A Cry from the Far Middle

This is where the astute skills and discerning perceptions of Scott Manning & Associates come into play. Founder Scott Manning and his colleague Abigail Welhouse are fabulous relationship counselors. They sit down with the public and the book. They urge the public to talk through its insecurities and anxieties about the book and be more sensitive to the book’s needs. They advise the book to be more supportive of the public and more open to emotional engagement. They help the public and the book build a relationship that is so strong, enduring, and mutually respectful that even a $26 cover price doesn’t cause screaming and tears and slammed doors.

But, of course, all of the foregoing thanks would be “thanks for nothing” if it weren’t for the people at Grove Atlantic who made this book a physical reality.

And a thing of beauty, as all Grove Atlantic books are. This is the work of Art Director Gretchen Mergenthaler who has turned our hardcovers and paperbacks into fashion statements. Don’t wear Givenchy, don’t wear Dolce & Gabbana, don’t wear Prada, don’t wear Ralph Lauren, carry a Grove Atlantic book. In fact don’t wear anything at all. Just carry a Grove Atlantic book and you’ll be dressed for . . . well, that depends on the subject of the individual book. In the case of my book you’ll have a beautiful fig leaf to clothe your ideological nakedness when you’re expelled from the political Garden of Eden for having tasted the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Or that’s what I’d like to think. Anyway, the fig leaf will look good on you.

The job of Managing Editor Julia Berner-Tobin and Production Director Sal Destro is—authors being the irresponsible and self-willed creatures that we are—to herd cats. They are good at it. If Julia and Sal had been cowpokes in the wild west, the Chisholm Trail would have been crowded with thousands of cats, all moving north at a steady pace in an orderly fashion from the litter boxes of Texas to the scratching posts of Abilene.

Copyeditor Donald Kennison is the SEAL Team Six of semicolons, the Clausewitz of subordinate clauses, the Sun Tzu of syntax, and the Washington at the Valley Forge of my tangled sentence structure.

Director of Publicity Deb Seager is so good at publicizing things that she could get a front-page headline out of a Dalmatian having spots, set off a Twitter storm over the Pope being Catholic, and cause the House Judiciary Committee to hold a congressional hearing about where bears go to the bathroom.

Associate Publisher Judy Hottensen is responsible for sales. “Could sell ice to Eskimos” is no longer an acceptable cliché in these times of climate change and heightened sensitivity to language. (Although soon someone may well need to market Sub-Zeros to the Inuit.) So let us instead say that Judy could sell dial phones to Tim Cook, Sears and Roebuck catalogues to Jeff Bezos, and a complete set of The World Book to Wikipedia.

Editorial Assistant Sara Vitale is learning just how much assistance authors need, especially if they’re of a certain age. Sara, I know you’re hundreds of miles away in New York, but where the heck are my car keys?

And, lastly, let me return to the aforementioned Morgan Entrekin. If James Joyce had had the advantage of Morgan’s blue pencil, Finnegans Wake would have been at the top of the New York Times bestseller list every week since 1939.

And if all publishing houses were run like Grove Atlantic, the whole world would have its face in a book instead of an LCD screen. Smartphones would be used as nothing but bookmarks. Even the character who’s been hanging out in the TV room at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for the past four years would become a bookworm. (Morgan, can we get the reprint rights for a large print edition of Go the Fuck to Sleep?)