A CONVERSATION WITH BILGEWATER
Kelley, John L.
A Conversation with Bilgewater John L. Kelley Inasmuch as "publish or perish" summarizes the requirements for advancement in the academy, I was most anxious, recently, about finding a publisher...
...A Conversation with Bilgewater John L. Kelley Inasmuch as "publish or perish" summarizes the requirements for advancement in the academy, I was most anxious, recently, about finding a publisher for my doctoral dissertation, "The Influence of the Peanut on American Foreign Policy, 1783-1812...
...Easy...
...Well, to take up the slack (witness Seattle's unemployment rate due to curtailed aerospace contracts for Boeing) the publishing industry must continue to increase its output...
...We won't just publish your peanut monograph...
...We collided at the door...
...My mind boggled at Bilgewater's conception, but I was beginning to see the beauty, and the necessity, of the new complex...
...Wait...
...Outraged I grabbed my manuscript and headed for the door while Bilgewater attempted an interception...
...Today's climate of opinion is violent...
...Wait a minute," I demanded...
...Hell...
...Then I recalled the number of blurbs and mentally calculated that the reviewer would have been required to read at the rate of 4947.26 paragraphs per minute...
...Kelley is the author of HARDING: THE FIRST EDWARD KENNEDY...
...All in good time...
...You've heard of the Report from Iron Mountain and its warning that the American economy cannot afford to revert from a war-time to a peace-time structure...
...Much to my surprise the manuscript prompted bids from ten or fifteen different houses, not to mention several attractive offers from certain academic editors...
...Briefly put, earlier this year the National Security Council at the President's request called together the country's leading minds to meet at Slippery Rock State College in Pennsylvania to consider alternatives to the military-industrial complex, which is obviously on its last leg due to an impending outbreak of peace...
...I indicated that I was aware of the Report...
...speeches as Stand Up For America...
...The Saturday Evening Club Proudly Announces: Appointment of Dr...
...Keynesian economics have taught us that the United States can't survive without a complex...
...snorted Bilgewater, grabbing for his dog-eared copy of Becker...
...But surely," I interjected, "the value of foreign policy critiques from such aberrant journals is at least dubious and at best transitorv...
...Endowed with a new feeling of purpose, and with head high, I thanked Bilgewa-ater for his inspiration, handed him my manuscript, and departed, all the while planning my next Magnum Opus: a computer study of the socio-economic makeup of Terre Haute's bordelloes...
...Trivia Press won't get my research nor will anyone else...
...Why the demand has been so great that we have entertained the project of publishing all of Andrei Y. Vishinsky's U.N...
...24 hours a day to read the number of books he claimed to review...
...We must stop this travesty on American scholarship...
...Jerry Rubin...
...I laughed...
...I'll have none of it...
...Enough, Bilgewater...
...Then you can issue a book of readings on recent critiques of American foreign policy culled from the pages of Ramparts, American Opinion and the New York Review of Books...
...Voila...
...Certainly you aren't suggesting," I interjected, "that book publishers are capitalizing on the munificence of the public purse...
...Rather uneasy about the exotic nature of my manuscript, I anticipated rough sledding...
...Bilgewater smiled...
...my second chapter, "Peanut Reciprocity Negotiations and the U.S.-Tangiers Crisis of 1792," scattered on the floor...
...Well, that's not exactly surprising-it's all been very hush hush...
...We are only supplying what the market demands...
...Same principle works here-self-interest, pure and simple...
...I assured him that I hadn't...
...Who the hell needs credentials...
...Hell...
...Librarians these days will buy anything, now that they can gouge the public through the state legislatures, not to mention the funds from HEW...
...P-E-P stands for Politicians, Education, and Publishing...
...You can edit a new series on American foreign policy...
...Nonsense," Bilgewater shot back...
...Always considering myself something of a chauvinist, I inquired what could possibly be unpatriotic about my refusal to publish...
...Politicians, whether at the local, state or national level, will appropriate billions for the P-E-P Complex because they know that the electronics, publishing and other allied industries, being grateful, will give them high-paying consultant positions when they retire from public office...
...You surely don't mean," I interrupted, "that a new power elite is forming to replace the New Left shibboleth, the Military-Industrial Complex!'' "Precisely...
...Credentials...
...John L. Kelley as Warren Gamaliel Harding Professor of History at Iberia College, Iberia, Ohio...
...That's easy...
...I'll have no part of your insane perversion...
...HE FIRST EDWARD KENNEDY...
...Libros Bilgewater, how Trivia Press could be so generous...
...Reconsider our inducements before you make such a hasty decision over your future," Bilgewater pleaded, blocking my exit...
...I...I...I'll go to a competitor...
...How are you going to guarantee the stability of such an alliance...
...Where do scholarly monographs like mine fit into your scheme...
...Already hints of a slowdown in government contracts have prompted many leading government contractors such as Raytheon, Xerox, RCA and Bell & Howell to move into the publishing and educational industries...
...They considered the welfare-intellectual complex and all sorts of variations but settled on a P-E-P Complex...
...I was astonished by my editor's non sequitur...
...After long deliberation I decided to sign with Trivia Press (an off-shoot of one of the new educational conglomerates: General Animated Motor Skills) which offered me a complete set of John Kenneth Galbraith's cardigans and Arthur M. Schlesinger's bow ties in lieu of royalties...
...Now the true meaning of that motto hit me with the force of a first edition...
...Why you wouldn't believe how many requests our reprint division, Retread Press, gets for reissues of the great classics outlining America's incomparable history of violence, imperialism, and racism...
...I observed...
...We are already forming alliances between these three groups to keep the economy going the moment peace erupts...
...What on earth is a P-E-P Complex...
...Besides, who is more repressed than Rubin...
...Don't crowd me, boy...
...Suddenly I realized a new significance to that maligned phrase "publish or perish...
...We are even taking on Jerry Rubin as our consultant on 'Repression in American History.'" "But surely Rubin has no credentials as a historian...
...he insisted that the federal government curry the favor of the rich to guarantee their support of the new national government...
...The insidiousness of such a practice overwhelmed me, and at first I was tempted to dismiss it as merely another Bilgewater excess...
...Have you heard of the Report From Slippery Rock...
...Don't you remember Hamilton's ideas on government...
...We'll call it A Kernel of Truth...
...We'll call it 'American Foreign Policy Decisions in a Nutshell.' " Warming to his subject, Bilgewater spoke as though inspired...
...I attempted to shove him aside but he clung to my manuscript like a dying man, all the time imploring me not to desert my country...
...Becker said it all when he wrote that 'the historian is the myth-maker for the tribe.' Thus I feel 'authority' is determined by the climate of opinion of the historian...
...My blood boiled...
...he replied...
...exclaimed Bilgewater...
...Relieved, Bilgewater continued...
...So we must tool up for greater pulp production than we ever thought possible...
...It wasn't the professor who would perish if he didn't publish -it was the entire country...
...Peace may break out at any moment, and we in the industry must be ready for it...
...Wait a minute Bilgewater," I menaced...
...Are you going to associate my research with the secretions of Jerry Rubin...
...Astonished at this magnanimity, I aked my editor, a Mr...
...pay them a stipend for writing something . innocuous or pleasant...
Vol. 4 • November 1970 • No. 1
