At 08:12 PM 1/23/00 -0500, Bill Freind wrote:
 
>I'm surprised by the implicit argument about "important work." Are you really
>suggesting there are any publishing executives who are losing sleep
because a hack
>like Jewel sells 250,000 books, while a good chunk of (for example) Ron
Silliman's
>work is out of print? "Important work," however defined, doesn't keep
>HarperCollins in business. Hell, it barely kept New Directions afloat.
 
I think we may be talking past each other here. I wasn't imputing motives
to anyone in the publishing industry; I was just calling attention to the
cash register. Scribners has a cash cow in the works of Fitzgerald and
Hemingway, and it doesn't want to lose that income to other publishers. Of
course Scribners is in business to make money, and I can't imagine it
rejecting the manuscript of a potential best-seller, ephemeral though it
may be. But isn't it interesting that so much of Scribners' enduring
patrimony -- fundamental work, work that is fundamental because it has
redefined literature for succeeding generations -- was created in the 1920s?
 
Interesting and maybe historically significant?
 
That's all I was trying to say.
 
Jonathan Morse