I wasn’t always politically conscious. I spent a good deal of my young life totally self-involved and wondering about the country wasn’t a priority. Jay helped me think in broader terms, not necessarily by tutoring me, just by example. I was living with a major thinker. It rubs off.

At Harper & Row, the editor I worked for was Virginia Hilu, an intellectual dynamo. She did big books, some of them controversial. She published Arthur R. Jensen, an educational psychologist who ignited an international firestorm by suggesting that the gap in intelligence-test scores between black and white students might be rooted in genetic differences between the races. Virginia wasn’t a racist, but she was intent on expanding all debates. She thought this to be an important book to publish. She also published “Obedience to Authority” by Stanly Milgram – an examination of the mindset that led to Nazis “just following orders” when they murdered indiscriminately.

Before going to Harper & Row, I had worked for a literary agent whose authors were major nonfiction figures of the day, historians and the like. He had decided he would leave William Morris and be on his own, taking his list with him. But he wasn’t making it in his expensive location at 53rd St. and 7th Avenue. It was an apartment office. He decided to give it up and work out of his home in New Jersey. He gave me a recommendation to Virginia, an acquiring editor at Harper & Row, who was looking for an editorial assistant.

The day of my interview with Virginia, she told me she would let me know within the week, but also mentioned that if I didn’t hear from her right away, not to worry, because she was going in for a biopsy the following day and was not sure how that would work out.

Well, it didn’t work out well. She had cancer, and immediate surgery was performed. But she hired me and I held the fort without oversight until she could get back into the office. My days with Virginia were mixed. She could be a mentor, or a rival. She was tall and rawboned and had clawed her way out of a Lebanese Jewish family with Middle Eastern roots and a culture that wanted its females to marry, have babies and obey their husbands. They hated her career and she spent the rest of her life (too short) trying to get them to respect her achievements. Except for one brother, that never happened. And they told her she “didn’t have to come” to her father’s funeral which she interpreted to mean, “Please don’t come -- because we are ashamed of you and your big city ways.”

And there I am, definitely smaller, cuter in traditional terms, with a flirtatious personality. Her authors liked me, some too much. This bothered her. A lot. She would retaliate by sometimes keeping me out of the loop on her projects. She’d hand me a manuscript with the required copy already written, and tell me I should take it to Production to begin the process. When I wasn’t being punished, she’d fill me in on her discussions with the new author, describe the book, and say “we” were going to take it on, and sometimes would suggest I do the flap copy for the jacket, or the brief description that would make the rounds of the editorial and sales meetings. So I was alternately thrilled with my role, or miserable at her rejection.

One author in particular, whom I did not encourage but that is the way Virginia saw it, was on my tail – literally -- and he was a problem even without this aspect. He avoided the writing, one could never find him when he was needed. His co-author was an editor for NBC Nightly News, a real nerd, a forever catch-up in the charisma department, in contrast to foxy David, resentful, and angry all the time and furious with him for being in the wind most of the time.
Okay, that was David Durk, Serpico’s cop partner, who had blown the whistle on police corruption and was in bad graces with his fellow officers.

Once David phoned and I said, I’ll put you through to Virginia and he said, no, no, I just want to ask you a question. I answered his question, he thanked me and hung up before I could stop him. Virginia asked who that was, and I told her, and she flew into a rage, told me she’d been trying to reach him all morning and was convinced I was trying to upstage her.

When I was in touch with Virginia’s son, Dalton, he was in the process of learning all about his mother, whom he had lost at such a young age. He got in touch with as many of her authors as he could find. And one of them was David. He gave him my number and David called me one day. We were on the phone for an hour late in 2012. He spoke at length about New York politics, the corruption, the chicanery. He was exhausted with his, as he saw them, failures, was quite ill and knew he was terminal. He died in mid-November. His obits laud him as key to the Knapp Commission hearings and deserving of more recognition than that afforded to Serpico. Recognition only after death. How sad.
I am no longer in touch with Dalton, because he took exception to my criticism of the way he was handling his (5 year old?) entitled daughter, who screamed her way through our New York dinner and forced the issue to the extent of his taking her outside for most of it. She just wanted his attention and I ventured to say, he should not indulge her. He’ll learn the hard way – which is to say when she is a teenager and full of hormones and her acting out might be more serious. Meanwhile, his wife and unidentical twin son, sat away from the turmoil and ignored it completely. I am thinking she has been through this before and this is how she copes.

When I got to Times Books, after Virginia’s death in 1974, there was some talk of taking David on as an author. David told me he would insist on my being his editor and that way would ensure my next step up the ladder. I told him it was a lost cause (it was – Tom, the president, was an emotional sadist and vicious naysayer -- he would eat lye rather than be manipulated into promoting me). I told David not to try, that it would only cause problems for me. I lost track of that effort when Rob Roy Buckingham (classic newspaper story – son of an editor and newspaper publisher in Dodge City, Kansas and former United Press London correspondent during the war years) hired me away, intercompany, to work with the News Service and Syndicate. I remember Roger Jellinek, then editor in chief, and an elitist without peer, walking by my desk as I was working off the notice I had given and saying, “Why is that woman smiling?” That was the last time he deigned to notice me. Some time later, I wrote him from the Syndicate (he was by then working independently with an office in ?the Bahamas?) to inquire about a joint project and he ignored me.

The controller at Times Books was a woman named Emily Jacob. She was a rotund, butch-like woman, in thrall to Tom, whose management style she loved, and abusive to everyone, except her assistant, whom she mentored, lived with, and attended to through a terminal illness. I am guessing she thought this bit of altruism absolved her of all the mischief she did to others. I was told to write her a note of resignation for the file, which I did, asking her to please excuse the champagne spots on the stationery. I don’t think she ever forgave me for that bit of flippancy, because later on, to my great dismay, she transferred over to my division and continued her mission of abuse.

Following my escape from the toxic atmosphere of working for an infantile tyrant, Emily, outraged that I had done this end run, tried to make it impossible for employees to transfer intercompany without the approval of their immediate superiors. I don’t know if she succeeded.

When Virginia couldn’t come into the office anymore, I took work to her in her apartment in Queens. One afternoon when I was there, the hospital phoned to say a bed had become available, so I helped her pack a small bag, got a cab, and saw her through the entry process. We phoned her husband at his work, but he couldn’t be bothered to take time off to be there for her. (He was/is a genuine self-involved, narcissistic asshole. That’s another story.)

I kept going to the hospital to see her and would take her projects to weigh in on. One day, some of her relatives were there. She was listless. I presented her with a couple of decisions, her sign off on a jacket, etc. She said, “No, no, I can’t.” I said, sure you can, Virginia, your input is needed. She rose to the occasion and by the time I left, she was bright-eyed and animated and her relatives were stunned.

When she died, I chose not to mindlessly accept a lackey status with the editor hired to replace her. He was Harvey Kornberg, a casualty of a reorganization at McMillan. Virginia, who was friends with Tom, “willed” me to him. Her relationship with him, of course, was more one of equals – she was not a victim of his manipulations and controlling ways and considered him a friend. She had, however, heard stories, and told me to be watchful. I decided this was better than taking scraps from Kornberg, who, during an interview, told me in so many words, that my role would be reduced to getting him coffee and Danish, and sweeping the crumbs off of his desk.

He had said, “Well, I do my own flap copy. I do all the brief descriptions. I do this, I do that.” At the end of that coffee klatch, I thanked him and wished him well, and he looked startled. I learned afterwards that his in-house posting of the position (allowing employees first crack at a job was mandatory at H&R) required a background worthy of an ad for editor-in-chief. Of course, no applicant was “qualified” and he was able to then hire his boy toy former assistant at McMillan. That had been his goal all along. He would have found a way to get rid of me after I had given him my company insights, and showed him the involved process of putting books through production, probably by making me so miserable that I would quit.

H&R so appreciated my caretaking of Virginia that they gave me a huge party in the publisher’s office. They were grateful that I had helped her through (and taken the onus off of their avoidance of close contact with imminent death). It was the only way I knew how to be. (I think it’s a Greek thing.) Also, Tom, my boss to be, had put pressure on me to switch jobs while she was still hanging on. I told him no way. The unit was her-and-me. If I left, there would be no job. She had to know I was keeping it for her, whatever came next. I knew things were dire for her, but I did not want to add the final nail. I told Tom, if you have to, get someone else. So he waited. The only decent thing he ever did in my presence.

xx, Teal