Author name: DavidThayer

This is a how to article. It’s about the Gap. Long before there was a store by that name, the Gap slipped into the vernacular, worming its way onto TV. Picture this: in the year 1966, news comes from three sources including Walter Cronkite. TV news is sedate, stentorian, ominous. There was a Missile Gap in the Sixties, a Knowledge Gap after Sputnik. On the fashion scene archival evidence suggests that women of the era bore an odd resemblance to David Bowie, not as he appeared then, as much as he does now. Every squeeze of the aerosol can created

The Year of Living Dangerously? 2005 can lay no such claim in the halls of the publishing kings. In the book world this was more along the lines of The Year Jose Canseco became Our Greatest Living Writer. Jose, I tip my cap to you and hope that Google engineers will capture your oeuvre now that the steroids have worn off, mine, not yours, for imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and I want to be a great writer too. Juiced was a surprise bestseller. Was it art? It told the truth, a truth that needed telling especially for

Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s the transit strike, but a wave of news releases from the Big Apple this morning suggest that everyone may be auditioning for A Fine Madness. I walked across the Brooklyn Bridge during the last transit strike and discovered two things: objects along the East River are further away than they appear and two, the streets were filled with Manhattanites asking one another for directions all of which led back to the bridge. The police were on hand to assist Brooklyn residents who were doubled over with laughter. Somewhere in Brooklyn is the Atlantic Avenue

Jane Friedman is a smart executive. She runs Harper-Collins, one of the trade houses large enough to represent the book industry as a whole. HC is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp conglomerate, with all the drama and trauma that implies. Ms. Friedman made the comment last summer that she envisions a time when authors are secondary to the brand name imprint, that future book buyers will want to buy a book because Harper Collins is the publisher. Harlequin is the role model. Everyone knows what a Harlequin title is. Even the casual observer understands that Harlequin has a traditional audience,