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 (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.

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.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (4)

 The New American Library publicity director, Marge Ternes, was an easy-going, white upper-middle-class woman who looked like she was in her early 40s in the mid-1970s. With her friendly and sweet personality, her stylish way of dressing and the physical beauty she still possessed, she was the kind of white woman that most men of her generation, and even men who were younger, likely considered quite attractive personally and physically and fun to have as a workmate.

And because she seemed to both enjoy working and talking with the authors whose New American Library books she arranged publicity for, and actually read what most of the New American Library writers had written before writing press releases for their books, it was likely that most of the New American Library writers were happy to have a person like Marge Ternes holding the position as New American Library's publicity director in the mid-1970s.

Prior to working at New American Library, Marge Ternes had previously held the same kind of publicity director job at another Manhattan book publishing firm. So, by the mid-1970s she had had a lot of experience in genererating publicity for a publishing firm's books and was on friendly personal terms with a lot of business contacts in the corporate print media world of Manhattan and around the USA, who decided which books their publications would review or write articles about.

Having attended college and received her 4-year college degree, probably in the liberal arts, in the decade before the 1960s, when most women who attended college still used a lot of make-up and lipstick and wore dresses, not pant-suits, when they went to work in the skyscraper offices, Marge stilll was always arriving at work each day wearing a dress or a skirt and blouse in the mid-1970s.

Although by the mid-1970s--after the coroporate ban on women coming to most skyscraper offices wearing pants or slacks had been lifted due to the pressure of the late 1960s and early 1970s then-rapidly growing women's liberation movement--more women executives, especially those under 30 years of age, were starting to come to the office skyscraper workplaces in pant-suits and wearing less makeup and less or no lipstick; as were more women office workers who weren't executives.

In the mid-1970s, Marge seemed to be happily married and lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her husband and daughter, who appeared to be between around 9 to 12 years of age around the time I was working as a New American Library publicity clerk.

Unlike some other white women executives with careers at that time, who were beginning to use their maiden names again as their workplace names, Marge seemed to feel no desire or need to not still use the last name of her husband, whom she apparently still loved, at the workplace. And Marge and her young daughter--whom most of her pre-high school or pre-junior high school (possibly private Manhattan day school) classmates likely would have considered to be one of the prettiest students in the class at that time--seemed very fond of each other.

Like most left-liberals in Manhattan by this time in the 1970s, Marge was anti-militarist, anti-Nixon and the kind of person who would want to see U.S. society become the kind of society Martin Luther King and the 1960s civil rights movement was working for.

But because she personally seemed to feel both economically secure and personally contented with the kind of life she and her family were able to live in Manhattan and not particularly exploited or oppressed by the kind of work she had to do during the workweek each day in the paperback book publishing world at New American Library, it never seemed likely to me that she would understand why some people of my generation were still into New Left Movement  politics during the 1970s; and had come to regard U..S. society, as a whole, as an insane society or wanted to still see some kind of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist revolution happen in the USA in the 1970s.

Yet if the nature of the publicity clerk job 9-to-5 wage enslavement situation at New American Library in the mid-1970s had only been about typing up the press release copy and letters that Marge wrote out for me and then mail out to her list of corporate print media contacts--sometimes mailed out with a copy of the New American Library book she was publicizing or with the most recent catalog of the books New American Library was then publishing-- and occasionally having to take messages for Marge when the telephone on my desk occasionally happened to ring, I might have ended up working at New American Library longer than I did.

Because, in retrospect, I can't recall Marge ever speaking to me or anyone else whom she supervised or worked with in any kind of impatient or authoritarian way; and, in that sense, her personality seemed similar to the personality my mother had had. In addition, Marge seemed vaguely similar in physical appearance to the way my generally youngish-looking mother had looked, although Marge was a few inches taller than my by then-deceased mother had been.

So if the System was requiring you to be a wage-slave office workers in the mid-1970s Manhattan skyscraper office world, it was not likely that you would have then found a more pleasant and less psychologically hung-up supervisor from the previous generation to work under than Marge Ternes was during that decade.

Yet, in retrospect, I also can't recall ever having any deep philosophical conversations with Marge or any conversations with her in which she openly expressed any concern about the direction the New American Library paperback book publishing business was moving by the mid-1970s.     

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (3)

 In the mid-1970s the publicity department at New American Library consisted of four people: a publicity director, the publicity director's secretary, a publicity director's assistant (who set up interviews of the authors of some of New American Library's most recently-published books with the producers of various local and national corporate media radio or television talk shows) and a publicity clerk.

The New American Library publicity director's private office within the corporate office skyscraper included a large window that enabled the publicity director to look out from her desk at the world outside during the workday. But an aisle about two to three yards wide, that other employees walked through during the workday, separated the doorway from the publicity director's private office from three desks across this aisle.

These three desks across the aisle were separated about two yards from each other. And on the chairs behind each desk sat either the publicity director's assistant, the publicity director's secretary or the publicity clerk.

In the mid-1970s, there were still many skyscraper office workplaces in Manhattan in which the office workers who didn't have their own private office spaces with doors did not work between the three walls of a cubicle. And at New American Library in the mid-1970s, no cubicle wall separated me from the desk and telephone of the publicity director's secretary, which was about two yards away from the right side of my desk. In addition, no cubicle wall separated the New American Library publicity director's secretary's desk and telephone from the desk of the publicity director's assistant, which was about two yards away from the right side of the publicity director's secretary's desk and against a wall on the publicity director assistant desk's own right side.

About three or four yards away from the left side of the publicity clerk's desk, behind which I now sat at the New American Library skayscraper officer, was the desk of the person who was then working as an assistant to the director of New American Library's promotion department.  And, like the New American Library's publicity director, the promotion department director also had a private office with a door in which the person whose office it was could look out a skyscraper window at the outside street below from the skyscraper office.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited: (2)

Being economically impoverished, low-income and a generally low-hourly-waged worker by this time in the mid-1970s during the periods when I wasn't jobless, spending money on purchasing furniture--like a dresser, a desk, a chair or a bed--to use in this slum apartment in Red Hook in the 1970s was not something I could easily afford.

And because, by this time, I had gotten used to living in slum apartments while just using my duffel bag and suitcase to store my few pieces of clothing, that I couldn't dump into or hang up in a closet, I also wasn't particularly interested in buying a dresser to put in this apartment.

And I had also gotten used to just sitting on my mattress on the floor when I did any writing or reading or practiced my guitar and wrote any new folk songs. In addition, whenever I used my cheap portable typewriter or, by now infrequently recorded a tape of my folk songs on my cheap casette tape recorder to mail to someone, I also had gotten used to just typing or recording while sitting on the floor or a mattress on the floor.

So I didn't feel I really needed to spend any extra money getting furniture to fill the rooms in the apartment, which I mainly used to provide me with a place to sleep and spend my evenings--after work during the week or after being outside for most of the weekend days, when the weather wasn't super-bad, just writing folk songs, reading or practicing my guitar.

By this time in the 1970s I also no longer had a television set or watched any TV shows in apartments in which I lived. And, also by this time in the 1970s, I rarely stayed at home that much listening to vinyl albums on some old-fashioned, cheap portable vinyl-record player when I was at home. Because by this time I found it more fun and interesting to spend my time at home creating my own new folk songs and practicing guitar--rather than listening to either old 1960s commercially-motivated rock or commercially-motivated folk vinyl records albums or the vinyl record albums of the 1970s commercially-oriented  "schlock rock" or "schlock singer-songwriter/folk", generally middle-class or upper-middle-class pop songwriters, etc.

When I lived in this slum apartment in Brooklyn, though, I did have a portable AM-FM radio, which I usually just listened to in the morning to hear what the weather was going to be like on a weekday or on Saturday and Sunday; and to hear, on the weekend, what that day's headlines happened to be.

In addition, I also had a small alarm clock on the floor next to my mattress, to make sure that when I had to go to work at a 9-to-5 wage enslavement job during the week (like the publicity clerk job at New American Library), I wouldn't oversleep.

Because AT&T's New York Telephone Company in the mid-1970s still required a big cash deposit to get a telephone installed--and because, by this time in the mid-1970s I was out of touch with most of the people I used to telephone or who used to telephone me in the 1960s and early 1970s--I also felt I couldn't afford or especially needed to pay a big money deposit and a monthly phone bill to have my own telephone in this apartment.

And because, in the 1970s, cellphones, mobiles, smartphones or Iphones were still not yet used by lots of people who lived in New York City, there were still plenty of coin-operated telephone phone booths around on street corners or in stores in most neighborhoods that tenants who didn't have phones in their apartments could use, whenever they wished to make a telephone call.

To get to the New American Library corporate office in Midtown Manhattan from the Red Hook neighborhood apartment in Brooklyn in which I lived, I usually had to leave the apartment by around 8 o'clock and then walk across an overpass that was over the BQE highway, towards the IND subway station that was about a 15-minute walk away.

During the weekday morning rush hours there were usually 30 or 40 commuting workers on the station subway platform also waiting to get on to the next already crowded rush-hour F train, that was heading towards Midtown Manhattan, when I was going to work at the New American Library office.

I can recall feeling that some of the women in their 20s--around the same age I was then--were still physically attractive, despite usually using lipstick and make-up and being dressed up in a culturally-straight, non-hip, plastic sort of way  And my recollection is that most of the women in their 20s on this subway platform each weekday morning looked like they were either clerical office workers, secretaries or receptionists.

But I can't recall ever exchanging any pleasantries or words or conversation on the station platform or on the subway train with any of these young neighborhood women who were around my age, during the whole time I went to work at the New American Library, at around the same time as they traveled to work for whatever corporate offices they each likely worked for.

Clean-shaven, with short-hair and dressed-up in the same cheap suit and tie I had worn when I had been first interviewed for the New American Library publicity clerk job a few weeks before, prior to the Christmas holiday office partying season in the Manhattan book publishing industry, I arrived on time on my first day working at New American Library.

And, as I had been told to do on the phone by the person who had finally agreed to hire me, the then-New American Library Publicity Director Marge Ternes, on arriving at the New American Library office I reported for work at its personnel office.

In the mid-1970s most U.S. book publishing subsidiaries of U.S. corporate media conglomerates like New American Library--or the book publishing firms that had still not yet been purchased by some U.S. or European corporate media conglomerate--still didn't seem to hire many African-Americans for either editorial, executive, book cover illustrator, secretarial, receptionist or clerical positions.

But what the institutionally racist book publishing firms like New American Library in Manhattan apparently were doing in the 1970s, to avoid being accused of discriminating against African-American applicants in their employment practices, was to hire African-American women in their 20s or 30s to either be their personnel directors or be the personnel department employee who initially interviewed and screened all book publishing firm job applicants.

So when I arrived on my first day at work at the New American Library office, the personnel office person who, in a bored way, had me fill out the forms new workers were required to fill out before they were brought to the desk they would be working at, was a well-dressed African-American woman in her mid-20s, whom most men of all racial backgrounds would likely have considered pretty.

The impression I had of her while I worked at New American Library though was, despite being an African-American who worked for a book publishing firm, this personnel office person was not particularly interested in either 1970s Black Liberation Movement politics and Black Liberation Movement history or in literature that much.

And aside from being able to pick up a paycheck from working in New American Library's personnel department that paid more than what she had, at that time at least, been offered for some job in some other Manhattan skyscraper office, she wasn't particularly interested in what paperback books New American Library published; or particularly interested in what she was required to do (which included walking around the office floor every payday and personally handing each New American Library employee their paycheck on payday) to take home her own paycheck on each payday.

Publicity Clerkin' At New American Library Revisited (1)

 Having gotten into reading books again in the early 1970s, I was somewhat excited to have landed the job as a publicity clerk at the New American Library paperback book publishing firm in the mid-1970s.

As a college undergraduate during the 1960s, and even as a high school student in the early 1960s, I had read some of the paperback books that New American Library published under its "Signet" imprint labels. So I initially assumed that the atmosphere within the New American Library publishing firm's skyscraper office headquarters would be  less commercially and money-oriented, more intellectual and literature-oriented and more culturally hip than what I had found when previously working briefly in offices; at places like United Merchants & Manufacturers [UM&M], the alumni relations office of Columbia University, Cardinal Export Company, Playtex, Bulova or the Wall Street area offices that Computerware or the Landmark temp agency had sent me to work briefly at, earlier in the 1970s.

By the time I started going to work at the New American Library office, inside one of the skyscraper office buildings in Midtown Manhattan on Avenue of the Americas, on the west side of 6th Avenue around 52nd and 53rd Street, I was now living in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn--which had still not yet been gentrified in the 1970s.

The first floor apartment in which I now lived was in a two-story, two-unit building that looked like it had been built in the late 19th-century or early 1900s.  The building was located on the last block before the neighborhood's land touched the Brooklyn waterfront by the East River/Buttermilk Channel/Upper Bay water; very close to where the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel entered under the water to start connecting drivers on its underwater road into Lower Manhattan.

So, despite living for nearly a year and a half in this 2 1/2 room slum apartment (in which the cost of heating and electricity for the unit was paid by the owner-occupant landlord) for which I paid a $100 per month rent, I can't recall ever walking the short distance directly eastward to the Brooklyn shoreline from my apartment building; due to the way there being blocked off, somewhat, by the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel's nearby concrete barriers.

The owner-occupant landlord/superintendent of the Red Hook building in which I lived, Luis, was a married guy with a wife and a few children, including a teenage son; and Luis and his whole family lived in the residential unit above me.

Luis appeared to be in his 40s and spoke English with a Spanish language accent that seemed to indicate he had moved to New York City from Puerto Rico during the 1950s or early 1960s. But his teenage son spoke English without any Spanish accent, in a way that seemed to indicate he had either been born in New York City or been living in New York City since he was a young child.

Apparently, the previous owner of the run-down two-unit slum apartment building had decided that it was no longer profitable to rent the first floor unit I was now living in and/or pay real estate taxes on this property in the 1970s--prior to my moving into the building. And, prior to this Brooklyn neighborhood being gentrified in the mid-1980s, the previous owner apparently could not find anyone else who was willing to purchase the building from him.

So, instead of ceasing to pay taxes and just letting the New York City government take over the building he no longer wished to be bothered with, this landlord--who had inherited the building from his parents in the 1950s or early 1960--just decided to give it away to his second floor tenant and superintendent, Luis, when he walked away from owning the building.

Prior to "inheriting" the slum apartment building in which he and his family lived, Luis worked at some kind of day job or night job, in addition to receiving some reduced rent or additional money (perhaps off-the books) from the previous building owner for acting as the superintendent of the building in which he and his family lived.

And after "inheriting" his slum apartment building from the previous owner when the run-down neighborhod had sitll not been gentrified, Luis contined to work at some kind of day job or night job; and he continued to act as the superintendent of the building in which he and his family now lived rent-free and which he now owned.

But after Luis became the landlord of this building, he apparently realized that he could collect a higher rent from the first floor unit that I had moved into, if he installed a more modern electric stove, a new refrigerator, new ceiling lights, modernized the bathroom toilet, sink and shower, plastered and repaired the apartment's walls and ceiling and made sure the plumbing and radiator in the apartment worked well.

So before putting a "for rent" sign in the front window of this first floor apartment, Luis also spent most of his weekend daytime or any extra time he had off from his day job or night job working himself on fixing up the apartment in which I later moved into during the mid-1970s.

It mattered little to me how newly painted the walls of the apartment I rented was or how new the stove, refrigerator, lights or bathroom fixtures were--as long as everything worked and I could afford the rent on the apartment.

So, ironically, even if Luis hadn't spent so much time modernizing somewhat this apartment, he still would have been able to collect his $100 per month rent--in cash and off-the-books---from me on time, for each of the 18 months I ended up spending there as his quiet--and therefore "model"--first tenant in this apartment.

But on the few occasions when I had to ask Luis to fix something in this apartment during the time I lived there, he seemed surprised to notice that in neither the one-half room kitchen nor the living room did I have any furniture. And in the small bedroom in which I slept, the only furniture there was a mattress on the floor (which I had picked up for free from the street)--after someone living in Brooklyn Heights had left the mattress on the sidewalk outside their brownstone, for for the garbage truck to pick up.