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PARTISAN REVIEW
ing sold by ourselves. We believe our destiny should be within our
own hands."
The commercial rationale for globalization would seem to be
irrefutable, the proof being that the process is everywhere in
evidence.
It
makes sense: there's no reason a well-managed publish–
ing company can't publish books of every kind, in every format, in
every available market. Certainly the trend is unmistakable.
Readers of the business section on February 16, 1988 are aware that
Pearson, the British conglomerate in which Rupert Murdoch has a
sizable stake, has just bought venerable U. S. textbook publisher
Addison-Wesley. Please note that Pearson owns Penguin with all
its
holdings-and that Murdoch owns Harper
&
Row in addition to his
20.6% share of Pearson. And you thought his mind was occupied
exclusively with saving
The New York Post.
* *
Because of the centrality of books in our culture - a cen–
trality that has thus far survived the computer and the VCR - there is
often a sense of nervous urgency when publishing people ponder the
industry's future. That is another peculiarity of the book business: it
is often to be seen taking stock of itself, amid rumors of disaster ("I
hear that sixty-seven people got fired in the service department of
Harper
&
Row") and spectacular strokes of good fortune ("Iacocca!
Cosby! Trump! It's like minting money!"), at fancy midtown and
up-and-coming Union Square restaurants, where lunch is cele–
brated as much as consumed.
One question that recently got asked a lot is, how will the in–
dustry do in the wake of the stock market crash of last October 19th?
Opinion seems divided between the venison eaters who are frankly
uneasy and the people having cold poached salmon who hold that,
for all its risks, the book business is recession-resistant. The argu–
ment the latter make is that the need for textbooks is constant and
that in times of national travail the demand for inexpensive forms of
home entertainment - books, cassettes - goes up, not down. It cer–
tainly sounded good over dessert.
Many gossipy lunchtime conversations effortlessly perpetuate
publishing's sense of itself as "the new Hollywood." The phrase, as
publisher Joni Evans uses it, refers to a process that has gone on ever
since "the
People
Magazine society came in": the transformation of
authors into telegenic celebrities, who prosper to the extent that they
look and sound glamorous on morning television shows. Authors
