On Oct 9, 2009, at 4:06 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:
> At 01:01 PM 10/9/2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
>
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>> Barney's. Much much more upscale, in other words.
>
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> Oh. That's very different then. Macy's doesn't list designers on
> their web page.
>
> http://www.barneys.com/Designers/DESIG1,default,sc.html
Yup. The idea was, of course, to turn the book into something of a fashion statement. I think Alex Cockburn called it their latte table edition.
It was the brainchild of Colin Robinson, who was at Verso for almost 20 years before the fired him in 2001 - and who was later at The New Press until they fired him a few years ago. Colin published two of my books and he's a good friend too, so maybe I'm biased, but he manages to devise fabulous publicity schemes while maintaining pretty seriously Marxist politics. (Like most people in the NLR/Verso orbit, Colin was in the IMG, who were, I think, nemeses of James Heartfield's gang, the RCP.)
The poor New Press. Since its founder, Andre Schiffrin, has mostly retired, and they fired Colin, the place is politically adrift and selling poorly. Its new leader, Diane Wachtell (daughter of Herbert Wachtell, the bigtime lawyer, who started as Andre's secretary and worked her way to the top), has NPR-ish politics, and says The New Press should publish conservatives when there's a Dem in the White House. She once yelled at Colin for publishing a book by Gary Indiana that made fun of John McCain, because McCain is a New Press author, thanks to having a piece in some dull collection on war. She made a big play to rely more on foundation support than book sales, and then the foundations ran out of money. They've laid off half the staff.
Doug