September will also see a new trade paper edition of my own The Secret Life of Walter Winchell. Out of print for many years, the original has been bringing $50 on the used book market. This title precipitated a violent physical assault on me by three known gangsters with blackjacks (two of whom I helped capture and who were tried and convicted), and the jailing of Winchell’s former son-in-law and the book’s original publisher, Samuel Roth. I wrote a new introduction for this new edition. (Retail price: $12)

Also shipping as I write this is the entertaining wine culture reference book The Official Guide to Wine Snobbery by Leonard S. Bernstein. Written with a sense of humor, it contains valuable wine etiquette information and discreet tips to avoid senseless acts of snobbery that often lead to embarrassing situations. (Retail price: $17.50)

Want all three? Send your check or money order directly to me at Barricade Books, 185 Bridge Plaza North, Ste 308-A, Fort Lee, NJ 07024, for the special price of $34. All three books will be shipped to you via UPS. We’ll pay the shipping so you’ll save $12. Credit card orders can be placed toll-free by phone with Albertha O’Neill at 800-59BOOKS. (800-592-6657) Tell her you want “the trio.” For a single book and not the trio, the cost would be the retail price plus $4 for shipping. And let me know if you’d like your copy of my Winchell book autographed personally to you. End of commercial!

Book Publishing for the Layman (3):

Two decades ago, there were more than 4,000 independent booksellers and a few small chains such as Doubleday Book Shops and Womraths. If one retailer didn’t like a book, another might be quite enthusiastic about it and recommend it to his customers.

Today there are two major chains and perhaps three minor ones. If a buyer at one of the major chains decides to pass on (not buy) a title, the chances for the success of that title drops twenty percent.

Quality of a book is secondary during the selling transaction. The chains want to know how much advertising money is available for co-op promotion and how much a publisher will pay for display and location in the store.

In many ways, the publishing business has come to resemble the grocery business.

Spotlight on Brights:

Question: What is a bright?

Answer: Someone who is a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist. In other words, someone who doesn’t believe in a physical god or heaven or angels or mysticism or theistic nonsense.

There are an estimated 27,000,000 brights in America. Founded in 1998, brights are described as “Believers in Reason, Intelligence, Goodness, Harmony, Thinking and Science.”

The movement was given impetus on July 12 with an OpEd column in the New York Times by Daniel C. Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University.

The column began: “The time has come for us brights to come out of the closet. What is a bright? A bright is a person with a naturalist as opposed to a supernaturalist world view. We brights don’t believe in ghosts or elves or the Easter Bunny – or God. We disagree about many things, and hold a variety of views about morality, politics and the meaning of life, but we share a disbelief in black magic -- and life after death.”

An impressive list of brights may be found in Celebrities in Hell by Warren Allen Smith, a Barricade Books title currently in the shops.

For more information, e-mail the author at wasm@mac.com.

And don’t forget the Barricade Books website: www.barricadebooks.com.

People Stuff:

Jennifer Itskevich was once a Barricade Books intern. She recently returned to replace Desiree Rowe as Publicity Director. She was duplicating the path of the lovely and bright Desiree who had also been an intern who left and then returned as a full-timer. Desiree abandoned us to move to Mankato, Minnesota. She’ll coach the University of Minnesota speech team there while getting her Masters degree in speech communication and teaching freshman-level public speaking classes.

Kevin Connell, who worked in our Secaucus warehouse and was brought to the front office when he showed an astute talent for proofreading Hot News, is now assisting Jeff Nordstedt in production. Kevin’s step-father is the famous card man and magician Arnold “Doc” Boston.

Paul Krassner will arrive in Manhattan on October 23 to participate in the Do-It-Yourself Publishing Convention on Saturday, October 25. Paul recently placed his new book Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy with Ten Speed Press of Berkley, California. Ten Speed will publish it next March. Meanwhile Paul is writing a series of columns for the New York Press. The biweekly column will start appearing in late October and called Zen Bastard.

Praying:

That editorial comment in the last issue on the powerlessness of prayer brought several reactions and one tongue-in-cheek comment. The latter came from the legendary Leonore Fleischer whose position was: “You’re wrong. God does answer prayers but most of the time his answer is ‘No’.”

Leslie Shephard wrote from Dublin, Ireland, to send us pages from a local Irish paper. Half of the ad space is devoted to people offering thanks to St. Jude and St. Claire and to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Sprinkled among these were ads offering hookers, and sex videos, and one that doesn’t offer just ordinary prostitution but is headlined, “Why not host a virgin?”

Most amusing to me was the comment by a Manhattan real estate tycoon who takes his Jewish religion quite seriously. “You know,” he told me, “God never spoke directly to the Jewish people. He made Moses his messenger. And sometimes I can’t help but wonder, what if Moses lied?”

Ignorance & Our Free Press:

In a recent Sunday column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Managing Editor Thomas Mitchell quotes the results of a poll of 1,000 Americans by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut. It found that 46 percent of those polled believe the press “has too much freedom.”

Less than half of those questioned believed that newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of a story. Believe it or not, 28 percent thought the government should approve a story before it appears in print.

Mitchell, distressed by such findings, quotes Thomas Jefferson who, in 1816, declared, “Where the press is free, and every man able to read, all is safe.”

Mitchell adds: “Ignorance of the First Amendment is rampant. The survey found very few can name more than one of the five rights delineated in there. Fully 37 percent didn't know any or refused to answer. One out of five listed some right that isn't even there.

“Sixty-three percent could recall freedom of speech, but only 16 percent came up with freedom of the press and 22 percent with freedom of religion.

“One out of 10 named right of assembly, while the lowly and misremembered right to petition the government for redress of grievances was listed by a paltry 2 percent.”

Commented Mitchell, “The right to go fight city hall is easy to forget when it generally is a futile gesture anyway.”

Only In America:

Thirty-eight years ago Harry Golden, publisher of the Carolina Israelite, wrote a #1 best-selling book titled Only In America. The title became a common phrase. My brother, Don W. Stuart offers the following:

Only in America –

v do drug stores make sick people walk all the way to the rear of the store to pick up their prescriptions while healthy people buy their cigarettes at the front register.

v do we buy frankfurters in packages of twelve and buns in packages of eight.

v do we leave automobiles worth thousands of dollars in the street and put our useless junk in the garage.

v do people order double-size cheeseburgers, large orders of French fries and a diet Coke.

v does a pizza reach your home faster than an ambulance.

v do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

Libel Lawsuit Victory:

The daughter of one of the Manson group members that murdered Sharon Tate, among others, sued Barricade Books for libel in New Hampshire. Her attorney offered to settle the suit in its early stages for $85,000. I told our New Hampshire attorney we wouldn’t pay eight-five cents.

Our very competent New Hampshire attorney William L. Chapman managed to have the case dismissed by the United States District Court.

Cuba Revisited:

In 1960, shortly after the victory of the Cuban Revolution over the fascist dictator Fulgencio Batista, America’s man in Havana, I headed a delegation of some 305 men, women and children to Cuba. We were to spend the Christmas holiday in Havana.

The trip was sponsored by the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. At the time I happened to be its national treasurer, and in short order (it wasn’t planned that way) I found myself drafted to be leader of the group.

Three days after we arrived, some of us were with Fidel at the Presidential Palace where he was greeting foreign visitors at a large reception. Paul Krassner was stuffing a copy of his The Realist and a personal note into Fidel’s jacket pocket when Celia Sanchez arrived, hurried up to Fidel and whispered into his ear. (Celia was Fidel’s girlfriend and served as his executive secretary.)

She gave him the news that the United States had just broken relations with Cuba.

It was an historic moment and we were there to witness it. Among our group was my friend Irving Wolfe. It was his first visit to the Island. (A few issues ago in these pages I told you about Irv’s 90th birthday party, which was attended by 90 prominent political activists.)

Four Decades Later

Recently, more than forty years later, Irv Wolfe made his twentieth visit to the Island. For the sixth or seventh time, he was part of a Pastors for Peace caravan determined to openly defy the United States government by delivering badly-needed medicines and medical supplies to the Cuban people.

In a report to his friends, Irv describes a reception for a thousand people in a huge banquet hall. “Fidel stood near the door,” he writes, “surrounded by hundreds of mostly Spanish speaking youth trying to answer questions. I got a brief handshake from Fidel.

“There were dozens of huge banquet tables laden with an incredible array of foodstuffs. The ‘piece de resistance’ on many tables was a whole roasted pig (without an apple in its mouth). Wine, beer and liquor were readily available….

“Tourism is at a record level. Electricity is generated entirely with Cuban oil…. Some 85% of Cubans own their own homes. Of those who pay rent, no one pays more than 10% of their income. Cuba has remarkable education and health care programs. Despite the hardships caused by the American blockade, no school or health facility has ever been closed.”

San Francisco:

In Rudy Maxa’s Traveler, he encourages his subscribers to visit San Francisco now because hotel rates have taken a tumble as have prices on most other things. I like his observation: “The arrogant $150,000-a-year twenty something geeks who bloated restaurant prices and grabbed the best tables and choicest parking spots are gone. Or asking if you’d like fries with your burger at Wendy’s.”

(For subscription information for the Traveler, call 800-387-8025.)

Prophesy:

In five years there will be no video/DVD rental stores. Blockbuster and Hollywood Video will have vanished.

Today, libraries of movies are available on demand from Showtime, Home Box Office, and Cinemax. The customer selects the movie and it is his to play. He or she can stop it and resume at any time within a 24-hour period. There is a monthly fee for access to the libraries but no charge for watching any film or as many films as one wants to watch.

The giant video chains will not be able to compete with the convenience of not having to borrow and return a physical video tape or DVD.

Tales Without Heads:

??? Barry Farber is delivering knock-‘em-dead commercials on his radio network for Arthur Milton’s America Will March Forward.

??? Helen Gurley Brown’s Sex and the Single Girl has gone back to press for a second printing. Meanwhile Barnes & Noble made an offer for reprint rights to a hard-bound edition for sale in B&N. Carole turned it down and they’ve doubled their offer. To paraphrase Jack Benny’s response when he was given the choice of his money or his life, “We’re thinking! We’re thinking!”

??? Ivan G. Goldman is completing a book called Crazy Money: Inside Investor’s Daily. It will be published by Carroll & Graf. Barricade Books published Goldman’s gaming novel, Where The Money Is. Incidentally, there is no longer any Carroll or Graf at Carroll & Graf.

??? Playwrite Arthur Miller taped an Actor’s Studio television interview with James Lipton for the Bravo series. However the show was never broadcast because of Miller’s candid but harsh criticism of the Strasbergs.

??? My wife, Carole and I recently attended a reading of Howard Blue’s book, Words at War. It is probably the best book yet on the post-war blacklist in radio and television.

??? MRC, Nevada’s largest market research organization, has concluded that the primary purpose of most visitors to Las Vegas these days is entertainment rather than gambling.

??? The latest edition of The U.S. Book Publishing Industry, published by Business Trends Analysts, Inc., contains 575 pages and sells for a mere $1,495.

Annie Hall In Retrospect:

A booklet was prepared for film writing classes at a California University (which I won’t embarrass by naming). It dissected the movie Annie Hall. I couldn’t resist passing this one on to Marshall Brickman who co-authored Annie Hall. (His other film writing credits include Manhattan; Lovesick; Sleeper; and Manhattan Murder Mystery.)

Brickman responded in a note to me saying: “What’s scary about that academic re-or-de-construction of Annie Hall is (1) that somebody would actually take the time to analyze it like that and (2) the impression it gives of authors’ intention -- which appears to be deliberate and rational, which it certainly was not.

“The final cut of the movie,” he writes, “was the result of a desperate attempt to find some coherence and a structure in over 3 hours of filmed material… with lots of added scenes, truncated scenes, arbitrary choices and so on.

“But when you read this breakdown and analysis, it all seems as if we authors knew exactly what we were doing and had it all planned out beforehand. Those poor students who see the movie and look at this analysis will probably want to shoot themselves because how on earth could one ever PLAN for a final like that? Oh, well.”

It reminds one of the careful analyses that were done following the first showings of the movie Casablanca. In both cases even the writers didn’t know what was coming next. Both films won Oscars as the best films for their respective years.

Personal Musings:

I recently celebrated another birthday.

Looking back, there aren’t many things I would have done differently if I had my life to relive. Most of the time during my first 30 years, I worked only for people and organizations for whom I wanted to work (Variety, Hearst, Bill Gaines.) After that and for the past half-century I’ve been my own boss.

When I sold Lyle Stuart Inc., I received several million dollars. I gave much of it away, sharing my windfall with former employees, friends and relatives. I made sure that Carole was protected for life.

I gambled some of the balance of it away. I made bad investments (i.e. junk bonds) with some of it.

Oddly enough, getting and then getting rid of all that money didn’t change my personal lifestyle at all. With eight million new dollars in the bank, I didn’t buy a new house or a new car. (Note: My Mercedes 500SEL has just passed the 200,000-mile mark!) Even the fact that in recent years I spent a good part of my savings defending a principle few people understand, hasn’t bothered me.

The dullest year I remember is 1989, the year I took as “retirement.”

I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed working, whether it was newspaper reporting or book publishing. And when things were prosperous, I’ve gotten a kick out of giving people “adventure” that they might not otherwise experience

I took an average of thirty to thirty-six people who worked with me on all-expenses-paid journeys to Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco, Mexico, Jamaica, Cuba, and Denmark—and on one occasion, 38 people were given a 22-day vacation in Europe where we all lived first class from rooms at the Savoy in London to the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. We often traveled in chauffeured limos and everyone was given cash with which to gamble (or pocket) when we visited casinos.

To this day I receive cards, letters and phone calls from several of the people who worked with me all those years ago. We’re in touch with Patrick Thornton, Carlos Gonzalez, Florence Washington, Diorcy Vasquez, Barbara Gabel, Jose Gonzalez, William Gomez, Hernando Villegas, Esperanza Reyes and many many others.

I’ve outlived most of my enemies. But I’ve also outlived most of my close and dearest friends ranging from Joe Whalen and Avant Keels to Bill Gaines, Jerry Jacobs and Allen G. Schwartz.

Summing up, my life has been filled with the love of two remarkable wives, three delightful children and many friends and associates. I’ve pretty much done what I wanted to do, said what I’ve wanted to say and gone where I’ve wanted to go.

Who could ask for more?

I was reminded of this when I came upon a picture of my father sitting at a table with three other young men. They were pretending to play cards. Each had a stein of beer in front of him. It was a posed photo taken in a studio in Vienna. The year? 1897.

Time won’t turn backward in its flight and so I’m reminded of the title of a lovely but little-known Jack Lawrence song, “Where did it all go?”

Until next time ---
Lyle Stuart
lyle@barricadebooks.com

June 2003 Hot News
August 2003 Hot News