Archive for December 3rd, 2002
What a brilliant idea. The Varieties of the Balloon Hat Experience Web site: two guys travel around the world taking pictures of people laughing and wearing silly balloon hats.
“Bertelsmann’s Barracks” is an exceptional article about plans to unify all of Random House’s imprints in one Times Square office building later this month. Their parent company, German conglomerate Bertelsmann, is forcing my former colleagues, all 1,000 of them, to–gasp–share the same roof and–the real kicker–reside in identical offices. The article–particularly the quotes from Random House employees–is a portrait of modern book publishing culture: it’s marked by fierce individualism (which I admire in Gary Fisketjon, who refuses to stop smoking in his office) and intellectual snobbery (you mean we have to share our space with those mass market paperback people?).