Irascible Mentor

Beth Schulman

Email exchange, 3/10/05:

Me to him: I think of you every day as I look at the Chalmers Johnson book on my bedside table that I am too tired to read.”

Jimmy replies: Read the book … and push mine [The Long Detour].”

How apt. Right to the end, a dear and irascible mentor. 

Jimmy instructed all new ITT staff to read The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State. Having become a charter subscriber in 1976 because of reading Corporate Ideal, I came to my 1990 interview for a job at the paper” as associate publisher (or, in Jimmy’s lexicon, a beggar”) unwittingly over-prepared. To my continuing astonishment, I landed the job largely because I had long since reorganized my understanding of contemporary American history around his analysis of the Progressive Era. 

Fifteen years hence, I am still stunned: He hired me because I could articulate historical arguments. I had raised money before, but not the boatloads we needed. Could I have raised as much money from thoughtful ITT readers over the years if I had understood more about direct mail technique than I did about corporate liberalism? Wily Weinstein thought not. 

His impulsive decision reshaped my life. Yet our relationship stayed focused on the essentials: When I saw him on May 28, he made me promise again to push the book” and did not relax against the pillows until I recorded his instructions in my notebook.

Beth Schulman is both a former associate publisher and publisher of In These Times.
The text is from the poem “QUADRENNIAL” by Golden, reprinted with permission. It was first published in the Poetry Project. Inside front cover photo by Golden.
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