I recently remarked that my life runs on irony. I was thinking back to when I was trying to get out of Gorgias Press (long story) and I was interviewed by Irving Louis Horowitz, founder of Transaction Press. He listened to my account of myself and said, “What you need is a leg up.” He didn’t offer me that leg up, but I always remembered his kindness in giving me a shot at a non-existent position. As it turned out, I was hired a couple years later by Routledge. Routledge is owned by Taylor & Francis, an Informa company. Publishers grow in two main ways: by the volume of books that sell well, and by acquiring other companies. While at Routledge we were encouraged to talk to those higher on the ladder about prospects for acquisition. I made a small case to one executive about acquiring Transaction and was summarily dismissed.
Then I was actually dismissed. For reasons never explained, I was handed a pink slip the day after returning from a business trip to Arizona. So life goes. I found another job, more stable, in the academic publishing world. One day I was recollecting my conversation with Irving Horowitz. I’d contacted Transaction out of the blue because it was based in Piscataway, New Jersey. Gorgias Press was also located in Piscataway, and I’d moved my family to nearby Somerville so that the commute would be only fifteen to twenty minutes. (I was so naive about commutes at the time.) Besides, that semester I’d been assigned to teach on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University as an adjunct, and Transaction operated out of a building either on or adjacent to Livingston. It all seemed right. Except it never happened.
After Routledge let me ago, I again contacted Transaction. I knew that Horowitz had passed away but his widow sent me a packet of information that I never opened because a job offer had been made by my current employer by the time I received it. After some time I’d heard that Transaction had been acquired. The irony was that the publisher is now considered defunct because of the acquisition. In my reverie, I decided to look up by whom. Of course, Taylor & Francis had bought Transaction and rolled it into Routledge. I am absolutely convinced my sophomore suggestion had nothing to do with this this. Someone else, probably higher up, had noticed a smaller press ready for assimilation. I’m pretty sure that I didn’t keep the somewhat hefty envelope I’d received from Transaction when I was again in need of a job. If I had, and if it had contained an offer, I would’ve found myself again working for the company that had let me go. My life runs on irony indeed.