News Brief

Twenty years in the book business and still interested in books. I don’t know whether such conduct is reprehensible or not, but when you say that about Louis Green, advertising manager of Publishers’ Weekly, it’s true.

Unknown to the retail book buyers, Louis is probably one of the best-known figures in the business and one of the keenest judges of saleability in the trade. Twenty years ago he got a job as office-boy for a now-defunct publisher. No sooner had he become accustomed to the crisp smell of books fresh from the press when he realized that he was hopelessly enamoured of the book business. He advanced to the sales department and as the years went by travelled up and down the country selling books.

One day as he stood in Brentano’s bookstore discussing the possibilities of becoming a salesman for that firm, a Mr. Simonson walked by, stopped to talk to Louis and told him that a job was open at Publishers’ Weekly. A visit to Fred Melcher, editor of the paper, was then in order and a few weeks later found Louis on the paper. That was in 1918 and he has been there ever since. He is now a director of that company and is the only Jew to hold an important executive position in the firm.

Today Louis Green sails on the Columbia for an eighteen-day Central American tour and what do you think he is taking with him for entertainment? A package of books.

RANDOM REMARKS

Alexander Woollcott’s almost shameless plug on the radio and in the “New Yorker” for his latest book, “While Rome Burns,” is causing much raising of eyebrows among those who have had dealings with the portly sage of the East Fifties….The Artists and Writers’ Dinner Club, an organization which has been feeding indigent artists and writers these past two years, will give a ball at the Hotel Roosevelt on the evening of April 13th. All the proceeds will be used for continuing full troughs for hungry creators. Harry Hirshfield will act as master of ceremonies and among the sponsors of the affair are Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Deutsch. Tickets may be procured at the Roosevelt or at the Hotel Brevoort, the club’s headquarters.

Andor Braun, German Jew who came to this country to show publishers how books should be designed and who worked for Simon & Schuster and later for Long & Smith, has been harboring an idea to start a Radical Book of the Month Club. It is his hunch that there is a large portion of the reading public who would be interested in receiving periodically, a radical book…The big problem is “How radical should a radical book be?”