Schmoozing and Boozing

Every career has its distinct sinful predilections: politicians have hookers; bankers have embezzling; musicians and moviemakers have imitations and outright theft of ideas. (What else can explain two movies this spring season about "friends with benefits"?) But for the publishing world--for writers and editors alike--it's always been the cocktail hour, the three-martini lunch, and the long whiskey hours of creation. Yes, booze has always had a central place in the world of literature, and not just for the writer pouring over manuscript pages late into the night.

In his Townies column today for The New York Times, writer and former editor at Harper's Magazine Theodore Ross delves into the rituals of the office cocktail, and how alcohol acts like a lubricant when it comes to talking shop, and making books. "The past few weeks the better part of my social life has revolved around drinks," he says, as he looks back on his last days in the office. "Publishing tends to liberally grease the runners of those it transports out the door." He's not wrong: whenever someone departs our offices, we often salute them with Dixie cups full of champagne, and then follow them out of the office with a happy hour nearby. But the tradition applies beyond farewells: Fridays at Five, chats with agents and authors outside the office, schmoozing at book parties and literary events. After a while, you start to feel like an extra on "Mad Men," even if you don't have a bar cart of mixers in your office.

Of course, this trend in the literary world is also famously destructive. Dozens of history's most brilliant writers, editors, and agents have been documented as alcoholics and party people. When you look back at their names--John Cheever, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, and so on--it's impossible to separate their reputations as artists from their reputations as drinkers. Some say it's the process of creation that makes them hit the bottle--after writing his masterpiece In Cold Blood, many said Truman Capote was so devastated by what he'd experienced in his bond with the executed murderer Perry Smith that it drove him to drink, and he was never the same after that. One has to wonder if it was the mood of the time to drink and socialize--the cocktail parties of the Paris Review back in the day were infamously debaucherous--or if it was the condition of creation. Is it an indispensable part of the life of the written word, to soak oneself with a bottle of gin?

But I don't mean to get too down on your social lubricant of choice--because alcohol does have one very good impact on the writerly experience: for those that can hold it and not fall asleep too quickly, it has a great reputation for making writers bolder, speaking their minds. (This was parodied to hilarious effect on a recent episode of Glee, in which the club's main diva readied herself with a glass of rose as she prepared to call someone to ask them out--the idea being, if she experienced more heartbreak, she'd have something worth writing songs about.) I'd heard multitudes of writing student friends talk about throwing back a martini before sitting down to write, to quiet the editorial voices in their head. Yes, this is psychosomatic drinking, but it can have real-world benefits every now and then. At the literary event I attended last night, the booze made sense: it was a Q&A at Powerhouse Books with Gabrielle Hamilton, the brilliant chef from Prune who has just written her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter. I devoured a rough copy of the manuscript several weeks ago, and haven't been able to stop raving about it since. As I sat in this Q&A, listening to this funny, humble, beautifully unpretentious woman talk about her career in cooking, I sipped a complimentary cup of wine and felt emboldened to contribute to the discussion. The wine did much more than taste good, it may me brave enough to talk to a writer who had inspired and moved me through her work. If there's something to blame on the alcohol, I'm glad it was the chance to participate in a conversation about how we make books that make us better. And then we go home and throw back a few in anticipation of the work ahead...

Pack . . . Your . . . Bags . . .

Ah, it’s that magical time of the year again: August in book publishing, when our book-lined halls become quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and the email pile-ups grow burdensomely heavy, impossible to clear from our boxes. That’s right. Despite working two cubicles away from each other, Caroline and I seem to be having entirely different end-of-summer work experiences.

August can be a slow-moving, lazily and delightfully paced month. Or, as bosses leave town and with the mounting spectre of autumn before us, it can be the time of year when we (and, alas, others) look around our cubicles and realize just how much work remains to be done. The proposals that have been neglected. The editorial comments required on manuscripts. The permissions—oh, the permissions!

In between projects both small and large, I’ve taken a few moments to imagine where I should head next. Alas, I’m afraid today left me somewhat poorly equipped to dream of any exotic locales:

5. The bathroom. I’ll pass Katie’s office. Maybe she’ll have cookies? Cookies? Cookies!

No. No cookies.

4. Back to my cubicle. Passing Katie’s office again. Are there cookies yet?

3. The cafeteria. Time for iced coffee.

2. Back to the bathroom. And Katie’s office. And… nope.

1. The snack machines: screw this. I’m getting Mrs. Field’s.

Pack Your Bags . . .

Ah, it’s that magical time of the year again: August in book publishing, when our book-lined halls become quiet enough to hear a pin drop, and the email pile-ups thin. Things are so blissfully slow and unharried around here that I’ve had time today to dream up the top five places that the entire book publishing industry should head to en masse for one industry-wide vacation.:

5. Any beach, anywhere. Not exactly publishing related, sure, but is there any place better to read a book?

4. Seattle. Our West coast counterpart city when it comes to books, there are plenty of coffee shops there to duck into with a good book when the rains come, and it would be nice to get a peek at Amazon’s headquarters and see where the online buying magic happens.

3. The place where all of our old manuscripts are recycled, so that we can see first hand that they become something new and aren’t wasted, so we can finally put to rest the guilt we feel every time we print out a five hundred page manuscript!

2. A train tour across the country stopping at the museums that the homes of literary giants of yesteryear have been turned into. (Minnesota for a glimpse of F. Scott’s stomping grounds, up to New England and Dickinson’s Amherst, you get the idea . . . )

1. Off on a nice long sojourn to Sweden, aka Stieg Larsson territory, to read in full his epic Lisbeth Salander /Mikael Blomkvist trilogy on the soil of their origin. It is, after all, the summer of Stieg.