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The breakdown of consciousness
By Paige Arthur
Confronted by the discoveries of artificial intelligence, some philosophers are questioning the very minds that keep their profession afloat
(11/20/98)

Historiographic revisionism
By Christopher Shea
DNA evidence shows that Jefferson fathered at least one of Sally Hemings' children, and his academic defenders are scurrying to cover their tracks
(11/18/98)

What do Jefferson and Clinton have in common (besides randiness)?
By Christopher Hitchens
Answer: They're both protected by a group of credulous historians
(11/18/98)

Camille on Campus
By Camille Paglia
Allan and Harold Bloom dared to buck the conformity and cowardice of the academy
(11/18/98)

Jane Eyre, to go
By Victoria Olsen
Internet plagiarism: Where the term papers are free and the words are misspelled
(11/13/98)

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IT'S ALL ABOUT PARTIES -- AND THE BOTTOM LINE | PAGE 1, 2
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"The Radcliffe Publishing Course does a great job showing you that there are business concerns that you can't escape," said recent graduate Dan Kois. But these lessons are carefully leavened with name speakers like Morgan Entrekin, president of Grove/Atlantic press -- who turned his father's generous loan into a highly respected publishing house that has issued such books as the 1997 National Book Award winner "Cold Mountain." Sporting long hair, wire-rim glasses and a seersucker suit, the publishing playboy explained how he graduated from college with no plans and few ambitions, and through dumb luck and some help from his good friends Richard Hugo and Ray Carver, just happened to stumble into the "fraternity of publishing."

The cavalier hipster also waxed nostalgic about the old days of publishing, when a few smart, idiosyncratic men made the decisions, instead of the corporate suits who dominate the industry today. "I do things differently than most," he said. After his speech, he invited the class out drinking with him at the Bow & Arrow, a bland campus establishment. Leading the way into the bar, followed by scores of mostly female students, he bought a round of drinks. Scoping out the room for pretty young talent, Entrekin bantered and flirted like a solicitous high school English teacher. "I'm not about money and power," he said. "I'm about art and love."

This debaucherous excursion is an annual course tradition, advertised by the director with a wink and a sly chuckle. The drinking, the name-dropping and the old-world chumminess are an essential part of the curriculum, balancing out the dour talk of marketing and business plans. "Publishing," preaches Hess, "is one of those rare fields where work and play are intermingled." And thus, young book lovers must learn about the fine art of schmoozing, as well as how to calculate a print run.

This uneasy marriage is perhaps best embodied by "sherry hour," a daily soiree where students and publishing bigs drink wine, munch on finger food and mingle. Sherry is, in fact, not available, but it is the cachet, not the drink, that is being served. With a deceptively refined demeanor, the future publishers form concentric circles around their potential employers, firing pithy anecdotes and sharp witticisms to defeat their able competitors. It is in this seemingly casual arena that many important connections are made, and prominent careers are born.

For the $5,000 admission fee, almost every student gets a job soon after the course ends in August. The workshops and lectures that teach the finer points of the industry, the extensive network of graduates and the sherry hour schmoozing do indeed help, but the Radcliffe Course's high placement ratio might have a more prosaic explanation. "It's not that the students are better qualified," explained Greg Giangrande, the director of human resources of Hearst Publishing. "It's just that it's the time of year when there are openings. It's easier to get résumés, attend career fairs and know that these students have invested time and money in learning about publishing."

While most people take the Radcliffe Publishing Course to get a job or to make connections, the program offers something that might be even more important -- a vision of success. For young people starting out in the industry, faced with very low pay, little chance for upward mobility and unrelentingly long hours, being exposed to all those powerful and accomplished industry players can be an inspiring, if somewhat deceiving, experience. It will almost certainly be the last time they talk to these higher-ups for at least a few decades.

The voices that are strikingly absent at Radcliffe Publishing are the editorial assistants, the assistant publicists, the production assistants and all the other entry-level employees. Or to put it another way, at no point do the students hear from someone who will be like them. Instead, they learn about the great triumphs, the ubiquitous parties and the art and the love. They learn about all these things right out of college, before they can realize how remarkable and unreachable they truly are.

"They make it seem all rosy with all those success stories," said Meredith Arthur, a recent graduate who is now an editorial assistant at Harcourt Brace. "And you're supposed to glean some general trend, but there is none." But that is precisely the point. A common trend would limit the pool of applicants and, in turn, stack the deck toward the talented or rich or ambitious or whomever. From the first day of the Radcliffe Publishing Course, you learn that success is eminently reachable and ridiculously random -- the only common experience being the course itself. "I ask the speakers to tell the story about how their careers developed," Hess said, "because it gives a sense of what an accidental industry this is."

A recent New York Times article tried to explain why young people take jobs as editorial assistants. It was titled simply: "It's the cachet, not the money." The Radcliffe Publishing Course tries to teach young book lovers the nuts and bolts of the business, while simultaneously charming them with cachet. It aims to disillusion and romanticize simultaneously, providing a frank picture of the real world and a fantastical image of the good life. But for some aspiring publishers this is just the sort of tonic they need to brace themselves for the first years of paper pushing. As Brendan Cahill, a student who graduated this past August, put it, "Getting into publishing is so daunting, and at the course you get to interact with people who have made it, with people who are where you want to be. It's good to see the bright side, especially since you're going to go through some tough years ahead."
SALON | Nov. 23, 1998

Jason Zinoman is the books editor of citysearch.com. He lives in New York.