Once again… beat out by some hack with a guitar
Jun 18, 2008 in Books
Us nerdy book types can’t get a break. An article in the New York Observer (which I found via Gawker) talks about young and lonely publishing types who peacock on the subway using galleys (that’s advance proof copies for all you non-publishing types).
From the New York Observer:
download Gentlemen Prefer Blondes movie
“If you’re reading a galley on the subway, and someone comes to talk to you, you’re going to share a lot of things in common with them,” said Tom Meaney, the former literary editor of The
Rugrats in Paris dvdrip New York Sun, who is currently a graduate student of modern European history at Columbia. “You can have the right jeans or the right purse or whatever … but if you’re reading How Fiction Works in March, you know, three months before the book comes out, and you get the one girl who is interested in [New Yorker literary critic] James Wood, well …” Our imagination is going wild! “It’s just an incredibly selective object.”
Of course the article ends with this comedown of a line:
Meanwhile, Ali Heifetz, an editorial assistant at Norton, said that while she has never been moved to approach someone based on the galley they were reading, she would not rule it out. “If and when [I saw] a cute dude reading a galley on the train,” she said, “he would be more attractive to me than same dude not reading a galley. Bat*21 ipod
“But less attractive than the same dude carrying a guitar case,” she added. The Pink Panther
download Goal II: Living the Dream movie Right. So some busker who doesn’t know how to shave or play said guitar is somehow more attractive than a guy reading the new Phillip Roth? Sigh, life ain’t fair.