Simone de Beauvoir on the US publishing biz

While poking around the site Moby Lives, I found this 1947 quote from Simone de Beauvoir posted by a reader in the Letters section: "Publishers and editors size up your mind in a critical and distasteful way, like an impresario asking a dancer to show her legs. They have contempt for the start for the product they're going to buy, as well as for the public on whom they'll foist the goods. Their role is to create between these two ridiculous forms of humanity -- the author and the reader -- a relationshp that is equally preposterous, but which their skill wll nonetheless convert into respectable dollars for the publisher. The very precision of their methods turns writing into a grocery store item. They say, 'I want 2,500 words. We pay so many dollars for 1,500 words.' A French editor must also count columns and lines of type, but with more flexibility. As for the contents of the articles, in France it is still accepted that certain values have meaning and that the public is capable of recognizing them. Here, it's a question of concealing from stupid readers the fundamental foolishness of the pages they're offered. This stupidity, amplified by the arrogant contempt of the businessmen who exploit it, rules the day. You are not allowed to trust the public, in the hope that they will trust you. You must give them what they want. The problem is that you must surprise them at the same time, surprise being one of the recommended forms of bait. Hence, a serious dilemma -- propose a subject for an unpublished article, and they tell you that Americans aren't interested in that; choose a question that concerns them, and they object that it's already hackneyed. The trick is to invent a provocative little novelty amid the commonplace."