The kids at Penguin Random House Canada (PRHC) were shocked – shocked! – this week to learn they worked for a company determined to profit from selling books, even those written by Jordan B. Peterson.
PRHC announced Monday that the author of 12 Rules for Life, which sold millions of copies for the company worldwide, had penned a sequel entitled Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life. It will be released in Canada in March under PRHCâs prestigious Knopf Random House imprint.
According to Manisha Krishnan at Vice, who has the best account of the heated town-hall held at PRHC the day of the announcement, several employees confronted management about its decision to invest further in a man world-famous for refusing to refer to transgender students by their preferred pronouns â a man they say is âan icon of hate speech and transphobia and⌠white supremacy.â
It was not simply the fact that PRHC was publishing another Jordan B. Peterson (above) that irked. The book was not announced, even internally, until the last minute.
âI feel it was deliberately hidden and dropped on us once it was too late to change course,â an employee told Vice.
Another complaint was that since last spring, PRHC âhas been doing all these anti-racist and allyship things and them publishing Petersonâs book completely goes against this. It just makes all of their previous efforts seem completely performative.â
For my part, I was shocked it took the PRHC employees this long to figure out what was going on under their roof. SHuSH broke the story more than a year ago.
As SHuSH reported, Petersonâs representatives, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), were shopping his sequel around New York in the summer of 2019, right around the time young staffers at Manhattan media outlets were enjoying their biggest successes in canceling people whose views they considered wrong or objectionable or dangerous. The New York Review of Books had just rebelled against their editor-in-chiefâs decision to print Jian Ghomeshiâs non-apology for his reprehensible antics, leading to the dismissal of said editor-in-chief. And the New Yorkerâs staff revolted when editor David Remnickâs invited Steve Bannon to speak at a magazine event. Bannon was outlawed and Remnick apologized.
[Correction: Just learned that Peterson moved from The Cooke Agency to CAA, the mega-American agency, after the success of his last book. The text has been changed to reflect the move.)
CAAâs first stop with the sequel was Penguin Random House US, rich cousin of Penguin Random House Canada, and both of them part of the Penguin Random House multinational publishing company, a division of Bertlesmann, based in GĂźtersloh, Germany.
Penguin Random House US had famously whiffed on the opportunity to publish 12 Rules for Lifea few years earlier, leaving all of its phenomenal profits for Random House Canada, which sold the book around the world almost by default. Penguin Random House US wasnât going to make the same mistake this time. The CAA people were warmly welcomed. Jordan B. was offered a fat contract with the Random House U.S. imprint. He signed. All was good.
At least, all was good (as reported earlier) until Random House U.S. announced to its staff the good news that the best-selling Canadian controversialist had joined their ranks. Inspired by their peers at the New Yorker and New York Review of Books, the staff howled. Management swiftly folded. Peterson was told that Random House U.S. wouldnât be his publisher, after all. PRH would release him under another suitable (i.e., inconspicuous) imprint â itâs got hundreds of them.
Thatâs exactly what theyâre doing. The sequel will be published in the US in March by Portfolio, a business imprint in a broom closet in the Penguin wing of Penguin Random House US. Among Portfolio titles: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams; The HP Way by David Packard; and Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey Mackay. Odd company for Peterson, and not the treatment usually accorded an author who has brought a couple hundred million to the firm, but the execs at Portfolio presumably know how to get the books printed and shipped to stores, and thatâs really all a phenomenon like JBP requires.Managementâs shell game with its imprints somehow convinced the foaming footsoldiers at 1745 Broadway that their company had nothing to do with JBP2.With Penguin Random House US taking the lead on the book, it was a dead certainty that Penguin Random House Canada would get the Canadian rights (the Canadian rights deal may well have been done simultaneously). That was the moment for PRHC staffers to take to the barricades. They missed their chance. Last Monday was far too late.Moral of the story: read SHuSH.It fell to Anne Collins, publisher of Knopf Random House Canada, and as credible a figure as exists in Canadian publishing (herself a Governor Generalâs Award-winning author), to explain to staff at Mondayâs town hall that it is important for a large publisher to be open to âa variety of voices.â
Bravely, she went further, according to Vice, suggesting that Petersonâs therapeutic musings had âhelped millions of people who are on the fringes of society who would otherwise be radicalized by alt-right groups.â
It was a proper response, given the setting. Anneâs a pro. If Iâd been in her shoes, I would have blown it.
I would have been confrontational: âWho do you thinkâs been paying the freight here the last couple of years. Itâs not Tessa McWatt and Shame on Me: An Anatomy of Race and Belonging. I mean, fine book but does Tessa see the light of day here without a win like JPB to make her affordable?â
I would have added: âYou know Random House was built on right-wing politics, no? Ayn Rand (above) was a staple of our list in our glory years, and sheâs still a significant contributor under Signet, one of our âclassicsâ imprints.âAnd more: âWe also publish George W. Bush and Henry Kissinger and the Fifty Shades Trilogy. And youâre all complicit. Donât be suckered by the shell game. Donât think your hands are clean because you work at the other end of the hall. Itâs all Penguin Random House, and youâre complicit in all of it.âAs for the evasions: âOf course, we hid the damn thing from you. We canât have tantrums getting in the way of business. Next yearâs budget, our current staffing levels, and lots of things we like to do as a publishing company depend upon this book. Itâs JBP or the 2021 Christmas party. Think about that.âAnd: âAs for the anti-racist and allyship things, of course itâs performative. All corporate social responsibility stunts by all publicly-held companies are performative. But we probably do some good regardless, and at least we werenât partnering with WE.âProbably, by this point, the employees would have been looking for rope. I would have blithered on:
You fools.
Do you have any idea who you work for?
Iâll show you hate speech and white supremacists.
Iâll show you fascists.
Thereâs an official 800-page report on your employerâs links to the Nazis.
Real Nazis, not pretend Twitter Nazis.
Our dear masters at Bertlesmann printed nineteen million pieces of anti-Semitic material and Nazi propaganda during WW2.
The head of the company made donations to the SS and his Lithuanian printers used cheap Jewish labor from the local ghetto.Howâs that for allyship?Bertlesmann spent the war raking in money, and the moment the war ended they lied about it, claiming that Hitler had shut the company down victims.You canât make this shit up. It was in the New York Times. Itâs on Wikipedia.Surely if we can stand on the shoulders of The Christmas Book of the Hitler Youth, we can learn to swallow Jordan Bernt Petersonâs motherâing pronouns.
Then, wary of the rope, anxious to get them back to their desks in a productive mood, I would have bargained.
âLook, weâve been sitting forever on Joseph Boydenâs next novel to assuage your sensibilities. Give us this one and weâll keep Joe on the shelf for three more years.â