Rick Simonson

A Dalai Lama, Dally-rama Day
April 13, 2008

There are days like this.

Spring in Seattle so far had been utterly cold and withholding, cruel, cruel, barely touching north of sixty degrees at any point. Then Saturday blossomed forth, heavenly manifestations at work, or something. The temperature in a single bound pushed 80. People in more southerly climes may take that in stride, but in Seattle it made for borderline delirium.

Everything seemed different.Three blocks south of the bookstore (Elliott Bay) where I work is a stadium which when full usually holds over 60,000 boisterous, loud, demonstratively bellowing people, more than a few alchohol-propelled. Instead, this providentially sunny day, it was 50,000+ all going in to hear talk - talk, not shoulder pads crunching - on compassion. It was part of a four-day gathering in Seattle, a "Seeds of Compassion" series of dialogues and concerts (Dave Matthews) highlighted by the presence of the Dalai Lama.

Through someone who had received a ticket but had to decline, a ticket came my way at the last minute. On a beautiful Saturday afternoon I found myself perched where I never had expected to be, as my attendance in the stadium had been limited to minor league soccer matches that drew about 2,000 people. Still, I had an idea that my seat above an endzone would not normally have so many children, nor such a gentle air. My seat had me placed amidst a sizable contingent of Tibetans. Yes, people had their fries and hot dogs. No beer in sight, however.

The program for this session, one of many the Dalai Lama was partcipating in, featured local Lummi and Samish elders (a good reminder to some, looking at China, that similar issues are alive yet in this country), and many children - from musicians to singers to professions of compassion. The Dalai Lama did his own holding forth, speaking of and with humility about his own part in the scheme of things, but then asserting how everyone can and does have her/his power. He seemed pretty attuned to all the goings-on. An 11-year-old played a drop-dead Mozart violin concerto, for which the Dalai Lama hustled over to bestow a kata, the white silk scarf, around her neck.

That session was followed by one next door and inside, in a converted concert space. Here again I (somehow) had a ticket. All was more intimate, no stage shared with officials, less pomp and circumstance all around. Though reverence and respect there was. What made this talk different was that it was all in Tibetan. Three-fourths of those in the room were Tibetan - the other fourth largely Indian, Nepali, and other South Asians, with a few others also there. A few Tibetans translated sans microphone, but one had to be within feet of them to hear and understand.

I was seated in such a place that I got whiffs now and then - there was talk at the begnining of Buddhism, and its move, I believe, from India into other parts of Asia. Near the end, if I heard correctly, the talk was more on the present, convulsive state of affairs. I want to say I heard it that he saw the time now as being the most crucial and important since a large-scale assertion/crackdown of Chinese government authority over Tibet occurred in 1959, an action which occasioned a major rush of refugees. Knowing I was 'missing' the talk on one level, I nevertheless took it in at another - it was fascinating to just sit and listen - tone of voice, rhythms, inflections, points pointed and points humorous. This was His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. This was also Tenzin Gyatso.

When this concluded, it was a stark step out into the bright warmth of late afternoon. What crowd was this now? Ah yes, baseball. 35,000 people going to our other stadium, located across the street from the football one. First pitch was ten minutes away. Hot dogs, sausages, grilled onions, mustard - all filled the air. Knowing Seattle, I suspect a good many went from the Dalai Lama in one place to a Mariner baseball game in another.

There is a book angle to this, should you be wondering. Whereas 67,000 people can descend upon our neighborhood for a football game and purchase, at most, a handful of books on football (or any other subject), the Dalai Lama-bound crowd definitely found their way into the bookstore. A Tibetan Buddhism display was picked over big-time. Had I not known Pico Iyer was still two weeks away from a Seattle appearance for his new book on the Dalai Lama, The Open Road (Knopf), I might have thought he was in the joint for a reading, such was the spike on his book alone.

From the Dalai Lama festivities, the day continued with a drive and then ferry ride over to lovely Vashon Island, a bridge-free island that does work for a number of people to commute to Seattle from. It wasn't yet time for the annual Strawberry Festival. No, the occasion was rarer than that - one of those landmark birthdays for Vashon native and resident John Dally.

If I have the moniker correct, John is now our Houghton Mifflin Harcourt rep, though I don't think he would yet sell us Harcourt this coming fall season. (Has anyone heard?). This transition, seamless in some places, has had its confusions. A smattering of book folk were there along with a good number of Vashon habitants. We'll let this be one of those let 'what happened on Vashon stay on Vashon' stories, for brevity if not decorum's sake. There was music, there was food, there were libations, there were photos of John's first fifty years. I will say that even though Vashon is a skip and holler from Seattle proper it holds the night sky in ways the city can't touch - it was the starriest sky, and the shiniest moon seen in a long while.

John's being feted as he deservedly was had me musing on his work life, wondering how representative it is of how many others now.

John's very first book job was working at Elliott Bay. If I have the chronology correct, it would have been around 1979 - he was still at the University of Washington, in its creative writing program (if memory serves, a classmate of his was Kate McCunn, who also had her bookselling start at Elliott Bay before going the many places that would lead her to Chicago and HarperCollins). He was a kid, that was for sure. Around 1983, the late, great Oliver Gilliland plucked him from us for Norton (we were a generous source of reps over the years, back when reps were really being hired). He was shipped off to Chicago to work half the continent there as his territory. That went on a few years, then he stepped over to commission work with Stuart Abraham and Patsy Welch's group (as it was then constituted). There came a point where family started happening and Chicago wasn't working so well. John simply started packing it up, readying to move back to the Northwest, no prospects on the horizon.

Fortuitously, David Brewster, then our Viking Penguin rep, called with the news that he had just been promoted to the regional sales manager job. His first task was to hire someone to replace himself as a rep. Before he could speculate on possibilities, I gave him a Chicago phone number that was about to be disconnected. David and John talked, David and John soon met, David hired John.

That went on until David decided to leave Viking and make his own move east. (We're talking early 1990s here, I believe). John was promoted ... and promptly hired two more Elliott Bay people to be reps within his region.

Then came Viking's (Pearson) purchase of Putnam, and one of those turnabouts where the ones bought ended up being the ones to call the shots, at least operationally. This meant that when consolidation of the sales forces came along, the Putnam people generally prevailed. Pretty much all the reps under John's charge lost their jobs. John was losing his, but was offered the children's rep job. John would surely have been fine - he was/is good with kids' books. But he also has a streak in him. He turned the offer down.

He then scraped along a year or more (help here, John), at one point handling all the sales work for a small publisher specializing in language instruction titles. He did whatever else it took to help keep the family afloat. Probably he took on more bagpipe gigs than he'd usually have had time for (anyone else in the book business play?)

In the wake of longtime Houghton Mifflin rep Bill Hill's untimely passing, John was eventually hired (I recall a drawn-out process) to sell Houghton up here in the Northwest. I believe that that included the then-fledgling account that Amazon once was. (One could write a passel of these remembering reps staggering back from appointments in those early Amazon days, not sure which end was up, what language they had just been hearing, what expectations voiced ...)

These past years, that's pretty much been it, John selling Houghton and Beacon, ably, smartly, passionately, to independent accounts and Amazon. This last year, the Bay Area was added, when Michael Harrison retired.

There was a bit of unease (I believe) waiting out the reckoning of rep jobs now with this Houghton and Harcourt merger, but I think the breathing is now easier.

Twenty-five years, if that's what it is this year, of being a rep, John Dally has weathered some twists and turns, ups and downs, shakes and bumps, over the course of it all. He's not alone ... but in his case, it all seems to have help serve him well out on the dance floor.

Posted by Rick Simonson on April 13, 2008 | Comments (4)