Volume 11, Number 4 · September 12, 1968
Serving Time
By Andrew Kopkind
I used to work for Time; or was it sell? A Lucemployee is always a salesman first, and then a journalist of whatever degree. For most of three years, I was listed on the masthead as a correspondent in the San Francisco and Los Angeles bureaus, where I was assigned coverage of anything that could conceivably find its way into the magazine (except, of course, politics, which was left to wiser heads). I once investigated the left-foot braking trend—that is, the use of the left foot to apply the brakes on cars without a clutch. The trend was soon aborted. Shortly thereafter, I accompanied Conrad Hilton halfway around the world on a sentimental chevauchée, from one Hilton hotel to another. That ended abruptly when Pope John's untimely death canceled the gala opening of the Rome Hilton. On other occasions, I was sent to Fairbanks in late December by a superior who seemed to be made nervous by my presence in his bureau; to Aspen to ski-along with the Kennedys; to Tijuana to follow El Cordobés into the bullring; to Portland to watch open-heart surgery; to Baja California to observe the copulation of whales. Some of all that activity (and a lot of Business Section reporting, which I have repressed) eventually became bits and pieces of articles. But it occurred to me, long after I left Time for the distinctly drearier world of liberal political journalism, that reporting had been my secondary function. First of all, I was a drummer for the largest, most powerful publishing corporation in the world.
Feature, 4784 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |