Viking Penguins of the 80's

George Csernovics 1924?-2007

(From future Hall of Fame inductee Andy Weiner): Friday evening I received a couple of e-mails to let me and other former and current Penguin employees know that our old friend and colleague, George Csernovics had passed away. George was 83, and died of a stroke. George was the New York-area sales reps for Viking Penguin, then Penguin USA, and he had a great influence on many of us who had the good fortune to work with him.Among those who received notification of George’s death was Paul Slovak, editor and publicist extraordinaire, who wrote, “What I will most never forget is when George, at some sales conference, made this brilliant explication of a novel called Cyrus Cyrus by Adam Zameenzad, which I don’t even think his editor Kathryn Court understood as well as he did. And at the end of it, he said “nevertheless, it is a piece of shit.” And Brenda Marsh, now of Barnes and Noble, who wrote, “I am devastated…What I remember most is when I took over from (name omitted to protect the disliked) and George stood up and applauded.”Dan Farley of Harcourt wrote, “Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. You’ve rekindled memories of a most remarkable man, a former colleague whose work ethic and doggedness was unsurpassed, whose passion for publishing and the power of the word was his vocation, whose loyalty to friends and colleagues was stalwart, whose impatience with bs was yet another defining virtue.” And Dan’s colleague at Harcourt, Paul von Drasek wrote, “George was still on my mind several times a week, since nothing that annoyed him has gotten much better, and everything he said is still true. George didn’t need to love a book to sell it well. One of his more effective handles for a “make” book of commercial fiction (that worked) was “This is a good book for stupid women!” His buyers knew what he meant.” Yes, there’s no question that George was a man who had a particular way of looking at the world.Laurel Burr, who worked with us at Penguin as well as at Simon and Schuster, wrote, “Do you think George will be reunited in the afterlife with the wife he said he had ‘murdered with a pitchfork’”? Yes, that’s the story George told us. Mary Ellen Curley wrote, “My best memory of George is that he would come over to my office brandishing his Swiss Army knife, pretending to scratch his neck with the open blade, while he'd ask me why some bound galley or other was not yet available.” James Wehrle, now at Workman wrote, “I once asked George how it was that he escaped from the ‘Iron Curtain’. He explained that he went to the border crossing spot, and waited for someone else to make a break for it, and while the border guards were busy shooting at that person, we simply walked across the border.”But perhaps the person who expressed it best is our friend Gary Hart, now a rep for University of Chicago Press, who wrote, “I loved George and will really miss him.”I worked with George from 1984 to 1995. The last two years I was a regional manager, and George was one of the reps I “managed.” I knew that the most important thing for me to do was to help George get his work done the way that he knew how to do it, and to continue learning from him. I believe he was 71 years old when I became his boss. Those two years were two of the most enjoyable in my now more than thirty years in bookselling.George was loved and admired, feared by some, and sometimes treated less than well by those who took him for granted. We are all fortunate to have known him, worked with him, and loved him. With his passing we are forced again, as it seems we are so often these days, to think about what our industry is today, what it was, and what it inevitably is becoming. Here’s to George, the sheepherder from Hungary, who maybe killed his wife with a pitchfork, who knew how to sell shit, who influenced everyone with whom he ever worked, and who will be missed by all of us who knew and loved him.

Wendy Werris

Author of the Commission Rep manifesto, AN ALPHABETICAL LIFE: Living it Up in the World of Books (www.wendywerris.com).

Geoff Rizzo and Ed Springer

Jim Shepherd d.2006

Scouts' Chicken Killing Brings Second Thoughts
DALLAS, April 25,(AP) -- A troop of hatchet-wielding Boy Scouts was recently turned loose on a flock of chickens awaiting slaughter at a processing plant. The object was to show the boys how their meals got to the table; but a scoutmaster has since expressed regret and a regional spokesman for the Boy Scouts of America said this week that killing animals was not part of scouting. Last Satruday, the scouts caught, killed and dressed the chickens for a campout dinner. Of the 80 scouts there, at least 10 declined to take part in the slaughter. "Chicken to them is a chicken nugget," said James Shepherd, scoutmaster for Troop 890. "So the feeling was that, educationally, if they could see this is where their chicken comes from, it would be good for them." But such activity is not part of being a scout, said Rob Hoffman, the spokesman for Circle 10 Council of the Boy Scouts of America, which oversees scouting in 13 counties in North Texas and Oklahoma. Two parents complained about the activity, which was overseen by 40 adults and followed a one-hour demonstration of how to kill, pluck, dress and prepare chicken.

-- New York Times, Sunday April 26, 1998

Frank Rizzo

Veteran of Doubleday Publishing and Frank Rizzo Associates now enjoying retirement in South Carolina.

Southern Territory Associates Logo

Roadrunning in the South since 1975.