Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (5)

 So many decades later I can no longer recall the names of either the New American Library publicity director's assistant or the New American Library publicity director's secretary, during the time I worked in that paperback book publisher's Manhattan skyscraper office, as a publicity clerk in the mid-1970s.

The New American Library publicity director's assistant was a young white woman, who didn't seem very intellectual, in her early 20s, who apparently was fresh out of college. Despite her having long brown hair, a slim, youthful figure and generally wearing pants or blue jeans and dressing in a less culturally-straight-looking way than most women of the previous generation, she was still likely to have been considered just average-looking by most men and women in the 1970s; also, in part, because she didn't seem to radiate many friendly vibes, particularly.

The assistant to the publicity director had apparently been able to land this relatively high-paying job as her first job after graduating college and getting only a B.A. degree because, in part, her father apparently had some kind of high executive position elsewhere within the corporate media conglomerate that then controlled New American Library, as one of its subsidiary divisions.

Most of her workday seemed to consist mostly of sitting behind her desk telephoning or answering the telephone calls of the radio or television show producers involved in determining which New American Library paperback book authors would, or would not, be invited to appear as guests on corporate media radio or televisions shows; to talk about the writer's book. Or else, telephoning or answering the phone calls of the particular New American Library paperback book authors for whom she was setting-up or had scheduled radio or television show book-related interviews.

Perhaps because the publicity director's assistant always seemed busy and on the telephone during each workday--or perhaps because she was the kind of uppper middle-class classist white woman snob, who had been socialized to not converse much at the workplace with male clerical office workers whose jobs paid much less per week than her own did--I cannot, in retrospect, recall her ever conversing with me. Or even acknowledge my existence during the whole time I was employed as the New American Library publicity clerk--despite the fact that her desk against an office wall, but separated from my desk by the desk of the publicity director's secretary, was only about four yards to the right of the desk I sat behind in the same department.