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.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (18)

 It was while I was publicity clerkin' at the New American Library paperback publishing firm that the heiress to the super-rich Hearst Dynasty's excess wealth, Patty Hearst, was taken hostage in Berkeley, California by the Symbionese Liberation Army [SLA[ racially-mixed urban guerrilla group.

Led by an ex-California prisoner named "Cinque" a/k/a Donald DeFreeze, the SLA demanded that the family descendants of 20th-century media baron William Randolph Hearst/"Citizen Kane"--who in the 1970s still controlled many newspapers, magazines and U.S. television stations--both disseminate the SLA's revolutionary communiques and set up a "food-for-the-poor"/"serve the people" program.

Soon after the SLA grabbed Patty Hearst and her then-boyfriend--a guy named Steve Weed (who apparently had previously been somewhat politically sympathetic towards the U.S. antiwar movement as a student), some folks in U.S. left circles and U.S. underground press circles were already speculating that both the Red Brigade urban guerrilla group in 1970s Italy and the SLA were "agent-provocateur" groups set up by police agents to grab headlines and discredit left-wing movements.

But, like Bernardine and the Weather Underground (who issued an open letter to the 1970s underground press which, while criticizing the SLA for previously killing an authoritarian Black school superintendent in Oakland, noted that "for two generations, the Hearst newspapers have wielded their power" and "the guerrillas have kidnapped the daughter of a rich and powerful man in order to provide food to the poor"), I then felt the SLA's "arrest" of the daughter of the then-Hearst Corporation Chairman of the Board Randolph Hearst was morally and politically justified; as well as a creative way to break through the 1970s U.S. corporate mass media's continued denial of free speech rights and equal mass media access to most anti-imperialist revolutionary U.S. political groups who wished to present their political viewpoint to people in the United States.

So using some of the free time during my workdays in the New American Library office to read one of the newspapers that was reprinting the texts of SLA communiques, I actually ended up writing a folk song, titled "Live Like Cinque," which included the lyrics "Live like Cinque, the champion of the poor" around this time. Because in the 1970s I then felt that text like the following reflected my own feelings and political viewpoint in many ways:

"We must first understand who the Hearsts are, who they serve and represent. Randolph A. Hearst is the corporate chairman of the fascist media empire of the ultra-right Hearst Corporation, which is one of the largest propaganda institutions of this oppressive military dictatorship of the militarily armed corporate state that we now live under in this nation..."

And I also then felt that the SLA was justified in making the following demand of Randolph Hearst, as the price for returning his daughter, Patty Hearst:

"Each person with one of the following cards is to be given 70 dollars [equal to around $437 dollars in 2024 U.S. dollars] worth of meats, vegetables, and dairy products: all people with welfare cards, Social Security pension cards, food stamp cards, disabled-veteran cards, medical cards, parole or probation papers, and jail-or-bail release slips."

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library [NAL] Revisited: (17)

 Two other New American Library [NAL] employees I vaguely remember, after so many years, were an elderly couple, seeming to be in their late 50s or early 60s, who--almost in their own outer office world across the aisle from me, worked in another one of the offices with (like the NAL publicity director's office) a skyscraper window , out of which one could see the street below.  The white elderly husband and his white elderly wife had apparently previously made some kind of a deal, with either NAL or with the Times-Mirror media conglomerate, to sell their previously independent Daw paperback-publishing firm to either NAL or Times-Mirror.

So now, their Daw paperback firm, that published science fiction and fantasy paperback books--which apparently had never been able to sell as many copies as the books that Stephen King wrote in the decades after 1970 did--was now just a subsidiary of a mass media conglomerate, in an office surrounded by NAL executives who seemed to rarely interact with them.

I can't recall having exchanged any words with the culturally straight, elderly couple. But during my time as a NAL wage slave, my impressions is that the beardless husband, who wore glasses and always came to work dressed in a suit and tie, and the conventionally-looking wife, who always came to work wearing a dress, were used to working together alone and ignoring everybody else at the office. So they barely noticed or cared that no one at NAL seemed interested in socializing or conversing with them; despite Daw being now distributed and marketed by NAL. 

I had been into reading science fiction paperbacks and watching TV shows like Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But by the time I was publicity clerkin' at NAL in the mid-1970s my reading interests had changed so much that, when I did read fiction, I mainly read fiction that reflected a socialist realism, feminist, African-American, Beat Generation or working-class aesthetic. So I don't recall which science fiction novels were published by NAL with the Daw imprint or whether its science fiction paperbacks were generally considered to be of higher literary quality than what other science fiction paperback publishers were publishing in the 1970s.

What I do recall, though, is that--after I opened for the NAL publicity director some envelopes (which each contained a photocopied clipping of the latest print media reviews of NAL-published/marketed books) and noticed that one of the mailed-in print media reviews included a mean-spirited and personal attack on her husband's qualification to hold his position as NAL's Daw imprint editor/publisher, which I first showed to the Daw woman co-editor/publisher (before letting the NAL publicity director see it), she read it and then quickly tore up the hostile photocopied clipping.

The only other New American Library Library [NAL] worker I still have some memory of so many years later, mainly because I did have a conversation with him alone inside the office in which he worked, was a usually casually-dressed white visual artist in his late 20s, whose job was to create and draw the different illustrated covers that were printed on each of the NAL paperback books.

The NAL visual artist didn't have to work 9-to-5 while dressed in a suit and tie when he came to his skyscraper office "studio"/ private office each day.  And he could pretty much spend the day creating and drawing the illustrations used on the book covers, without having to interact personally with any of the business-oriented NAL executives and higher-up corporate-types.

But my impression, after chatting with him alone in his private office at some length, where I had been told to go to in order to pick up some rush book cover illustrations he had been assigned to complete, was that this NAL paperback book cover illustrator would have preferred to be at home during the day or in a studio, working on his own paintings, rather than being in the skyscraper each day doing what he likely considered to be "hack work." 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (16)

 Within a few weeks after I began publicity clerkin' at New American Library, however, it became obvious that, by the mid-1970s, the most power within its office, in determining which manuscripts were to be published, promoted and publicized most, was held--not by its culturally-straight, white upper-middle-class female editorial director--but by its culturally-straight and less intellectual white upper-middle-class male sales department executives.

And because the manuscripts most likely to be marketed commercially most profitably as paperback books, were those that tied-in to already-produced media conglomerate movies, television shows or to mass media celebrities, or were those manuscripts most likely to be adapted into a Hollywood movie or commercial television show, those were the kind of manuscripts that NAL's sales department executives most wanted to see NAL accept and publish.

So even if the New American Library's editorial director may have wanted NAL/Signet to be into publishing manuscripts of a more enduring and higher literary quality than what it published in the mid-1970s,  it's likely that the intellectually low-brow NAL male sales department exeutives would have blocked her from doing so; since the paperback book publishing firm's male sales department executives had little interest in literature and evaluated writers' manuscripts solely on the basis of whether or not they would increase NAL's annual business revenue.

Among the only four other NAL employees I have vague memories of, after so many years, was a young white woman clerical worker whose desk was around 10 yards to the left from my desk, in some other department of the paperback book publishing office. Looking to be in her early 20s, she still dressed up for work each day in a culturally-straight way; and, despite it being in the mid-1970s, still never came to work casually dressed in slacks, or even less-casually in pant-suits,--unlike most young white women clerical workers her age were then starting to do. But still, this young woman was likely to have been considered the most physically beautiful younger woman in the NAL office, by most men.

Despite her dressing in a culturally-straight way, because she was both a NAL clerical worker, like I was, and a younger woman whom I also considered physically beautiful, after I first noticed her, I, initially, hoped that she would be interested in perhaps occasionally chatting with me or getting to know each other.

But, despite both being stuck in clerical worker wage-slave slots at the same workplace, after I smiled at her and said "hi" one day when she walked passed my desk within the office, and she seemed to turn her head the other way and did not even say "hi" in return, the vibe I got from her was that I was definitely not the kind of guy she would ever be interested in conversing with or dating--even if she didn't already have a boyfriend (which, given her physical beauty, she likely already had).  So no words were ever exchanged between this physically beautiful NAL clerical worker and me during the whole time I was publicity clerkin' at New American Library.

 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (15)

 So many years later, I no longer have much memory of other people who worked at New American Library [NAL] during the mid-1970s. The person at NAL who seemed to then have the most influence, from an editorial decision-making point of view, in determining which submitted manuscripts were to be finally accepted for publication, was a culturally-straight-looking and dressed white upper-middle-class white woman in her late 20s or early 30s.

This top NAL editorial decision-maker received a copy of each puublicity release, that was written by the NAL publicity director, Marge, and typed up by me, about every paperback book that was being publicized by NAL; at the same time copies of  the press release were put into envelopes and mailed out to various corporate media newspaper, magazine or radio-television book reviewers.

Most men then would likely not have considered the NAL editorial decision-maker as physically attractive as Marge still was in the mid-1970s, despite the chief NAL editor being younger. But with her smiling, easy-going, good-natured personality within the office--which seemed to reflect the fact that she now felt happy with the kind of work she was being paid a good salary to do within the world of publishing--most men in the mid-1970s would still not have considered NAL's then-most influential editorial department decision-maker unattractive.

Politically, the NAL's top editorial decision-maker seemed to be, like Marge, just an anti-racist and anti-war, culturally-straight liberal in the mid-1970s; who had not been involved enough in the late 1960s or early 1970s hip youth counter-culture to have developed a more politically radicalized, anti-imperialist and pro-Black Panther Party antii-racist political consciousness, like I had.

But, given some of the early 1970s women's liberation movement-related and feminist paperback books that NAL had started to market (after the white middle-class's feminist movement began to receive much more favorable corporate mass media coverage, following the well-attended Women's Liberation march in Manhattan in the summer of 1970, and the idea of "women's lib"  then became a trendy one within U.S. upper-middle-class white liberal circles), it's likely that NAL's editorial department boss was a more conscious bourgeois feminist in her political views than Marge was in the mid-1970s, when I was publicity clerkin' under the two of them at New American Library.

Many years later, I noticed some info appearing on the internet that seemed to indicate that this same NAL editorial director may have graduated from Barnard College in the early 1960s--in the years before historical events and Columbia Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] chapter campus organizing had eventually politically radicalized many Columbia and Barnard students.

And many years later, I also noticed some info appearing on the internet that seemed to indicate that some of the post-World WarII baby-boom fiction writers (who weren't ever as politically or culturally radical as most pre-World War II-born novelists or Movement activists, like Marge Piercy, Carl Oglesby and Abbie Hoffman, or most pre-World War II-born or post-World War II baby-boom 1960s underground New Left Movement writers)--like Maine-based left-liberal Stephen King (who still believed in the 21st-century that the Warren Commission's "official" version of what happened in Dallas, Texas between November 22, 1963 and November 25, 1963 was true)--were promoted within the paperback book publishing world by this particular white upper-middle-class woman NAL editor in the 1970s.

Not sure, myself, how true the info on the internet I came across was. But most of the writers who became best-selling U.S. fiction book authors in the late 1970s and in the 1980s pretty much failed to reflect the literary values and historical social/economic realities experienced by most hip counter-cultural, post-WWII baby-boom working-class people of all racial backgrounds, in their fiction.

So the class situation reality, middle-class life interests, fantasies, values and ideological/political perspective of the NAL editor likely were reflected by the particular best-selling U.S. fiction writers whose literary careers she chose to promote, I suspect.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (14)

Publicity clerkin' in the New American Library book publishing corporate office, within the plastic Sixth Avenue skyscraper each day from 9 to 5 or 9:30 to 5:30, Monday through Friday, produced little variety in may daily workday routine at this office.

In the mid-1970s, within the skyscraper corporate offices like the New American Library one (in which lettering engraved on the wall, with the words "Times Mirror", could be seen as you walked through the office door, to remind you that the New American Library paperback publishing firm was, by then, a subsidiary of a larger corporate media conglomerate), besides escaping from your wage-slave cage desk for an hour everyday to eat lunch outside the skyscraper somewhere (and maybe, afterwards, then sit in a park or library, shop or window shop or just walk around on the street), you also got a 15 to 20-minute coffee break away from your desk, to break up your morning; and a 15 to 20-minute coffee break away from your desk to break up your afternoon.

A non-unionized worker for some food vendor, whose boss had won the concession contract to sell the coffee and cakes to the employees at the offices within the building, would roll one of the food vending carts, which contained wrapped-up cakes and buttered rolls, a coffee dispenser, juice bottles and fruits, near the glass front door of each office. And some of the New American Library workers or executives would either purchase a cup of coffee to bring back to their desks or stand around chatting with other workers or executives during the morning or afternoon coffee break.

Becaause I both didn't drink coffee then and didn't encounter any other workers around the food vending cart who seemed either culturally hip or interested in chatting with me, I usually just waited in line, purchased a Danish cake or a buttered roll and returned to my workplace desk for most of my coffee breaks at New American Library, in both the morning and afternoon.

While sitting at my desk, though, I always made sure that I didn't resume doing any work I still had to do until the 15 to 20 minutes were up. But if the NAL publicity director happened to be speaking to someone on her office telephone, her secretary was also on the telephone, and a third telephone call came through, I would then sometimes have to pick up the telephone, occasionally, during my coffee break time. 

  

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (13)

 A final response of mine to hearing about Dylan's initial 1970s "comeback tour" was to take a Long Island Railroad train out to the Nassau Coliseum, on the evening that Dylan was performing live on Long Island and charging the inflated concert ticket price, to see if any Yipster Times readers or Dylan Liberation Front/Rock Liberation Front supporters--who also felt that some hip capitalists were individually enriching themselves by being involved in youth cultural rip-off activity and collaboration with music industry media conglomerates that economically exploited and politically manipulated U.S. music fans and the U.S. youth market--would be protesting there.

But when I arrived outside the Nassau Colisuem, as mostly white middle-class and white upper middle-class suburbanite post-1966 Dylan fans were walking towards and through the concert arena's doors, the only sign of any protest I noticed was a Yipster Times writer named Aron passing out a leaflet in the arena's parking lot.

The leaflet included a photocopied image of a check from CBS to Bob Dylan for $80,000 [equal to around $482,000 in 2022]; which seemed to indicate that in the mid-1970s Dylan was apparently collecting over 10 times as much money each month from the CBS media conglomerate as the vast majority of mid-1970s freaks and U.S. music fans were able to earn in a year, at whatever menial, straight 9-to-5 wage enslavement job (like the publicity clerk job at New American Library that I then had) they were trapped in during the mid-1970s.

And the leaflet the Yipster Times writer was attempting to distribute pointed out that, with that kind of money already passing into Dylan's 1970s bank account from CBS on a regular basis, there was no economic justification, other than hip capitalist individual greed, for Dylan to be charging his fans so much money for tickets to his initial live concerts in the mid-1970s.

After I said a few words of encouragement to the Yipster Times writer when he handed me the leaflet, he, alone, continued to hand out his leaflets to as many of the post-1966 Dylan fans as he could encounter, before they marched into the Nassau Coliseum.

Standing alone myself in front of the entrance to the Nassau Coliseum, I observed, for awhile, how the suburban music fans reacted when they were handed the leaflet.  And I noticed that Aron wasn't receiving much of a response, one way or the other, from the music fans who accepted the leaflets he handed to them.

So I concluded that the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island was too far from Manhattan neighborhoods like the Lower East Side and the Upper West Side for there to be any chance that any protest would develop outside or inside the live Dylan concert on Long Island to express dissatisfaction with the inflated ticket prices Dylan was now charging his music fans.

So when the number of young music fans heading into the Dylan concert began to decrease, I began the long walk alone from the Nassau Coliseum to the Long Island Railroad station to catch the train that would take me back to Brooklyn.  And on the train, I re-read the leaflet the Yipster Times writer had handed me in the Nassau Colisuem parking lot.

But when Dylan performed live in Manhatttan's Madison Square Garden a few days later, some counter-cultural Movement people apparently did appear in larger numbers outside Madison Square Garden to express their dissatisfaction with the ticket prices Dylan was charging for his "comeback tour" performance there. 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (12)

Once I heard about the inflated ticket prices that Dylan was going to charge those U.S. music fans interested in attending his initial 1970s live concerts, I soon telephoned Murray Lerner, the documentary filmmaker who had produced a film in the 1960s, Festival, that contained some footage of the early Dylan performing at the Newport Folk Festival prior to 1966.

But when I asked Murray Lerner over the telephone if it would be possible to arrange for screenings of his 1960s Newport Folk Festival film on some local New York City campuses to be shown for free, to 1970s college students, during the time Dylan was making his initial 1970s live concert tour (so that, for free, younger 1970s music fans could better determine the degree to which the Dylan of the 1970s was different than the Dylan of the early 1960s), Murray Lerner indicated that he still wanted to receive money in the 1970s for allowing 1970s students to see his 1967 Festival film for free, while Dylan was on his well-publicized 1970s "comeback tour."

Hence, it wasn't until the late 1990s or early 21st century that most music fans in the United States who had never seen Murray Lerner's Festival film when it was first released in the 1960s were able to see much of its footage, as well as some added footage, as part of a newly titled film, "The Other Side Of The Mirror: Bob Dylan Live at The Newport Folk Festival."

A second thing I did, when I heard about the inflated prices Dylan was going to charge folks who bought tickets to his initial 1970s live concert tour, was to write a satirical folk song about "Bob Dylan Incorporated", which protested against the commercialism of the new 1970s symbol of hip capitalism: "Bob Dylan Incorporated."

I sang the satirical folk song about "Bob Dylan Incorporated" for awhile inside the slum apartment near the Brooklyn waterfront that I was living in, while Dylan was touring again and I was publicity clerkin' at New American Library. But, by the late 1970s, I no longer was singing this particular song and had lost the piece of paper containing the lyrics for this song.  And I forget if I ever recorded on my cheap cassette tape recorder in the slum apartment the "Bob Dylan Incorporated" satirical folk song on any cheap homemade cassette tape of folk songs I may have mailed to anyone during the mid-1970s. So I no longer can recall what the lyrics were to this particular folk song. 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (11)

By the time Dylan decided to charge inflated prices for his initial 1970s live concerts, the post-World War II period of relative economic affluence for large numbers of U.S. white working-class baby-boomers had begun to end, gasoline for U.S. automobiles no longer only cost 30 cents a gallon and the Nixon-Henry Kissinger administration was (despite signing a peace  agreement with North Vietnam's government in early 1973--after bombing civilian targets in Hanoi during the Christmas 1972 season, while Joan Baez was visiting there on a peace mission) continuing to prolong the Vietnam War by shipping weapons to its puppet Thieu regime in South Vietnam, in an attempt to prevent a military victory by South Vietnam's National Liberation Front [NLF].

And, in addition, despite signing its 1973 agreement which promised that the U.S. government would pay reparations to the North Vietnamese government for all the destruction and deaths its post-1954 military intervention in Vietnam--in violation of the 1954 Geneva Accords--had caused, the Nixon administration was still refusing to begin paying the reparations it had promised to pay.

Yet, as a result of the late 1960s and early 1970s COINTELPRO and FBI political repression that was authorized by both the Democratic Johnson administration and the GOP Nixon-Kissinger administration, by the time Dylan launched his first mid-1970s live concert tour, 1960s Movement groups that had attempted to create Freedom Now!, Black Power! or a Black Revolution in the USA had generally been either destroyed, forced underground or split-up into competing factions; or else, forced to shift politically into a less revolutionary direction during the 1970s. And, by the mid-1970s, the Movement groups that had worked to create an end to U.S. imperialist military intervention overseas and to create a democratized affluent society in the USA, in which U.S. working-class youth of all racial backgrounds would be free of 9-to-5 wage slavery in the 1970s, had generally suffered a similar fate, to some degree.

In addition, by the mid-1970s, many Movement people and post-World War II baby-boomers had begun to realize that U.S. hip capitalists (like Rolling Stone magazine publisher Jann Wenner, etc.) were apparently ripping-off and marketing for personal, individual profit much of the hip counter-culture and hip lifestyle alternative ideas that had been developed collectively by hip Movement, underground newspaper journalists and counter-cultural people of all racial backgrounds during the 1960s.

So what 1970s Movement folks like me considered most culturally distasteful about what Dylan appeared to be up to during his initial 1970s live concert tour was that--despite the early 1960s protest and topical folk songs he had written--the now over-thirty-year-old Dylan seemed to have turned into just another ageing, money-grubbing, hip capitalist entertainer who was into crass commercialism.

And in the 1970s, Dylan seemed to be now using his celebrity and media-reinforced hype to rip-off more money from the U.S. youth market of music fans, by now charging more for his live rock concert tickets than any U.S. rock star had previously charged. Instead of, for example, just doing a series of live concerts in the USA, on a non-profit basis, in which U.S. music fans could obtain concert tickets for free, or for only a minimal ticket price.  

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (10)

By the time it was announced that Dylan was going to do his Newsweek magazine-publicized first 1970s live concert tour in various U.S. cities, at venues like Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and at the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island, I had read Anthony Scaduto's earlier 1970s biography of Dylan, which had portrayed Dylan in a much less flattering way than nearly all of the many other biographical books about Dylan--written during the decades after he seemed to become one of the U.S. media conglomerates and U.S. Establishment's "court rock musicians" and "court singer-songwriter and court rock star aristocrats."

So I was not totally surprised when I heard that the apparently "on-the-make" careerist singer-songwriter who--who in his early 20's, during the early 1960s--had implied, in his writings and in the song lyrics of his, which Broadside magazine frequently published, that, like Woody Guthrie, he wasn't into money-making, was going to now require the U.S. music fans who wished to see him perform live again to pay an individual U.S. ticket price that was higher than U.S. music fans had then ever previously paid to see a live concert by any other 1960s or early 1970s U.S. folksinger, folk or rock singer-songwriter, folk group or rock group.

There was some speculation at the time that one of the reasons Dylan was requiring U.S. music fans to pay so much money for a ticket to one of his "comeback tour" live concerts--which were held not too long after the October 1973 Middle East War (in which the Egyptian government attempted to regain control of the Sinai Peninsula territory of Egypt that the Israeli military had illegally begun occupying following its surprise attack on Egypt which began the June 1967 Middle East War; and the Syrian government attempted to regain control of Syria's Golan Heights territory that Israeli's military also began illegally occupying in June 1967)--in order to provide the Zionist movement's regime in Palestine with some extra private funding to help pay for the cost of its October 1973 war actions.

And because there had also been some indication or speculation, during the early 1970s, that Dylan had become more sympathetic to the politics of the Zionist right-wing extremist JDL group--which Brooklyn's right-wing extremist Zionist Rabbi Kahane then led--and that Dylan falsely regarded the anti-imperialist, left-wing Black Panther Party [BPP] as "anti-semitic" (because the BPP supported the Palestinian people's national liberation struggle), a few Movement people did feel there was some actual basis for assuming Dylan's motive for his initial mid-1970s live concert tour was to raise funds for the Zionist groups or the Israeli government. 

By the early 1980s--despite Dylan disillusioning some more of his audience members, after he seemed to identify himself as some kind of "born again" Christian for awhile--Dylan's more open support for the Zionist movement's state of Israel became more evident after he wrote and recorded his pro-Zionist "Neighborhood Bully" song during the months following the Israeli war machine's June 1982 invasion and accupation of Lebanon.

And by the 21st-century, Dylan's decision to give a live concert in Tel Aviv, despite the call by Palestinian solidarity movement activists for him to express support for their anti-apartheid BDS campaign, by refusing to perform there, seemed to make it even more obvious where Dylan's political sympathies lay, with respect to supporting or opposing the Palestinian national liberation movement's struggle in the Middle East.

But when I was publicity-clerkin' for New American Library in the 1970s while Dylan was making his U.S. corporate media-promoted initial "comeback tour," the fact that Dylan had apparently been sent to Zionist movement-oriented summer camps as an early teenager and--unlike most U.S. anti-imperialist left and Black Liberation Movement activists of the late 1960s--had apparently not begun to oppose Israeli militarism and support the Palestinian liberation movement, was not generally realized or known by most of the Movement people who felt Dylan had pretty much sold out to the hip capitalist Corporate Establishment by the mid-1970s.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (9)

During the same 1970s period when, in my 20's, I was living near the pre-gentrified Brooklyn waterfront in Red Hook and working as a publicity clerk at New American Library, the by-then over 30-year-old Bob "Dylan" Zimmerman--after having pretty much stopped performing any live concert tours within U.S. imperialist society (while the U.S. war machine's attack on Vietnam escalated) when some of his early 1960s initial fans booed him at his 1965 and 1966 live concerts, for seeming to become more commercially-oriented and less Movement-oriented than he had previously been--began his new career as a "never-ending tour" performer.

Not surprisingly, by the time Dylan began performing live again and began his "never-ending tour," Establishment corporate media magazines (like the then-CIA-linked Washington Post Company's Newsweek magaine--which had published an unflattering article about Dylan over a decade before, when his songs were reflecting the concerns of U.S. New Left Movement groups) no longer viewed Dylan as being an anti-Establishment artist.

So in the 1970s the U.S. Establishment promoted Dylan's initial 1970s "comeback tour" by putting his photo on the cover of Newsweek magazine; and, at the same time, Newsweek published a flattering article about Dylan which publicized his initial 1970s live concert tour.

Between 1966 and his initial mid-1970s U.S. concert tour, Dylan could be seen performing live on television in front of Johnny Cash's tv show audience. But--aside from performing at a live concert paying tribute to Woody Guthrie at Carnegie Hall in January 1968 (after Woody's death in 1967), performing before a large audience at the Isle of Wight festival in the UK in 1969 and performing live at the 1971 Bangladesh benefit concert that George Harrison arranged--U.S. music fans had not been able to see Dylan performing live in front of them.

And between 1966 and his initial 1970s "never-ending concert tour" performance, the only new protest folk song Dyland had written that reflected a political issue that concerned most Movement people was the "George Jackson" song. But Dylan's "George Jackson" song was only written after one of the corporate media conglomerate book publishing subsidiaries had previously published George Jackson's Soledad Brother book, only after George Jackson's brother, Jonathan Jackson had been killed and Angela Davis had been arrested, and only after George Jackson was killed.

In addition, Dylan had only written the "George Jackson" song after the A.J. Weberman-led Dylan Liberation Front/Rock Liberation Front (which ex-Beatles member John Lennon supported for awhile) and Abbie Hoffman began criticizing Dylan for not writing new protest songs anymore and characterizing Dylan as a "cultural rip-off artist" who had personally enriched himself by ripping off the 1960s Movement counter-culture and collaborating with the U.S. establishment's CBS media conglomerate's hip capitalist Columbia Records subsidiary.

And only after A.J. Weberman's critique of Dylan's post-1966 political/artistic shift and money-making began to appear in publications like the East Village Other underground newspaper, the Yipster Times, the Village Voice, and even Rolling Stone magazine, as well as being increasingly discussed over some NYC radio stations like WBAI, did Dylan write and record the "George Jackson" song.

So because Dylan didn't write any song and release his record related to George Jackson's unjust imprisonment until after George Jackson was already killed, some Movement music fans speculated that Dylan mainly wrote the "George Jackson" song to try to minimize the growing number of people who were starting to agree with A.J. Weberman's early 1970s East Village Other articles, which were then-arguing that Dylan had sold out politically and artistically to the U.S. corporate Establishment.  

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (8)

Ironically, although I was unaware of District 65's history when I was one of its union members in the 1970s, this labor union had apparently been originally formed by leftist and/or Communist Party USA workers and organizers during the 1930s.

Apparently, its initial focus was to organize workplaces of less than 15 or 10 workers, which the existing CIO-affiliated union leaders felt had too few workers to be worth assigning their own organizers to recruit into their already existing industrial unions. And, as a result of merging for awhile with other unions during the 1940s and early 1950s, by the time I was working at New American Library in the mid-1970s, District 65's officials were also collecting union dues from some publishing firms and other corporations; based on the premise that certain individual clerical workers employed by these firms were occupying a clerical position that had previously been unionized by District 65 (or by a union District 65 had previously merged with), and were still now being represented by District 65.

Being a U.S. working-class person with anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist revolutionary New Left political beliefs, who was also interested in U.S. labor movement organizing and working to create a classless society in the USA in the 1970s, one would have thought that a District 65 union member like me would have tended to get involved more with District 65 activity; or to have tended to interact more with District 65's union office staff or officials at some point, when I was filling its unionized New American Library publicity clerk position.

But by the 1970s, the Old Left District 65 leaders--despite some of them still likely being "closet communists"--appeared to me to be not that much more democratic or less economist in the way they ran their labor unions or related to their rank-and-file District 65 members than were the U.S. labor union bureaucrats who undemocratically controlled the more anti-communist U.S. labor unions; despite the District 65 union bureaucrats likely being less corrupt and less politically reactionary than were the more anti-communist and more class-collaborationist U.S. labor union bureaucrats like George Meany and Lane Kirkland.

Aside from being invited, along with other new members who worked at other workplaces, to go to District 65's office further Downtown and attend a required orientation meeting for new members--where some elderly District 65  union staff members told us about the District 65-run union medical clinic that we were eligible to utilize for free if we needed to see a physician (which, being in my 20s and in good health at this time, except for occasionally getting a cold, I never needed to see, myself)--the District 65 staff members provided us new members no information about District 65's history and what its long-term economic and political goals were; and they showed no interest in learning what District 65's new members felt District 65's concerns and priorities should be.

And during the whole time I was purportedly being represented by District 65 at New American Library and District 65 was receiving dues on the basis of some historical bargaining with New American Library to get that firm to characterize the publicity clerk position as a unionized clerical job slot, I received no information about or any invitation to attend any District 65 membership meeting.

Despite some of its then-elderly leadership having been apparently involved in U.S. left movement politics prior to the 1950s McCarthy era that--in addition to seeking job security, health benefits and higher hourly wages for U.S. workers--also had envisioned creating a more democratic U.S. society in which the workweek was shortened, U.S. workers were more empowered at their workplace and politically, and the U.S. government would not be militaristic, District 65's union leadership in the 1970s now seemed unaware of the following historical reality:

By the mid-1970s, most anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist Movement supporters who were workers, who were born after WWII and who had grown-up during the more economically affluent 1950s wanted to create, in the 1970s, a classless, leisure-oriented society--in which U.S. workers were free of being trapped in 9-to-5 menial jobs and the division of labor that sentenced them to wage-enslavement.

And most post-WWII-born left Movement supporters who were workers in the 1970s wanted control of the corporate media workplace decision-making process (and/or book publishing firms like New American Library) to be in the hands of anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist left U.S. workers. In addition, post-WWII-born left Movement supporting workers in the mid-1970s wanted all the institutions in which District 65 members worked on a daily basis to be involved in rebuilding a 1970s Movement to oppose continued U.S. military intervention in Indochina and elsewhere abroad; and to be institutionally involved in working to create peace in the world by the 1980s, etc.  

 

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (7)

 The New American Library book promotion department director's assistant, whose desk was located not far to the left of my desk, when I was working as a New American Library publicity clerk, also wasn't very interested in talking much about either the mid-1970s world situation or the current political/economic situation within the USA, during the time I sat next to him during the workday.

Seeming to be in his late 40s or 50s, and more into dressing in a culturally straight suit and tie fashion than the younger, bearded white guy, who seemed to be in his early 30s, who was the promotion director he worked under, the white nearly middle-aged promotion director's assistant seemed mostly worried about being subtly pressured--by both the New American Library promotion director and the New American Library VP (who seemed to be in his late 30s)--into looking for a job at another company.

Apparently, these younger on-the-make executives wanted to substitute someone closer to their own age to fill the promotion department director's assistant job slot; because they felt the nearly middle-aged white guy who sat next to me was too old and over-the-hill. And was, in their eyes, apparently not particularly more successful than any other younger person they might hire from another book publishing firm likely would be in helping to increase the bookstore sales of New American Library's catalog of paperback books.

In addition, in their eyes, they apparently now felt he was too old to now "fit in" well with the other younger people who were involved in marketing the New American Library paperback books.

Most of the people who worked in the New American Library firm's skyscraper corporate office weren't members of any U.S. labor union in the mid-1970s. But when I was handed my first paycheck by the personnel manager's assistant--who had given me my typing test when I applied for the job and had had me fill out forms on the first day I reported for work, after being hired--I was surprised to be handed, along with my paycheck, a brochure indicating the New American Library publicity clerk job that I held was a unionized job. And that New York City's District 65 local union was receiving union dues which were being deducted from my paycheck.

Yet during the whole time I was working as a 9-to-5 wage slave in the District 65-unionized publicity clerk job slot at New American Library, I never encountered or spoke with any District 65 shop steward inside the skyscraper office or knew of any other District 65 union member who also filled a unionized job slot at New American Library.

Nor did any representative or organizer from the District 65 labor union office that was located further downtown in Manhattan, which was collecting dures from each paycheck I received for filling the unionized publicity clerk position at New American Library, ever make any appearance at my workplace--during the whole time my labor was being exploited at New American Library.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (6)

 The publicity director's secretary, whose desk was only a few yards to the right of my desk, did occasionally converse with me during the workday, when I was putting in my 9-to-5 wage enslavement time as the New American Library's publicity clerk. But, aside from having the one common interest in being paid on time for spending five days a week a New American Library's office, I can't recall any other common interest that the New American Library's publicity director's secretary and I shared in the mid-1970s.

The New American Library publicity director's secretary (whose name I no longer recall after so many decades) was a white, affluent working-class or lower middle-class woman who seemed to be in either her late 20's or 30's in the mid-1970s. She also seemed culturally straight and socially conventional, as well unaware that a mass-based anti-war movement and anti-war counter-culture and a women's liberation movement had developed within the USA during the 1960s and early 1970s.

Unlike the younger assistant to the publicity director, the secretary of the publicity director still always wore a dress or skirt and blouse to work each day; and seemed  to have not graduated from a 4-year college. Wearing a bit of visible lipstick and make-up each day, the publicity director's secretary also seemed more interested in buying clothes, shopping and acquiring material goods in the mid-1970s than interested in books--despite the fact that she was working for a paperback book publishing firm.

The secretary to the publicity director didn't appear to be married yet, perhaps because even most conventional and culturally straight men about her age likely woud not have considered her particularly attractive on a physical, emotional or personality basis? But my impression was that she was still hoping to find some man to marry who had a job that paid a high enough salary so that she could quit her own job eventually and just become, in Westchester County, a stay-at-home mother, who just raised her children while her husband supported her and her kids.

My vague recollection is that on the rare occasions when some politically-related issue was mentioned while conversing with me, the publicity director's secretary's political perspective tended to reflect the political perspective of whatever the various Establishment politicians and Establishment corporate media news programs were then promoting.

So, not surprisingly, within a few weeks of me working as the New American Library's publicity clerk in the department in which she worked, the publicity director's secretary realized that I wasn't the type of man she found particularly attractive or interesting to work with.

And the longer I worked next to her, the more both she and I found it to be a drag working next to each other or conversing with each other during the time when she wasn't answering the telephone calls for the publicity director, that were shifted to her desk phone in order for her to copy down the messages the telephone callers wished to leave for the New American Library publicity director; or when she wasn't using the telephone on her desk to help the publicity director arrange primt media articles or interviews related to the paperback books that New American Library was then attempting to publicize and market.