Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: Conclusion

In 1970 the "titles of current interest" of books whose paperback editions the New American Library [NAL] firm was then interested in publicizing and marketing still included: Why We Can't Wait (by Martin Luther King); Three Lives For Mississippi; The Chronological History Of The Negro In America; Right On: An Anthology of Black Literature; Confrontation On Campus: The Columbia Pattern (by Joanne Grant); Miami and The Siege of Chicago (by Norman Mailer); and Voices From Women's Liberation.

But by the time I was publicity clerkin' at New American Library in the mid-1970s, the paperback edition of The Joy Of Cooking, along with the movie tie-in paperback editions of books that the Hollywood movie studios were producing movie adaptations of, were the New American Library marketed and publicized books that were selling most rapidly and that NAL was then most interested in marketing and publicizing.

So I guess it was always inevitable that a former late 1960s New Left Movement organizer like me would come to feel that publicity clerkin' for New American Library for too long, in its then-plush Times-Mirror media conglomerate subsidiary skyscraper building office, would be a selling-out road to follow in the 1970s; when other former late 1960s New Left Movement student organizers were still doing anti-imperialist work within U.S. underground circles during the mid-1970s. 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (24)

 After publicity-clerkin' in the 9-to-5 skyscraper work world of paperback book publishing at the Times-Mirror media conglomerate's New American Library [NAL] subsidiary during the winter, and not finding other workers in the 9-to-5 cage who were either as dissatisfied with the 1970s U.S. classist economic system as I was or whom I felt wanted to become closer to me on a personal level, I naturally felt, by springtime, that it was take to make my escape from that workplace.

If the job had only involved just working with the then-NAL publicity manager, Marge Ternes, as her publicity clerk, I probably would have felt less of a need to leave the NAL work scene once I began to get spring fever, because I liked Marge's non-authoritarian, easy-going, kind-hearted and gentle personality, felt she was an intellectually interesting, good-natured and pleasant person to have as a supervisor, and was personally attracted to her.

But the publicity clerk job also required me to work at the desk next to Marge's secretary most of the workday; and Marge's secretary was the kind of culturally straight person with whom I felt I had little interests in common, whom I felt no attraction for, who would tend to relate to me in a "low-brow boss-type" way whenever she had the opportunity, and who I was always eager to want to get away from by the end of each day.

So, not being involved emotionally with anyone else outside of work while employed at NAL when the Spring weather arrived in New York City, I used the telephone on my desk at NAL to call long-distance an old woman friend who was then sill living and working in one of the Midwest campus towns.

And, after talking with her for awhile, I decided it made more sense for me to scrap the NAL publicity clerk "flunkie" job and spend part of the newly arrived Spring taking a Greyhound bus out to the Midwest and visiting her.

So, on the evening after I cashed my next NAL paycheck, I then used my cheap portable cassette tape recorder to tape myself singing some of the folk songs I had written, on a cassette tape (including a humorous/satirical folk song, whose lyrics and melody I long ago permanently forgot, indicating why the paperback books NAL was then publishing and marketing didn't appeal to me); and on the following day, instead of going to work in Manhattan, I mailed the cassette tape of folk songs, along with a brief letter of resignation, to the NAL publicity director.  

And in my letter of resignation, I indicated again, that I was resigning my position as a NAL publicity clerk, in part, because I felt the quality of the paperback books NAL was marketing  was not that good anymore; and that the NAL paperback publishing firm had become too commercially-oriented in the 1970s and had become more commercially-oriented in the 1970s than it had been, historically.

Then, a few days later, I went to the Port of Authority bus terminal in Midtown Manhattan, bought a bus ticket, and hopped on a Greyhound bus that was heading to the Midwest.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (23)

 Around the time I was publicity clerkin' at New American Library [NAL], the WUO published its Prairie Fire book and some kind of Prairie Fire Organizing Committee [PFOC] above-ground Movement organizing group was formed in the New York City area. But at that time not ever bumping into any of the PFOC organizers on the NYC streets during the time I was working at NAL, the opportunity to then link-up with the PFOC in New York City never developed for me at this time.

So, aside from occasionally attending a Workers World Party [WWP] event-- and picking up the weekly newspapers of the various U.S. left-wing sect groups and the [now-defunct] independent radical left U.S. Guardian newsweekly, at a bookstore on St. Mark's Place on the Lower East Side/East Village neighborhood, or buying pamphlets or journals that were then sold at the pro-Maoist China Book Store or at the pro-USSR book store, below 23rd Street in Manhattan, or at the small pro-Soviet CP Jefferson Bookstore, near Union Square--I can't recall having much personal out-of-work actual contact with the U.S. Left Movement of the 1970s, while I worked at NAL.

Could be, though, that it was around this time that I attended a talk by some white antiwar Movement woman activist who, after returning from a visit to South Vietnam, described the horrific conditions that imprisoned political opponents of the U.S.-backed Thieu regime were experiencing in their tiger-cage cells, in a meeting at NYU's Loeb Student Center by Washington Square Park, perhaps?

Being moved emotionally by the talk of this antiwar woman, who seemed to be in her late 20s, I actually stopped by the antiwar Movement office where she worked one weekday after work, to perhaps offer to do some volunteer work on the campaign to expose the tiger-cage cell conditions of political prisoners in South Vietnam around that time.

But, perhaps because she was unaware of how experienced a Movement activist I had been in the 1960s, she seemed to somehow think it strange that I would follow-up hearing her talk about the this issue by, unlike others in the audience who had attended her NYU student center talk, showing up at her office to volunteer; and I was not encouraged by her to get involved politically with her campaign in my spare-time.

So I thus, in turn, dropped the idea that she was an antiwar Movement person I could work with politically in a politically productive way in the mid-1970s, despite her ability to give a good talk about the tiger-caged cell political prisoners of  the U.S.-backed  Thieu regime in South Vietnam. 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (22)

 On the Saturdays or Sundays when I often went to borrow folk song and pop song music books, containing lyrics and guitar chords diagrams, for free from either the New York Public Library's Lincoln Center branch or from the upstairs Music Department of the Brooklyn Public Library's central library branch at Grand Army Plaza, I also can't recall ever meeting anybody I knew or had known in these library, speaking to anyone else in the library or meeting any new person to talk to inside the library.

One Saturday afternoon, though, while I was walking lpast the fountain in Lincoln Center Plaza, on the way towards the New York Public Library branch there, a mother, who seemed to be in her late 40s and her teenage daughter suddenly approached me. And the white teenage daughter handed me a spare ticket for a rear seat for the last part of some afternoon performance on that day. No longer recall what was being performed on that day, but I did go into the Lincoln Center auditorium for free and watched the last half of the performance for free.

Being able to borrow for free the library songbooks with guitar chord diagrams and song lyrics saved me a lot of money in the 1970s. And much of my time when I was in my apartment while working at the New American Library was spent playing, practicing and singing to myself the songs contained in the various songbooks. In addition, the Music Department at the Brooklyn Public Library's Grand Army Plaza central branch then contained in its vertical files a lot of hard-to-find material that Sing Out! magazine had published or distributed during the 1950s and early 1960s.

So, looking back after so many decades, the time I spent borrowing a lot of songbooks from the pbulic libraries during the 1970s probably helped deepen my ability to later continue to pump out new public domain folk songs during the following decades.

Aside from writing the "Live Like Cinque" folk song around this time and perhaps the melody and first lyrical version of the "I Saw You Today" folk song, I no longer recall any folk songs I may have written while publicity clerkin' at NAL. Could be that I then wrote a song, titled "Stupidity"--which I no longer remember--that attempted to expose the degree to which intellectually and morally "stupid" folks were then ruling and enslaving the majority of people in the USA during the 1970s, around this time?

And it could be that around this time I wrote a love song like "Open Your Arms" for an old womanfriend who was living in the Midwest, while I was living in Brooklyn. And although I did, at times, use my cheap portable cassette tape player to occasionally record some of the songs which I then wrote, within a few years I no longer saved any of these cassette tapes with most of these particular new songs; and neither did I save most of the lyrci sheets for any of these new folk songs I may have written while working at NAL.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (21)

 Because Brooklyn College was still a CUNY 4-year undergraduate college in which most students still lived with their parents or in off-campus apartments and were commuter students, the Brooklyn College Library was usually empty of students whenever I went there on weekday evenings, after a day's work as a New American Library [NAL] publicity clerk, to spend a few hours reading there. And I can't recall ever speaking to any other person inside the Brooklyn College Library during any of the evenings I spent reading and browsing around the open book and magazine stacks while there.

It wasn't until the late 1980s or early 1990s that I realized that if you were then a non-student, like I was in the 1970s, you could now then purchase a guest borrower card for $50 from the Brooklyn College Library check-out desk, which then gave you the privilege of taking the circulating books on the Brooklyn College Library's open stacks home to read.

But during the 1970s I just assumed that any Brooklyn College Library book I ever wished to read could then only be read by me inside the library. So no Brooklyn College Library books were ever brought home by me to read during the time I worked at New American Library in the 1970s.

Of course, even if I had had borrowing privileges at the Brooklyn College Library as a non-student during the 1970s, it's unlikely I would have checked out many books to read in my slum apartment in Red Hook then during my evenings there or on my weekends.

For whenever I was stuck working 9-to-5 during the 1970s, I usually preferred to spend my weekday and evenings, when still awake and alone at home, mostly playing guitar and singing songs to myself, writing new songs and sometimes recording them and old songs on my cheap, portable cassette tape recorder, skimming through some 1970s leftist newspapers or pamphlets or listening to vinyl records on my cheap portable phonograph, rather than using my then limited free time to read many library books at home. And when stuck working 9-to-5, I also preferred to spend my weekend days outside the apartment, rather than sitting at home inside reading books on the weekend.

Because I had pretty much lost any desire to watch the U.S. power elite's corporate media's television programs by the early 1970s, I owned no television set during the time I was spending some weekday evenings after work reading the Old Left journals and magazines from the 1950s in the Brooklyn College Library.

And, in a way, going to the Brooklyn College Library in the evening after work for a few hours was seen by me as a hipper thing for a U.S. worker to do in the 1970s than for a U.S. worker to go directly home after work and sit in front of a television set; to then be manipulated and programmed by the U.S. corporate media's liberal or right-wing anti-communist gatekeepers, newscasters or entertainment show producers, directors, writers and  wealthy celebrity performers. 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (20)

 Besides usually spending most of my lunch hour during th workweek browsing in or taking out books from the New York Public Library's Donnell Library branch on West 53rd Street, across from the Museum of Modern Art, when I was working as a New American Library [NAL] publicity clerk in the 1970s, I also often spent time in the evening during the workweek, after work, taking the IRT Flatbush subway line from work, out to the last stop on that subway line, near Brooklyn College.

And I would then walk onto the Brooklyn College campus and into the Brooklyn College library.  Despite being a non-student, during the 1970s, Brooklyn College, at least, did not--unlike some other U.S. colleges or universities today--instruct any campus security guards to block non-students and "non-affiliates", like I was in the 1970s, from entering buildings like the Brooklyn College library, unless they were profiled in an objectively racist way by the (often even Black) campus security guards as being "suspicious Black males."

Once inside the Brooklyn College library, I would then spend a few hours reading the various Old Left periodicals from the 1950s that were still on the open shelves; before then heading back to my cheap slum partment by the Brooklyn waterfront, near the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel entrance in Red Hook, to eat some food, play a little guitar and sleep.

And often on weekends around this same time, I would spend portions of my Saturday or Sunday afternoons either walking up the hill towards the Brooklyn Public Library's Grand Army Plaza central library building ot taking a subway into Manhattan to the New York Public Library's Lincoln Center library branch, to find some guitar music songbooks that I could borrow and bring home for free.

When you're over 50 years-of-age, historical and political events that happened two decades ago don't feel to you like they happened that long ago; and, to you, such events seemed to have happened in recent years. But when you're only in your 20's in chronological years--like I was during the 1970s--what had happened two decades before then felt to me like it had happened very long ago and was almost like ancient political history.

So on the evenings after work during the 1970s, when I spent some time sitting in the Brooklyn College library reading issues of various Old Left journals like Masses and Mainstream, that had been published during the 1950s McCarthy era, I felt that the 1950s historical situation which the various Old Left writers were analyzing or commenting upon was a historical situation of long ago; and had happened long before the historical situation that the 1960s New Left Movement and Columbia SDS chapter organizers had responded to in the late 1960s or the 1970s historical situation I then found myself trapped in at the time.

And so despite finding it interesting to read what 1950s Old Leftists wrote about and thought about during the then-long ago-seeming decade when I was growing up in Queens, reading the Old Left group journals and magazines from the 1950s did not seem to me to then provide much relevant ideas on what collectively could be done effectively by counter-cultural, bohemian or hippie New Left antiwar revolutionaries from the 1960s, in order to bring about a political and economic Revolution in the USA by the 1980s.  

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (19)

The only remaining particular memory I have as a result of publicity-cllerkin' in the then-Times-Mirror corporate media conglomerate-owned New American Library [NAL] paperback publishing skyrcraper office in Midtown Manhattan is an afternoon when the writer of the sexist and macho male-oriented series of Mike Hammer detective pulp novels, Mickey Spillane, stopped by at the office to chat with the NAL publicity director in her office;; about some publicity business matter related to the 1970s marketing of his series of novels.

Spillane was then a beardless, crew-cutted guy, who looked culturally-straight and--in the 1970s--still dressed himself in a sport-jacket and dress shirt when he dropped by his paperback publisher's office.

With some gray spots in whatever hair was left on his crew-cutted head, Spillane looked neither older nor younger than most U.S. men then in their 50s (which was apparently his then age during the 1970s) generally looked like. And in the 1970s, Spillane seemed to look to me more like a middle-aged aging jock in his build and face than much like a middle-aged aging novelist or writer.

The sale of the pulp novels and movie and television adaptations of the novels that Spillane had written, in the decades before he appeared about 8 yards from me inside the NAL office, had likely made Spillane very wealthy and, perhaps, some kind of literary celebrity name for some U.S. readers and movie or television viewers. But--despite smiling in a satisfied way as he left the inner windowed-office of Marge, the NAL publicity director, exited the outer office and headed towards the floor's skyscraper elevator in a rapid way--Spillane didn't seem to expect anybody in the commercially-oriented NAL publishing firm to stop their work and treat him as if he were royalty; 

Perhaps, in part, because Spillane may have realized that, by the 1970s--as a result of the cultural impact of the post-1969 new wave of feminist consciousness on most U.S. readers of novels--most people, especially women who worked within the U.S. publishing world sub-cultural, considered most of his commercially profitable novels to now be old-fashioned and out-of-date in the sexist macho male personal/political consciousness they reflected.