makes me extra-interested in this sort of discussion.

(I guess I didn't mean that workplaces *are* equitable, only, maybe that there is more of a shot than there used to be for those of us who don't fit the appropriate mold? "More of a shot" sure doesn't mean the same thing as an equal playing field, though.)

I should definitely read "Class Matters". I liked the book "Limbo", by Alfred Lubrano, about people who end up in white-collar positions after being raised by blue-collar parents. He talks a lot about the subtle ways that cultural capital (whether it be inherited or deliberately acquired) affects status and prosperity, and how that results in continuing systematic discrimination against people who don't start out in the cultural elite - even when the people in charge think they're making decisions on disinterested principles rather than deliberately being racist, classist, sexist, etc.