I worked for Random House. I had obtained the job through a writing teacher. People say a young male is not fully mentally developed until his mid twenties? I think that's true. I had no idea what I was doing. I should not have been permitted to ride the subway, let alone hold down employment. I went to look at a place on 5th Street, in Park Slope, and I panicked, on a downtown train, when I heard the "F" W. 4th St. option announced. W. 4th? Surely this meant I was in Brooklyn already? It had not occurred to me that, passing from Manhattan to Brooklyn, I would have gone over, or under, a large body of water. So I ran up the steps, onto W. 4th, and breathlessly asked a stranger to confirm that I was in "the Slope." Cold, silent stares--a New Yorker tradition!--rained down, and down, and down on me.
My flashiest overlord was Kate Medina. She wasn't my boss, but really she was everyone's boss. Look her up. She had managed the literary careers of Sandra Day O'Connor, E.L. Doctorow, Jane Fonda, Anna Quindlen, and Nancy Reagan. At the time of my brief employment at Random House, Medina was working with Ms. Fonda, and you'd see here there--Jane!--in the hallways, wearing strange floppy hats and radiating crazed intensity. There was some debate over what she would call her book--and I think for a while it was "Act Three"--but all was resolved when someone stumbled upon the title "My Life So Far." And I thought, really? That's the best we can do? It's like when Patti LuPone invited fans to compete to choose the title of *her* own memoir, and the winning entry was--truth be told!--"Patti LuPone."
Kate Medina dyed her hair brown and wore pearls, and you couldn't begin to guess her age, which was the point. My colleague, Kate's assistant, drew fire from Kate when she once allowed Kate's less-than-confident signature to make its way into an Advanced Reader's Edition of an Amy Bloom book. A fluttery, shaky signature? How could this matter? It mattered because book critics nationwide would pick up this book, note the tremulousness of that signature, and conclude, "Gosh, Kate Medina is getting old. I hope she's still in good health." This was a level of shrewdness--attention to detail--entirely foreign to me. I had no idea what kind of impression I made on the world, and I'm sure I didn't even realize people were making inferences based on my hair, my posture, my walk. I was, however, discovering clothing, and I drew great joy from pairing blazers with hoodies (!), and from wearing a tee shirt *on top of* a dressy button-down.
Ms. Medina was a serious and ambitious person, and so it was reasonably easy to mock her. (Do you know that Forbidden Broadway has the easiest time with a parody when the thing they're assailing is actually a good piece of work? When the writer getting parodied has a strong voice and a clear point of view? It's much easier to poke fun at a thing with integrity--"Hamilton," say, or "Into the Woods"--than to make jokes about a muddy, gutless, mediocre musical. This I learned--as well--at some point in my early adulthood.) Medina fired assistants regularly--almost every other month, it seemed--so there was great rancor among the scurrying assistants; there was gleeful malice within the assistant pool. "She called me in yesterday, and she said, Edgar will be publishing in the fall. She was all excited. She meant Edgar Doctorow. She said to me, Jonathan, this is major. I mean, Jonathan? We are thinking NOBEL PRIZE." There were very few minds--beyond Medina's--that ever believed E.L. Doctorow was in the running for a Nobel Prize.
I was more interested in literary gossip and fashion tips than I was in doing my job and so, like many other assistants, I was eventually canned. This was a smart move. I, too, would have canned myself (though I'd like to think I wouldn't have hired myself in the first place). Several months later, I went alone to the movie theater to see "The Devil Wears Prada," and I wept quietly in my chair, because I felt this film had spoken directly to me--in a way that most movies did not. I knew how it felt to be (briefly) a hick in a glamorous world. I knew the awkwardness of staring at Meryl Streep without her makeup, as she, Meryl, began murmuring about her own divorce. (Wasn't this just another version of the Kate Medina shaky-signature incident?) I did *not* know what it was like to be romantically entangled with a hard-charging chef-aspirant in the form of sweet, vapid Adrian Grenier--but, of course, this is why we pay eight (or ten, or sixteen) dollars at the ticket window. We pay for some small bits of fantasy.
I've been reading Lorrie Moore's essays, and she recalls her first job in NYC. She was a paralegal. Also, I'm planning to leave New York. At long last. And so I'm in a valedictory mood. More later. Fifteen years ago, I was clueless and frightened--a toddler trapped within a semi-adult body. Now, the body is heavier, and my hair-line is receding, and I still feel a bit like a toddler. But: onward! Sally forth!
My flashiest overlord was Kate Medina. She wasn't my boss, but really she was everyone's boss. Look her up. She had managed the literary careers of Sandra Day O'Connor, E.L. Doctorow, Jane Fonda, Anna Quindlen, and Nancy Reagan. At the time of my brief employment at Random House, Medina was working with Ms. Fonda, and you'd see here there--Jane!--in the hallways, wearing strange floppy hats and radiating crazed intensity. There was some debate over what she would call her book--and I think for a while it was "Act Three"--but all was resolved when someone stumbled upon the title "My Life So Far." And I thought, really? That's the best we can do? It's like when Patti LuPone invited fans to compete to choose the title of *her* own memoir, and the winning entry was--truth be told!--"Patti LuPone."
Kate Medina dyed her hair brown and wore pearls, and you couldn't begin to guess her age, which was the point. My colleague, Kate's assistant, drew fire from Kate when she once allowed Kate's less-than-confident signature to make its way into an Advanced Reader's Edition of an Amy Bloom book. A fluttery, shaky signature? How could this matter? It mattered because book critics nationwide would pick up this book, note the tremulousness of that signature, and conclude, "Gosh, Kate Medina is getting old. I hope she's still in good health." This was a level of shrewdness--attention to detail--entirely foreign to me. I had no idea what kind of impression I made on the world, and I'm sure I didn't even realize people were making inferences based on my hair, my posture, my walk. I was, however, discovering clothing, and I drew great joy from pairing blazers with hoodies (!), and from wearing a tee shirt *on top of* a dressy button-down.
Ms. Medina was a serious and ambitious person, and so it was reasonably easy to mock her. (Do you know that Forbidden Broadway has the easiest time with a parody when the thing they're assailing is actually a good piece of work? When the writer getting parodied has a strong voice and a clear point of view? It's much easier to poke fun at a thing with integrity--"Hamilton," say, or "Into the Woods"--than to make jokes about a muddy, gutless, mediocre musical. This I learned--as well--at some point in my early adulthood.) Medina fired assistants regularly--almost every other month, it seemed--so there was great rancor among the scurrying assistants; there was gleeful malice within the assistant pool. "She called me in yesterday, and she said, Edgar will be publishing in the fall. She was all excited. She meant Edgar Doctorow. She said to me, Jonathan, this is major. I mean, Jonathan? We are thinking NOBEL PRIZE." There were very few minds--beyond Medina's--that ever believed E.L. Doctorow was in the running for a Nobel Prize.
I was more interested in literary gossip and fashion tips than I was in doing my job and so, like many other assistants, I was eventually canned. This was a smart move. I, too, would have canned myself (though I'd like to think I wouldn't have hired myself in the first place). Several months later, I went alone to the movie theater to see "The Devil Wears Prada," and I wept quietly in my chair, because I felt this film had spoken directly to me--in a way that most movies did not. I knew how it felt to be (briefly) a hick in a glamorous world. I knew the awkwardness of staring at Meryl Streep without her makeup, as she, Meryl, began murmuring about her own divorce. (Wasn't this just another version of the Kate Medina shaky-signature incident?) I did *not* know what it was like to be romantically entangled with a hard-charging chef-aspirant in the form of sweet, vapid Adrian Grenier--but, of course, this is why we pay eight (or ten, or sixteen) dollars at the ticket window. We pay for some small bits of fantasy.
I've been reading Lorrie Moore's essays, and she recalls her first job in NYC. She was a paralegal. Also, I'm planning to leave New York. At long last. And so I'm in a valedictory mood. More later. Fifteen years ago, I was clueless and frightened--a toddler trapped within a semi-adult body. Now, the body is heavier, and my hair-line is receding, and I still feel a bit like a toddler. But: onward! Sally forth!
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