6. The Firm
A good reputation is more valuable than money.
—Publilius Syrus, from Maxim (first century B.C.)
An instructor says, “My worry is that you’ll become educated beyond
your obedience.”
—John Rolfe Gardiner, in his
review of Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple.
For Educational Purposes, every Employé should be taken into the Firm.
—George Ade (from The Fable of the Subordinate Who Saw a
Great Light)
Back in the
late 1970s, a year went by during which I repeatedly photocopied 230 pages of a
manuscript, took them down to the post office, and mailed them off to some
publisher. I trusted, completely, in the wisdom of Writer’s Market, a book that I’d bought, believing with total
naïveté what various publishers said about their commercial interests and feeling
equally confident that the next one would snap up this piece of non-fiction
literature I’d entitled The Fundulus
Chronicles. After twenty-two rejections, a young man named Dennis Holler
from St. Martin’s Press called and asked if
the book had been sold. I said no, it was still available, and he replied that
they were interested in publishing it. I was alert enough to not say something
about the previous rejections, one of which had been with a letter asking “why
do you waste your postage sending us things that don’t turn us on?” and tried
to act calm, as he said that someone would call me back the next day. When Tom
Dunne, the St. Martin’s editor who accepted
the book, called later, he made the verbal offer, $5000 in advance royalties,
but also indicated that St. Martin’s Press
didn’t want to get into a bidding war. I told him to send me the contract and
I’d sign it. That book eventually became Keith
County Journal. A few weeks after it was published, I got a late afternoon
phone call from someone at Time Magazine.
“We’re
reviewing Keith County Journal,” the
caller said; “could you provide a photograph?”
“Sure,” I
replied; “what’s the address? I can mail
it.”
“No need to
mail it,” she said; “just put it in an envelope somewhere that we can pick it up.”
I put the
picture in an envelope, wrote TIME MAGAZINE in big capital letters on the
outside, and put it on the floor outside my office door, leaning up against the
wall. When I came to work the following morning the envelope was gone. The next
time I saw that photograph it was in Time. A few days later I was walking back from
Bennett Martin Library, in downtown Lincoln,
into the teeth of a bitter February north wind, when a colleague from another
department yelled at me from across the street.
“Hey, John!! What’s _______ saying about you
now?!? Huh? What’s _______ saying about you now?!?”
The
individual referred to as _______ was my department chair. I tend to think
about this particular set of events fairly often, mainly because they seem to
characterize my business, namely, that of American higher education. In this
business, reputation is currency, and it can be earned, spent, created, or
destroyed, just like other kinds of currency, but the worst thing you can do
with it is leave it in that metaphorical bank where it earns no interest, i.e.,
the files of your department chairman’s office. No, in this business,
reputation needs to be put to work—invested—sometimes to bring you pleasure,
like a deep intellectual conversation during a quiet meal with good friends, or
to recruit a student with exactly the right kind of personality into your
research lab. At other times it needs to serve as a weapon, like when you use
it on purpose to make another university employee uncomfortable if not
downright psychologically stressed out of his or her mind. Usually, but not
always, your immediate supervisor is the target. And when you need such a
weapon, your picture in Time is the
rough equivalent of a nuclear warhead.
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