MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1 Page I UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK .................................... X STUART Y. SILVERSTEIN, Plaintiff, -against- 01 Civ. 309 (JFK) PENGUIN PUTNAM, INC,, , Defendant. .................................... x October 26,2001 10:15 A.M. Deposition of Defendant, by MICHAEL MILLMAN, taken by Plaintiff, pursuant to Notice, at the offices of Piper Marbury Rudnick & Wolfe, LLP, 125 1 Avenue of the Americas. New York, New York 10020- 1 104 before Elisa Strassler-Rosenthal, a Certified Shorthand Reporter and Notary Public within and for the &ate of New York. Page 2 2 APPEARANCES: 3 PIPER MARBURY RUDNICK & WOLFE, LLP Attorneys for Plaintiff 4 125 1 Avenue of the Americas New York, New York 10020-1 104 5 BY: MONICA PE'TRAGLIA McCABE, ESQ. 6 CHRISTINE JASKIEWICZ, ESQ. 7 COWAN. LIEBOWITZ and LATMAN, P.C. 8 Attorneys for Defendant and the Witness 9 1133 Avenue of the Americas New York. New York 10036-6799 10 BY: RICHARD DANNAY, ESQ. I I .. I2 ALSO PRESENT: 13 STUART Y. SILVERSTEM 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Page 3 IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED by and between the attorneys for the respective parties herein that the sealing, tiling and certification of the within deposition be waived: that such deposition may be signed and sworn to before any officer authorized to administer an oath. with the same force and effect as if signed and sworn to before a judge of this court. IT IS FURTHER STIPULATED AND AGREED that all objections. except as to the form. are reserved to the time of the trial. Page 4 M. Millman MICHAEL MILLMAN, having been first duly sworn by the Notary Public (Elisa Strassler-Rosenthal), was examined and testified as follows: EXAMINATION BY MS. McCABE: Q. Would you please state your name and current work address for the record A. Michael S. Millman, Penguin Putnam, Incorporated, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. Q. I'm Monica McCabe, representing the plaintiff Stuart Silverstein in this matter before the court. I'm here to ask questions. I ask that you give verbal answers to the court reporter so she can understand them and take them down. If you don't understand my question, please let me know and I'll try and clarifL it. If you need a break, let me know and we'll break and we'll proceed. And we're using the usual federal stipulations. Have you been deposed before? A. Never. I (Pages I to 4) E-mail: [email protected]CLASSIC REPORTING, INC.
Transcript
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
Page I
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
.................................... X STUART Y. SILVERSTEIN,
Plaintiff, -against- 01 Civ. 309 (JFK)
PENGUIN PUTNAM, INC,, , Defendant. .................................... x
October 26,2001 10:15 A.M.
Deposition of Defendant, by
MICHAEL MILLMAN, taken by Plaintiff, pursuant
to Notice, at the offices of Piper Marbury
Rudnick & Wolfe, LLP, 125 1 Avenue of the
Americas. New York, New York 10020- 1 104 before
Elisa Strassler-Rosenthal, a Certified
Shorthand Reporter and Notary Public within
and for the &ate of New York.
Page 2
2 A P P E A R A N C E S : 3 PIPER MARBURY RUDNICK & WOLFE, LLP
Attorneys for Plaintiff 4 125 1 Avenue of the Americas
COWAN. LIEBOWITZ and LATMAN, P.C. 8 Attorneys for Defendant and the
Witness 9 1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York. New York 10036-6799 10
BY: RICHARD DANNAY, ESQ. I I . . I2
ALSO PRESENT: 13
STUART Y. SILVERSTEM 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Page 3
IT IS HEREBY STIPULATED AND AGREED by and between the attorneys for the respective parties herein that the sealing, tiling and certification of the within deposition be waived: that such deposition may be signed and sworn to before any officer authorized to administer an oath. with the same force and effect as if signed and sworn to before a judge of this court.
IT IS FURTHER STIPULATED AND AGREED that all objections. except as to the form. are reserved to the time of the trial.
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M. Millman M I C H A E L M I L L M A N ,
having been first duly sworn by the Notary Public (Elisa Strassler-Rosenthal), was examined and testified as follows:
EXAMINATION BY MS. McCABE: Q. Would you please state your name
and current work address for the record A. Michael S. Millman, Penguin
Putnam, Incorporated, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 100 14.
Q. I'm Monica McCabe, representing the plaintiff Stuart Silverstein in this matter before the court.
I'm here to ask questions. I ask that you give verbal answers to the court reporter so she can understand them and take them down. If you don't understand my question, please let me know and I'll try and clarifL it.
If you need a break, let me know and we'll break and we'll proceed. And we're using the usual federal stipulations.
M. Millman Q. Have you ever testified at trial? A. Never. Q. Have you been sued before? A. Never. Q. Have you been involved in any
litigation in which Penguin was a party? A. Never. Q. Were you involved in a Lanham
case, a trademark case at one point? A. I'm sorry, can you tell me what
you mean by involved? MR. DANNAY: He may not know what
that is. Q. Trademark infringement case
against Penguin. A. There was a -- there was a
trademark case some years ago involving Oxford University Press. I don't know if that's what you are referring to.
Q. Yes. A. I mean -- Q. Did you testify at it? A. No. Q. Okay. Were you the editor in
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M. Millman charge of the work that was allegedly infringing?
A. I was -- well, maybe I'm thinking of a different case then, sorry. Can you tell me what you are talking about?
Q. Okay. We'll come back to that later.
A. Okay. Q. Did you meet with anyone to
prepare for your deposition today? A. Yes. Q. And who did you meet with? A. Mr. Dannay and Alex Gigante, who
is counsel for Penguin Putnarn. Q. Anybody else? A. That'sit. Q. Did you talk to anybody else
about the deposition? A. With Jane von Mehren very
briefly. Q. What was the substance of your
conversation with Jane? A. It didn't really have much
substance, it was more of a question of how
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M. Millman long it took her.
Q. That's all you discussed, was the length of your deposition?
A. Yes. Q. Did she tell you what kinds of
questions I had asked her the other day? A. No. Q. Did you have any chance to review
any notes of her deposition? A. No. Q. Anyone else at Penguin you spoke
to about the deposition? A. No. Q. Anybody else you E-mailed or
communicated in any way about the deposition? A. No. Q. Did you review any documents in
connection with your deposition? A. Yes, I did. Q. And what documents were those? A. I think it was -- it was
everybody that Mr. Gigante and Mr. Dannay gave me pertaining to the case, so it seemed mostly to be copies of my own correspondence.
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M. Millman Q. Anything else? A. I think there was some
correspondence between Mr. Silverstein and his editor at Scribner. Contracts and so forth.
Q. Okay. Anything else? A. I think that's everything. Q. Do you recall a suit in which
Penguin Putnam was sued about a mystery titled -- called "McNally's Dilemma"?
A. No, I do not. Q. Do you know that you are quoted
in an article regarding that suit? A. No, I don't. What did I say? Q. Well, it says Penguin is an
editor at Penguin Putnarn -- well, let me tell you what I'm reading from; The Providence Journal-Bulletin January 30, 2000. This is a printout:
"Millman is an editor at Penguiflutnam, which under its Viking imprint last fall published a collection of Jack Kerouac's early, previously unpublished stories. Reviews of the late Beat guru's
1 M. Millman 2 adolescent ramblings were mixed." 3 And the next sentence says: 4 "And then, just two weeks ago, 5 Millman's company was accused of trying 6 to take the process one step further. 7 A disgruntled reader in Brooklyn filed 8 suit alleging that PenguidPutnam is 9 trying to con the public into thinking 10 its new mystery title, McNallyls 1 1 Dilemma, was written by the 12 best-selling author who had written the 13 others in the McNally series, Lawrence 14 Sanders, when in fact Sanders died in 15 1998!" 16 Are you aware of that? 17 A. No, I'm not. When was that 18 again? 19 Q. The story is January 30,2000. 20 MR. DANNAY: Maybe she should 2 1 give you a copy. 22 THE WITNESS: I would love to 23 have one, thank you. For my scrapbook. 24 MS. McCABE: We'll mark this as 25 an exhibit.
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M. Millman (Article from The Providence Journal-Bulletin dated January 30,2000 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 8 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Starting with college, can you give me your educational background?
A. Sure. I graduated from Hamilton College in upstate New York in 1984, and had a bachelor of arts as an English major.
Q. And any post-graduate education? A. None whatsoever. Q. And when did you begin your
employment? A. Period? Q. Yes. You know, not every
part-time job you ever had, but -- A. I guess maybe a year after
graduation. Q. Where did you begin? A. Simon & Schuster. Q. What was your position at that
point? A. I was an assistant to the head of
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M. Millman the copy editing department, a lady named Sophie Sorkin.
Q. How long did you remain an assistant to the copyright editor?
A. I think I was there for a little bit less than a year. The managing editor of Simon & Schuster took a shine to me and hired me away.
Q. The managing editor? A. Yes. I think her name was Leslie
Kraus. Q. Okay. Andwhatdidyoudowhile
you worked for her? A. I think I probably worked for her
for less than two months. I wanted to become an editorial assistant. The original job was in the copy editing department.
Then I worked for the managing editor and then I heard about an editorial assistant position at Penguin so I began there in '86, I think.
Q. And what kind of editor position did you start out with?
A. I was an editorial assistant to
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M. Millman two editors.
Q. And who were the two editors? A. Patricia Mulcahy and Stacy
Schiff. Q. And how long did you stay in that
position? A. Oh, God, probably less than two
years. Q. And what were your duties? A. Pretty much -- it's a clerical
position that first -- that first editorial assistant position. You're typing, filing.
Q. But you get to see a lot, I'm assuming?
A. Sure. Q. And after those two years, did
you get promoted? A. Oh, God -- I'm sorry, I didn't
bring my resume and I'm doing this all from memory.
Q. Okay. A. I think it was, I'm sure, less
than two years. Both of those editors moved on and I began working for another senior
Q. And what did you do for him? A. Same thing. Q. And how long did you work for Mr.
Frank? A. A long time. Over the years,
moving up sort of one rung at a time, but you go from editorial assistant to assistant editor to associate editor to editor to senior editor to executive editor, I hope this is helping by speeding it up, which is my current position.
Q. Okay. A. I've been there for 15 years. Q. And do you remember what Dan
Frank's position was at the time you worked for him?
A. Senior editor, I believe I said. Q. And any particular kind of books
that he worked on, publications? A. No. Viking Penguin at that time
was a general trade house so we did both fiction and nonfiction.
Q. And paperback, nonpaperbacks?
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M. Millman A. Both. Q. And who was the next editor that
you worked for that you can remember? A. Well, the thing is that as I was
being promoted, Mr. Frank was being promoted as well, so my promotions pretty much corresponded with his. And when he left the company, I'm sorry, I can't do the date off the top of my head, I began to report directly to Kathryn Court, who is the publisher of Penguin.
Q. Would that have been after the merger?
A. Whichmerger? Q. With Putnam. A. No. Much longer before. Q. So we're talking about 1992, '93? A. Something like that. I'm sorry,
I honestly don't remember the year. Q. Okay. And Kathryn Court was
employed by Viking Penguin? A. Yes. Q. And what duties did you have
working with her?
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M. Millman A. At that point? I think at that
point I was probably a senior editor. So I was an acquiring editor. So I was buying books, both hardcovers for Viking and paperbacks for Penguin.
At that point too, I was -- I had been put in charge of several paperback series including the Penguin Classics, the Penguin 20th Century Classics and the Viking Portable Library Series.
Q. And how would you describe Penguin 20th Century Line Classics -- I'm sony, I misspoke.
There's Penguin 20th Century Classics and then there is just Penguin Classics?
A. The 20th Century Classics are basically an outgrowth of the Penguin Classics. The Penguin Classics line is probably the most famous classics paperback line in the world, at least in the English language.
Sometime in the late '80s or the early '90s, we decided to extend the line into
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M. Millman 20th century literature. Up until then it really pretty much cut off at 19th century, the turn of the century. So we began to put many of the authors that we already controlled into that series. It has a different trade look.
Q. And what kinds of books would be published under the Penguin 20th Century Classics imprint?
A. I mean, I guess -- as I say, it was an outgrowth of what we were already doing, so they were basically canonical 20th ,
century authors, some fiction, some nonfiction.
But some authors we were already publishing, James Joyce, Saul Bellow, we began shifting them into this series as we began adding new authors all the time.
Q. And when did you become editor in chief of Penguin?
A. I've never had that title. Q. Okay. A. Although in Providence, I might
M. Millman Q. Executive editor? A. I'm sorry, I should have brought
my resume with me. I can't tell you the exact date.
Q. Approximate? A. '97,'98. Q. And in the '94195 period, do you
have a recollection of what your title was? A. I believe it was senior. Q. And what are the duties of a
senior editor? A. They are remarkably similar to
the duties of an executive editor. I think maybe I answered this as well before. It's hard to answer the question generically.
My responsibilities, as I say, were to buy new books, both for the Viking hardcover line and the Penguin line. And because I was in charge of the series, I was also buying books into all three of them, the black-spined Penguin Classics, the green-spined 20th Century Classics and the Viking Portable Library.
Q. What happened, when you were
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M. Millman senior editor, after you purchased a book?
What was your responsibility with respect to that book?
A. After acquiring it, which is to say having the contract drawn up with the author --
Q. Right. A. -- the editor, et cetera, the
editor is basically responsible for everything that happens to it afterward.
Which is to say we shepherd it through its entire production to get it from a manuscript to a finished book at the end of the day and then we also oversee the marketing and publicity and sales that go on after.
Q. So you are heavily involved in the editing of the book?
A. It depends what you mean by heavily involved. Again, I think it's really done on a book by book basis. Some things require much more involvement than others.
Q. What would require more involvement than others?
A. Say an original publication
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M. Millman versus, say, a Penguin Classic for the most part. Classics. by their very nature. are books that already have been published, so the amount of work we need to put into them would be lesser involvement than, say, a manuscript which hasn't yet seen the light of day.
Q. I know you said they are somewhat similar, the executive editor position. Is there any difference between the two positions?
A. I -- there is a difference in salary.
Q. In terms of your responsibilities?
A. Not -- not as such. I mean, the -- the executive adjective doesn't put a magical mantle on my shoulders and in terms of the people who are working for me, it wasn't as though when you get the executive editor position, you have a whole staff of people reporting to you.
Q. Do you have additional responsibilities though?
A. That came with that title? I
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M. Millman really don't think so. It was actually -- I hate to say it, it was more of a nominal promotion.
Q. When you were senior editor in the '94195 period, who was your -- was Kathryn Court --
A. Yes. Q. -- your direct supervisor at that
time? A. Yes, to the best of my
recollection. I think so, yes. Q. And when you purchased a book and
were shepherding it through the process, would you consult with her regarding the book?
A. As needed, yes. Q. And who were the people under you
during that time period, do you recall? A. I think a single clerical
assistant. Q. And who was that? A. Jariya Wanapun. Q. And who was Kathryn Court's
superior at that time? A. I'm not certain, but I believe
M. Millman she reported directly to the president of the company.
Q. Anybody else that reported to you at that point?
A. No. Q. And after the merger in 1996 --
late 1996 -- I'm talking about with Putnam, did Kathryn Court remain your supervisor?
A. Yes. And remains to this day. Q. Okay. And who is above Kathryn
Court? A. I think she reports now to Susan
Peterson Kennedy. Q. And prior to today, did she
report to somebody else? A. Kathryn? Q. Yes. A. I don't think so. Q. And in 1996, who would you have
been supervising? A. Oh, God, I don't remember exactly
when Jariya left, but I think she was still there in 1996.
Q. After Jariya left, who replaced
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M. Millman her?
A. Apologies in advance, Zelimir Galjanic. I'm not making these names up.
Q. And other than those two names, did you supervise anybody else in the late '90 period?
A. In the late '90s? No. Q. And today, who do you supervise? A. Yes. And I just hired her and
let me come up with her name. It's Claire Hunsaker.
Q. Anyone else? A. That's it. Q. Okay. A. And just to chi@, if it's
needed, generally, at Viking Penguin, the editors all share assistants. So when Jariya was working for me, she was also working for another editor.
Q. Do you know who the other editor was?
A. I think at that point, it was Dawn Drzal.
Q. You sometimes work with editors
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M. Millman that were outside the company, that were not Penguin employees; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And in terms of the editorial
process, when you were the senior editor or executive editor with respect to a book that you had published, who would the final say -- who had the final say in the editing decision, it was you as the Penguin employee?
A. Yes. Q. Have you ever been instructed on,
while at Penguin, regarding the company's policies or procedures regarding plagiarism or copyright infringement?
A. Yes. Q. And when would that have been? A. I think over the years, our legal
department has issued little booklets that are meant to be sort of instructions, general guidelines on transmitting manuscripts into production and the sorts of things that you should watch out for.
And on original works, we would often send them out to the authors just to let
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M. Millman them know these are the kinds of things that you need to clear.
Q. You mean, send the booklets out to the authors?
A. Yes. Q. And did you have any sort of
seminars or -- you know, lunches where the topic was discussed, perhaps by someone in your legal department, or someone outside of the legal department?
A. Possibly. I don't -- I don't remember.
Q. And the booklet that you are referring to, do you know what it was called?
A. No. Q. Do,you remember the first time
you saw it? A. No. Q. Would it have been early on in
your career? A. The one I remember the most
distinctly, which is to say not at all distinctly, was the one that was created after the merger with New American Library.
M. Millman Q. When would the merger have been? A. I guess it was the late '80s. Q. Okay. Do you still have a copy
of the booklet? A. Not personally, no. Q. Does the company still use the
same booklet? A. Idon'tthinkit'sactuallybeen
revised in years. And as far as I know, it has not been revised since the latest corporate merger.
Q. Is it still sent to authors, do people still use it?
A. I -- I can't speak for anyone else, but I -- I don't think I've used it, myself, in years.
Q. Do you know if it's sent to authors?
A. 1 honestly don't. Q. Do you know what it was called? A. I still don't know. Q. Okay. Do you recall what it said
about plagiarism or copyright infringement? A. I don't recall the particulars,
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M. Millman no.
Q. In general, what do you understand to be copyright infringement to be?
MR. DANNAY: I object as to form. MS. McCABE: Okay. MR. DANNAY: You can answer. THE WITNESS: I'm sorry, could
you repeat, please. (Record read.)
A. My general understanding is it's using work that's been copyrighted by someone else without permission.
Q. I'm going to show you a document that's already been marked as Plaintiffs Exhibit 1.
If you could take a look at the documents Bates stamped 00323 to 00325 dated April 1 8, 1996.
The subject matter of this memo is vetting of manuscripts; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. Have you ever seen this document
before? A. Probably.
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M. Millman Q. Okay. A. I honestly don't remember, but if
it had general distribution, it should have been sent to me. ves.
Q. And doyou know who Karen Mayer is? ~ - .
A. Yes. She's one of our attorneys. Q. And in 1996, would you have been
considered one of the adult trade -- A. Absolutely. Q. -- and mass market editors? A. Absolutely. In the former
category. Q. I would like to direct your
attention to paragraph 7. Is it fair to say, the first
sentence there states that editors are responsible for being sure that the author has obtained all permissions for the use of copyrighted material?
A. Yes. MR. DANNAY: I object to the form
of the question. You didn't read that correctly.
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M. Millman MS. McCABE: I was summarizing,
but I would be happy to read it into the record.
MR. DANNAY: I would prefer you read it accurately. Q. "Editors are also responsible for being sure that the author has obtained any required permissions for the use of copyrighted material."
And is that your general understanding of Penguin's terms in terms of copyright permissions?
A. Yes. Q. And just to direct your attention
to (b), which says, the second sentence: "Quoting up to 350 words from a
full length book with appropriate attribution would generally be a fair use for which permission would not be required."
Is that your understanding of what Penguin would consider a fair use --
document which has previously been marked as Plaintiffs Exhibit 2.
In particular, I would like to direct your attention to pages 22 through 24 and pages 32 to 33. Just let me know when you're done.
A. I'm sorry, 22 to -- Q. 24. A. And -- Q. And32and33.
MR. DANNAY: Is there a question pending?
MS. McCABE: He's reviewing. I told him to let me know when he Gas done. A. Done. Q. Do you recognize this document? A. Absolutely. Q. Is this the booklet? A. Yes, this was the name I was
searching for, the Viking Penguin Author's Guide.
Q. And do you know how you received
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M. Millman this or how you came to review it before today?
A. I think it was prepared around 1995 after the merger with New American Library. And it was generally distributed to all the Viking Penguin editors.
Q. Okay. And I'm sure you are familiar with anthologies, collections, compilations, works?
A. Yes. Q. On page 23, there is a little
blurb there about collections. It says: "No materials should be used in
works such as anthologies, compilations, collections, digests, reprints or readers (with the possible exception of a collection of quotations)" -- that's closed parens -- "without the written consent of the rights proprietor and the giving of full credit to the author, title, publisher and copyright notice of the work."
Is that your general
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M. Millman understanding of Penguin's policy of using collections, whatever they may be, compilations, digests, et cetera?
A. Yes. Q. Do you recall reading this at
some time prior -- A. Yes. Q. -- to today? A. Definitely. Q. And also in the first paragraph,
the third sentence I believe says: "It does not (except in passing)
address problems of libel or rights of trademark. privacy, and publicity, all of which must be dealt with on a separate basis."
Did you ever see any kind of manual, policy, written guideline regarding such issues as libel or rights of trademark, privacy?
A. Not that I remember. Q. Issued by Penguin, of course? A. Not that I recall. Q. And if you had a question
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M. Millman regarding rights of trademark or libel, what would you do with them?
A. Speak to one of our attorneys or someone in our legal department.
Q. Okay. And is there an attorney that you frequently use?
A. At that time? Q. Yes. A. What time are we -- Q. In 1996 -- 1995, 1996, 1997. A. I think it depended on the
question at that point. The woman who prepared our copyright pages -- oh, God, here is another name. Tsuyako Uehara was usually the first person that we would go to.
And if -- if it was a more complex question or Tsuyako, herself, didn't know, I think she would refer us to either the head of the contracts department, Ms. Judith Morse or I think the then general counsel of the company was Alan Kaufman.
Q. And did you ever consult with Alex Gigante regarding copyright issues?
A. I don't think Alex was there at
8 (Pages 29 to 32)
CLASSIC REPORTING, INC. E-mail: ClassReote@,aol.com
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30, 200 1
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M. Millman that point.
Q. Okay. A. I don't know the year that he
came, but it's relatively recently. He certainly wasn't there at that point.
MR. DANNAY: I'm just going to interrupt for a second. If you want to know who the lawyers were, I'm not sure everybody in the contracts department was a lawyer.
THE WITNESS: Oh, I'm sony. Q. Are there any other attorneys
that you would speak with? A. I think -- I think Alan was
probably the only one who had a law degree, but I'm not certain.
THE WITNESS: Thank you. MR. DANNAY: I'm pretty sure.
Q. In 1999, who would you have consulted regarding copyright issues?
A. I -- I think at that point, Karen Mayer was there so I might -- it would have been the same procedure. Going first to Tsuyako, sorry about that name, and then
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M. Millman probably to Judith Morse and then I think probably to Karen Mayer.
Q. I would like to direct your attention now to pages 32 and 33.
You have been involved in editing books and poetries; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. How many approximately? A. I have no idea. Q. Lots -- A. Let's say a dozen. Q. Okay. The first line says:
"Poetry is unique in that many poets have very definite ideas about how they want their books to look."
Is that your general understanding of --
A. I have found that to be the case, yes.
Q. And does this portiomhere entitled "Poetry Styling" generally communicate Penguin's policy in terms of dealing with poetry preferences and layout, things like that?
9 (Pages 33 to 36)
Page 3 5
M. Millman A. Generally, yes. Q. Okay. And does it direct editors
to follow, to the extent possible, the preferences or collection selections of the poets themselves or the person putting the book together?
A. Yes. Q. Is it also seemingly somewhat
important in terms of where the breaks are in terms of the poetry in the book?
A. Yes. And I hope this is a useful clarification. I believe the intent of the Viking Penguin Author's Guide was almost entirely for original works, so I don't know that I actually ever used this in preparation for any of the Penguin Classics, for instance.
Q. Right. Did you have a different policy for the classics?
A. No. Q. Okay. A. But -- I ' l l just leave it at
that. MR. DANNAY: Did you complete
your answer? Because if you didn't,
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1 M. Millman 2 you are allowed to complete your 3 answer. 4 A. We can leave it at no. 5 Q. Is there a reason then why, on 6 page 23, there is a section about 7 "Collections,'' which presumably would be 8 collections of previously printed works? 9 MR. DANNAY: I object to the form
10 of the question. 11 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry, do you 12 mind reading it back, please. 13 (Record read.) 14 A. I'm sorry, do you mind 15 rephrasing? I'm not sure what you mean, is 16 there a reason. 17 Q. You said this primarily applies 18 to new material; is that correct? 19 A. Yes. 20 Q. But collections usually are 2 1 collections of previously published work, no? 22 A. Absolutely. 23 Q. Okay. And what I'm saying is, 24 there is a specific paragraph here regarding 25 collections, is there not?
M. Millman A. Yes. Q. Okay. By the way, were you shown
this document during your deposition preparation?
A. I think so, yes. MR. DANNAY: I object to the form
of that question. MS. McCABE: Were you shown this
document? MR. DANNAY: Yes.
Q. Do you recognize Mr. Stuart Silverstein, who is sitting in this room?
A. No. Q. Have you ever met him before? A. Idon'tbelieveso. Q. Do you know who he is? A. I don't mean to perjure myself, I
met him downstairs, excuse me. Q. Prior to this morning? A. No, I have not. Q. Do you know who he is? A. Yes , Ido . Q. Who is he? A. He is the compiler o f a Scribner
Page 38
M. Millman book -- I'm sorry, I'm reading upside down, called Not Much Fun.
Q. When did you first hear of Mr. Silverstein's name, do you remember?
A. I don't know if I'm going to be able to do the dates justice, but I think it was in late 1994.
Q. Okay. And how did you come to hear about Mr. Silverstein?
A. A proposal for a book was submitted to my colleague Jane von Mehren that was being edited by Mr. Silverstein.
Q. And was that proposal, in fact, submitted by Mr. Silverstein?
A. I honestly don't know. At some point, an agent was involved, but I don't know if there was an agent involved in the beginning.
Q. And did you review the proposal? A. 1 did. Q. And did you discuss it with Jane
von Mehren? A. I did. Q. And what was the substance o f
Page 39
M. Millman your conversations with Jane von Mehren about the proposal?
MR. DANNAY: At that time? MS. McCABE: At that time. THE WITNESS: Thank you.
A. I -- I think -- I think w e may have had many discussions. I think the proposal was brought into our editorial meeting for a general discussion with the rest of my colleagues as well.
So to tell you the truth, 1 mean, I don't honestly remember what was a consultation directly with Jane and what might have been a discussion involving Jane, if that's an important distinction.
Q. No, it's not. A. Okay. Q. In general, who else did you
speak to about the book -- A. I honestly don't -- Q. Let me strike that.
Who else at Penguin did you discuss the proposal with?
A. I -- I don't remember
Page 40
M. Millman specifically, but the procedure is we generally bring new proposals into the editorial meetings so all of the other editors are present at that point.
Q. And -- A. I'm sony, again, if I can just
complete. Q. Yes. A. I don't have a specific
recollection o f who in the room might have talked about the specific proposal.
Q. Okay. But your conversations in general with Jane, what was the substance of those conversations?
A. Regarding the -- the specific -- Q. The manuscript -- A. The proposal -- Q. The proposal? A. I was against our acquiring it. Q. And why is that? A. Two main reasons, actually. As I
remember the original proposal, the idea was that the collection would be the quote, unquote, lost poems o f Dorothy Parker, and
M. Millman strictly speaking from an editorial standpoint, the poems were not lost at all, they were uncollected by Ms. Parker.
I was fairly intimate with her work. Viking had been in the business of publishing Ms. Parker for close to 75 years at that point. 1 was surprised to learn of the poems' existence and I -- actually -- I mean, I thought there was some wonderful work in them, but the proposal, as conceived, didn't make sense to me and I didn't think we would be able to sell very many copies.
Q. And what was Jane's feeling? Did she agree with you or did she
disagree with you? A. I guess, ultimately, she agreed.
I mean, that -- that wasn't my sole objection either.
Q. What was your other objection? A. From a -- from a business
standpoint, it was my understanding that the way the poems were being represented was that they were largely public domain poems.
So it wasn't particularly clear
Page 42
M. Millman to me exactly what we would have been buying other than the research that went into finding them and it looked like fairly thorough bibliographic research to me, but it didn't add up to a trade book, as far as I was concerned.
Q. And what was Jane von Mehren's response to that?
A. She agreed. Q. Do you know that she sent several
letters to Mr. Silverstein appearing to be interested in obtaining the manuscript?
MR. DANNAY: Object to the form of the question. A. I better hear that one again.
(Record read.) Q. Now that you've been tipped by
your lawyer -- MR. DANNAY: I think the form is
objectionable. If he can answer it, he can answer it under the rules, but -- you don't want to show him the letters?
MS. McCABE: No. Q. Answer the question. Go ahead.
Page -13
M. Millman (Record read.)
A. May I answer? I know she sent several letters, but exactly what she said I -- I mean, I may have even been shown them, but I don't remember particularly what they said.
Q. Okay. Did you speak to Kathryn Court about the proposal?
A. I don't remember, but she certainly would have been present in the editorial meeting when we discussed it.
Q. Was it discussed at one meeting, more than one meeting?
A. 1 don't specifically remember, but 1 -- as I -- as I remember it, the process took some time and the way it works at Viking Penguin is once you've brought a project up in an editorial meeting, it continues to be carried on our minutes until it goes away, one way or the other. The one way being that we buy it and the second way being that we don't.
Q. Do you recall how this one went away, quote, unquote?
A. Yes. I -- I mean, I think I do.
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M. Millman I believe that Jane ultimately rejected it and said that we thought it just didn't make sense to publish it in that particular form, but that some of the material or all of the material might be used as part of a larger colIection.
And since we were the proprietors of all of the rest of Dorothy Parker's poems, that would make a great deal of sense.
Q. And did you understand Jane to have made an offer for Mr. Silverstein to submit the material he had compiled to a larger volume of the more complete -- of the complete -- strike that -- of the complete poems of Ms. Dorothy Parker?
A. Goodness, that was a complicated one. I'm sorry, do you mind reading it back?
MR. DANNAY: Objection to the form of the question.
(Record read.) A. Do you mind simplifying the
question or breaking it down for me just so -- Q. Well, from what I understand your
M. Millman proposal that contained what were the quote, unquote, lost poems of Dorothy Parker; is that correct?
And you also thought that it wouldn't make sense to just publish the lost poems, that it would make sense to publish a more complete volume of her works; is that correct -- of her poetry, I should say?
A. Yes, indeed. And may I amplitjl? Q. Sure. A. I hope I can amplify. At that
same moment, we were in the middle of a negotiation with the NAACP to control the copyrights for Ms. Parker's works to put together a collection of the Complete Stories of Dorothy Parker.
So I think probably that's what put the idea into my head at that moment. If this volume was going to work, to do a Complete Stories, it might be a good idea to do a Complete Poems somewhere down the line.
Q. Okay. And wasn't it a fact that Jane wrote to Mr. Silverstein and perhaps spoke with his agent that they would be
Page 46
M. Millman interested in obtaining the works that Mr. Silverstein had compiled for the larger volume?
MR. DANNAY: Object to the form of the question. A. Do you mind rephrasing that one?
MR. DANNAY: Do you want -- Q. Do you understand Jane to have
made a proposal to Mr. Silverstein to obtain the -- strike it.
A. Thank you. Q. Do you understand Jane von Mehren
to have asked Mr. Silverstein if he were interested in submitting his compiled submission of the lost poems to a much -- to a larger volume of Dorothy Parker's works?
MR. DANNAY: Okay. I object to the form and he can answer if he can. A. Again, just would you mind
reading it back in its latest incarnation? (Record read.) MR. DANNAY: If you want the
basis for my objection, I'll tell you. The basis of the objection is that I
Page 47
M. Millman thought I heard Mr. Millrnan say that he was not familiar of the content of the letters from Jane von Mehren to Mr. Silverstein.
MS. McCABE: I didn't ask about letters, I asked in any w-ay did he understand that.
THE WITNESS: So, can I hear the whole question again?
(Record read.) A. I -- 1 have seen the final letter
that Jane sent and I can't remember if it was directly to Mr. Silverstein or to the agent, but I -- I've seen that letter.
Can 1 take a look at it now? Q. Well, I'm asking just for your
recollection right now. We can take a look at it later.
A. Okay. Q. Give me whatever your
recollection is. If you don't remember, you don't remember. If it's a no, it's a no. if it's a yes, it's a yes.
A. I don't remember.
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M. Millman Q. Do you recall what you did with
the proposal, as you call it, that Mr. Silverstein had given to Jane von Mehren?
A. I imagine we either sent it back or we recycled it.
Q. What does recycled it mean? A. Put it in a large blue bin to be
recycled. Q. Did you keep a copy of it in your
drawer? A. I don't think so. Q. In your file cabinets anywhere? A. I don't think so. Q. Did you send it on to anyone
else? A. I don't think so. Q. Did you actually read it? A. Yes. Q. Do you recall what was in it? A. Not -- not specifically, no, but
I did read it at the time, yes. Q. Do you know who else at Penguin
read the manuscript? A. I don't. Other than Jane, I
Q. Did you give the manuscript to Colleen Breese at any point?
A. I don't think i had the manuscript to give her. I certainly gave her a finished book.
Q. What was the finished book you gave her?
A. Not Much Fun. Q. Okay. This was previously marked
as Plaintiffs 4. Do you recall this letter?
A. I -- hang on one second, I'm sorry.
Q. Sure. A. I -- I don't, to tell you the
truth, but I'm clearly carboned on it so 1 must have seen it at the time.
Q. And did you discuss this letter with Jane von Mehren?
A. Not to my recollection, no. Q. Okay. Do you see at the end, it
says: "So, I would like to continue to
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M. Millman proceed here and will await more information from you."
Is that correct?. A. "So, I would like to continue to
proceed here and" -- yes, yes, I can read that.
Q. And is that what you understand the letter to have said at the time you received it?
MR. DANNAY: Object to the form. MS. McCABE: Okay.
A. Do I understand the letter to have contained the line that I just read from it?
Q. Yes. A. Yes. Q. This has been previously marked
as Plaintiffs 3. Do you recognize this document?
A. It looks familiar, yes. Q. And can you tell me what it is? A. I believe this was the original
proposal that was submitted to Jane in June of 1994.
Page 5 1
M. Millrnan Q. Okay. And this is the one you
reviewed? A. I believe -- Q. To the best -- A. To the best of my knowledge. yes. Q. At the bottom of each page, from
page 185 through 322, do you see a small line that says:
"Not Much Fun: The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker - Compilation, C with a circle, 1994 S.Y. Silverstein." A. Yes, I see that. Q. Do you understand what that
means? A. I think so. Q. Tell me in your own words what it
means. MR. DANNAY: I object to the form
of the last question. MS. McCABE: Why? MR. DANNAY: You changed it. You
asked him what he understands it to mean and then what it means. Q. Okay. What do you understand it
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M. Millman to mean?
Trying to shortcut here. A. Maybe I should just change my
answer to no, I don't understand what it means.
Q. Well, why would you change your answer now?
A. Well, I didn't think I was going to be asked to define it.
Q. Well, in general, what does a C and a circle mean?
A. That the material has been copyrighted.
Q. And do you understand this to mean that the compilation has been copyrighted by Mr. Silverstein as of 1994?
A. That's what it appears to say, yes.
Q. Okay. THE WITNESS: Would this be a
good time to break or can we keep -- or should we keep going for a while?
Q. This has previously been marked as Plaintiffs 5. Let me know when you're done reviewing it.
A. Okay. Thank you. MS. McCABE: This has been Bates
stamped, by the way, 009. Q. I wanted to for one second refer
you back to Plaintiffs E'xhibit 3, which was the manuscript.
A. Okay. Q. Was this the manuscript that was
discussed at the editorial meeting that you referred to earlier?
A. As far as I know, yes. Q. Okay. Moving on to Plaintiffs
5, do you know who Peter Lampack is? A. I believe he's Mr. Silverstein's
agent. Q. And have you dealt with him with
respect to other issues besides this book? A. I don't -- I may have, but I
don't think so. Q. But you know him to be an agent?
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M. Millman A. Yes. Q. And have you seen this document
before? A. I believe so, yes. Q. Okay. And do you recall
discussing this correspondence to Peter Lampack with Jane von Mehren before it went out?
A. I think -- I think I do remember that, yes.
Q. Okay. And does it indicate in a general sense that Penguin would like to do a larger collection of Dorothy Parker's work, larger than the manuscript Mr. Silverstein submitted?
THE WITNESS: I'm sony, can you just read it? I couldn't quite catch the whole thing.
(Record read.) A. Yes, I think it does indicate
that. Q. Okay. Does it also indicate that
Mr. Silverstein, and I'll quote: "Could pull together the lost
Page 5 5
M. Millman poems and the attending permissions and perhaps also select the other poems to be included in the book." A. Yes. I mean, it seems to say
that explicitly, in fact. Q. And does it also explicitly say:
"We would also want to have a major literary or academic figure write an introduction." A. Yes, it seems to say that as
well. Q. And did you have in mind who the
major academic or literary figure might be? A. At that point? No. At that
stage of the game, as I said previously, we were -- I think at that stage of the game -- actually, if we're in late October now, I believe the contract with the NAACP for the Complete Stories had actually been finalized at that point and I may already have picked the academic who was going to write the introduction to that.
Q. And who was that going to be? A. She's a well-respected feminist
Page 56
M. Millman critic at the University of Connecticut named Regina Barrecca.
Q. And -- A. I'm sorry, that was for the
volume of the stories. But my guess is -- and I'm sure I shouldn't be phrasing it that way, at the time that Jane sent this letter, we thought we would want to do a similar volume to the one we had only just contracted for.
Q. The Complete Stories? A. So putting together an editor
with an introducing -- Q. So apparently, you had spoken to
Jane about possibly Mr. Silverstein putting together the whole volume of Complete Poems?
A. I think so, yes. I mean, it seems to me the language in the letter is actually strangely ambiguous, but that's the way I would read it as well.
Who -- I'm sorry to keep interrupting you, we usually make offers much more explicitly than the wording in this letter.
University of Toledo? A. I believe so. Q. Isn't she, in fact -- wasn't she,
in fact, a teacher's assistant, a TA? A. I don't know. I think she was a
professor. Q. Isn't it a fact that she's no
longer teaching there? A. I do not know. Q. Do you know if she ever stopped
teaching in the last five years? A. I haven't stayed in touch with
her, no. Q. And does the following line:
"Editors of volumes like these normally receive only a nominal fee for their work, about $2,000." A. That's what it says, yes. Q. And could you tell me how you
would describe Colleen Breese as a major literary or academic figure?
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M. Millman A. Well, she's the author of a
well-regarded study of Dorothy Parker's fiction, and that's how I came to know about her.
Q. Does she have any other writing that you know about?
A. I'm not really familiar with her background, tell you the truth.
Q. Who chose her to be the editor of her Complete Poems?
MR. DANNAY: I'm sony, I didn't hear.
(Record read.) A. I did. Q. Do you often do some background
checking on the people you choose to be the editor of books that you work on?
A. Yes. Q. And do you keep files of that
kind of information? A. Well, it depends what -- I'm
sony, it depends what kind of background. It probably wouldn't be probably the same kind of background checking a lawyer might do.
Page 59
M. Millman Q. What kind of background checking
would you normally do? A. I have an academic consultant I
have worked with for years whose name is John Seelye, who is a professor at the University of Florida in Gainesville and generally. I entrust John with checking out the credentials of the academics who come to us.
Q. How do you spell that? A. Which part? Q. Seelye. A. Oh, S-E-E-L-Y-E. Q. And did you consult with John
Seelye concerning Colleen Breese? A. I don't remember. Q. Did you have any correspondence
with John Seelye regarding Colleen Breese? A. Absolutely, absolutely. Q. Or any other information about
Colleen Breese? Do you recall, when you did
whatever background check you did on Colleen Breese, what you discovered about her other than the books that she had written an
Page 60
M. Millman introduction to that you testified to earlier?
A. No, I don't -- I don't actually remember any of it, to tell you the truth.
MS. McCABE: Okay. I think we can take a break now.
(Recess taken from 1 1 :20 A.M. to 1 1:3 1 A.M.) Q. Does Colleen Breese have a
nickname, Mikki, M-I-K-K-I? A. Yes, she does. Q. I think you testified earlier
that you've seen a copy, which I'm going to mark as Plaintiffs 9, of Not Much Fun, The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker by Stuart Silverstein. This is the paperback version of it.
(Paperback version of book entitled "Not Much Fun, The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker by Stuart Silverstein" marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 9 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Do you recognize that volume? A. I think I only just saw the
M. Millman successful volume, I contacted the lawyer for the NAACP to say this seems to be going really well, would it make sense to commission a companion volume.
At that stage of the game, the only Parker that Viking Penguin had in print was the Portable Dorothy Parker, so none of the rest of her poems were in print with Viking Penguin, just those few that are in the Portable. So -- sorry, this is an oddly structured answer.
So it would be extremely useful to have bought Mr. Silverstein's book as a bibliographic source to get the knowledge of the rest of those poems.
Q. And prior to seeing his manuscript, did you have knowledge of those uncollected poems?
A. No. Q. Did you discuss with anyone at
Penguin the fact that the book had been published, Not Much Fun?
A. I don't remember. Q. Did you say to anyone, oh, isn't
Page 66
1 M. Millman 2 that the manuscript -- or isn't that similar 3 to the manuscript we reviewed a couple of 4 years ago? 5 MR. DANNAY: Object to the form. 6 THE WITNESS: Could you read that 7 back, please. 8 (Record read.) 9 A. I don't -- I don't remember
10 saying that -- that, no. I 1 Q. At the time you purchased the 12 book, did you recall having seen Mr. 13 Silverstein's manuscript of the uncollected 14 poems? 15 A. Absolutely. Yes, that is. 16 Q. And after you purchased the book, 17 did you show it to anyone at Penguin? 18 A. I don't -- I don't remember. 19 Q. Did you read the book? 20 A. I don't -- I wouldn't say that I 2 I read it from cover to cover, no. 22 Q. Did you review it -- 23 A. Yes. 24 Q. -- in general? Did you read the 25 introduction?
. - L .
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M. Millman A. I think so, yes. Q. Did you like it? A. 1 think I did. yes. Q. Whose idea was it to publish a
book incorporating the uncollected poems of Dorothy Parker?
THE WITNESS: Do you mind? (Record read.) MR. DANNAY: 1 object to the
form. Q. But --
THE WITNESS: I was going to object myself that time. Q. Whose idea was it to publish a
book incorporating the uncollected poems of Dorothy Parker where the publisher would be Penguin?
MR. DANNAY: I still object to the form. A. I mean, maybe -- maybe I don't
understand the intricacies of the question either, but the idea of publishing the book that we did, indeed publish was my own, which is to say the Complete Poems of Dorothy
Page 68
1 M. Millman 2 Parker. 3 MS. McCABE: I'm going to show 4 you a document that I am going to mark 5 as Plaintiffs 10. 6 (Letter dated April 25, 1995 from 7 Mikki Breese to Michael Millman 8 with attachments bearing 9 production Nos. CB 00085 through
10 CB 00088 marked Plaintiffs 11 Exhibit 10 for identification, as 12 of this date.) 13 A. Shall I stop at the "germ"? 14 Q. No. 15 A. Okay. 16 Q. This has been Bates stamped CB 17 00085 through 88. 18 Do you recognize this document? 19 A. I do. 20 Q. And can you describe what it is? 2 1 A. It appears to be a letter from 22 Colleen alWa Mikki Breese to me dated April 23 the 25th, 1995. 24 Q. And do you recall receiving this 25 letter at some point?
M. Millman A. Honestly, no. Q. Do you recall reading it at some
point? A. I mean, I have no memory now of
reading it, but I'm sure I did. Q. In the third paragraph down, I'm
going read you, let's see: "Douglas says in her
bibliographical essay, and I quote, 'As yet, no one has dated or located the first appearance of Parker's various poems and sketches' (49 1); aha! she was remiss in not finding my work---as early as 1992. Perhaps there is the germ of an idea here for another Parker project---a collection of all her poems?"
Isn't it a fact that it was Colleen Breese's idea to collect all of Parker's poems in one book?
MR. DANNAY: I object to the form.
THE WITNESS: Could you read that back, please.
Page 70
M. Millman (Record read.)
A. It seems clear to me in this letter that Mikki is saying -- is suggesting that as a project.
Again, I don't have the specific memory of it, but 1 have a feeling I may already, in fact, have been in touch with the NAACP with the idea about it. I don't remember. I don't have the chronology all together.
And indeed, maybe this is the germ of the project, but it doesn't -- the reason I don't think it is the initial germ is because we clearly had the idea ourselves when Jane wrote that letter to Mr. Lampack the prior year.
Q. Great. A. So chronologically, it doesn't
seem to tally. Q. So the both of you came up with
the idea almost simultaneously? A. Again, not to editorialize, but
the idea of a complete edition of an author's poems did not, in fact, originate with
Page 7 1
M. Millman Penguin. That concept has been around for some time. 1 wish we could come up with the idea of coming up with a complete compilation, but there isn't anything terribly original about it.
Q. Who came up with the idea of including the uncollected poems in the Complete Poems?
A. I wish I could tell you, but -- 1 mean, 1 wish t could tell you for certain. I think it must have been my idea, but I don't have any evidence to point to that.
Q. Do you have any idea when you came up that idea?
A. To specifically put together the uncollected poems --
Q. With the rest of the poems? A. No. But -- I mean -- Q. Would it have been before this
letter or after this letter, which was dated in 1995?
A. Again, I'm sorry if I'm repeating myself. It seems clear to me by the rejection letter that Jane sent to Mr. Lampack that the
Page 72
M. Millman idea must have already been in our heads by then.
Q. That is a rejection letter? A. I'm sony, I'm completely
mischaracterizing it. I assume it was the final letter. The letter of, whatever it was, the letter of October 28, 1994.
Q. It's an interesting rejection letter if I've ever seen one. But let's continue on this subject.
MS. McCABE: Can you read back his answer? A. I guess I meant to say it seems
to have been taken as a rejection. (Record read.)
Q. Wastheideatoincludethe uncollected poems in a volume of her Complete Poems, That is, Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems, did that come from the fact that Mr. Silverstein had submitted a manuscript of those uncollected poems?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. Do you mind reading that one
A. I have a hard time answering the question because you are asking me where the idea came from. I honestly don't know where the -- you know, the idea that there's a -- the idea -- that there's one specific germ that you can isolate. I -- as I say, I don't know at what point we decided this is something we should do.
But it clearly -- it clearly, to me at least, when we had Mr. Silverstein's proposal in hand, we were already thinking about doing something with the poems along the lines of the volume that we published of Parker's Complete Stories.
Q. I think you testified earlier, though, that at that point, you didn't know there were uncollected poems of Dorothy Parker prior to Mr. Silverstein submitting the manuscript?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. THE WITNESS: Please. (Record read.)
A. Can I hear my testimony? Is that
Page 74
1 M. Millman 2 all right? If I testify -- 3 MR. DANNAY: I object as to form. 4 MS. McCABE: Is your objection as 5 to form? 6 MR. DANNAY: That you are 7 characterizing his testimony, number 8 one. I don't think it's accurate. 9 Number two, I don't think it's
10 the proper subject of a question to 11 characterize his testimony. If you 12 want to go back and have the relevant 13 portion read to him. 14 Part of the process -- I'll 15 complete my objection -- part of the 16 process is 1 think it was a series of 17 questions back and forth that related 18 to the area you are now trying to 19 summarize and I think it's very 20 difficult to do that. 2 1 MS. McCABE: He clearly said he 22 had no knowledge of the uncollected 23 poems before Mr. Silverstein had made 24 his proposal or submitted his 25 manuscript to Penguin. I mean, we can
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M. Millman go back and read it.
MR. DANNAY: I don't want to characterize what I think he said because I don't want to be accused of coaching the witness, but I think you're inferring more from quick answers that can reasonably be inferred from them.
MS. McCABE: I don't think we've had many quick answers, but let's not argue. Let's move on.
MR. DANNAY: Okay. Q. Do you recall when the decision
was made to publish the Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker by Penguin?
A. My recollection is after we published the Complete Stories. And I don't remember exactly how far after. It had been demonstrated that the volume had been successful.
And at that point, I wrote to Ned Himmelrich, who was the attorney for the NAACP and the Dorothy Parker estate, to tell him the good news about how Colleen Breese's volume of
Page 76
M. Millman the stories was doing and to say at that point, would it make sense from your point of view to do a companion volume that would collect the Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker.
Q. And what was that time period, approximately?
A. I'm guessing very early '96. Q. And at that point, you would have
been a senior editor? A. I think so. Q. And Kathryn Court was your
supervisor at that point? A. Yes.
MS. McCABE: I'm going to mark as Plaintiffs 11 this volume. I guess this one, you better put on the front.
(Volume entitled "Complete Poems by Dorothy Parker" marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 11 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Do you recognize that book? A. I do. Q. And is that the book that you
edited at Penguin --
19 (Pages 73 to 76)
E-mail: ClassReptn(iZlaol.com . , . -- CLASSIC REPORTING. INC.
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
Page 77
M. Millman A. Yes, it is. Q. -- called "Complete Poems by
Dorothy Parker"? A. Sorry to have answered so
quickly. Yes, it is. Q. And were you the editor in charge
of publishing the book at Penguin? A. Yes. Q. Anyone else at Penguin? A. No. Q. Did you discuss the publication
of this book with Kathryn Court? A. I doubt there was a formal
discussion. I had the latitude at that point to make these decisions, not exactly unilaterally, but I would often report the decision rather than discuss it with someone else.
Q. And did she approve of the -- A. Absolutely. Q. Did you ever tell Kathryn Court
that at the time you were working on Complete Poems, that you had previously seen a manuscript from Stuart Silverstein compiling
Page 78
M. Millman the uncollected poems?
A. I don't think so. I don't actually recall ever having any conversations about the project with Kathryn, to tell you the truth.
Q. But she did approve it? A. Of course. Q. How would she have approved it? A. God, it's hard to tell, the
procedures have changed over time, but I think she -- at the very least, it's her signature on the contract.
So when the contract or the letters of agreement went out to Breese, she needs to sign off on that paper, if not beforehand. She certainly -- the countersignature is her.
Q. So presumably, you would have had some sort of conversation prior to her signing that contract, no?
A. Yes. But -- I mean, I guess -- I don't know that it would have been a substantial conversation, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It might simply would have
Page 79
M. Millman been --
Q. You would have told her what the project was about?
A. Absolutely. Q. And would you have told her what
the contents of the book were going to be? A. Again, I -- I don't have the -- a
specific memory of how it was done, but again. the custom is for me to talk about those classics projects and the editorial meaning as well.
So customarily, I would simply have said. and new Penguin business includes the volume of Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems.
Q. And this volume I'm assuming was discussed at several editorial meetings?
A. I don't remember. Q. At one editorial meeting? A. Certainly at one. Q. At two? A. I still don't remember.
MR. DANNAY: Object to form. Q. And would Kathryn Court have been
present at that meeting?
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M. Millman A. Ordinarily. Q. Would Susan Peterson have been
present at that meeting? A. No. I don't think -- we're
predating the Putnam merger now, so she wasn't in the company yet.
Q. Do you recall when the editorial -- the one that you remember, the editorial meeting discussing the Complete Poems, when that would have been, approximately?
A. No. And again, just to clarify my answer or my earlier answer, that -- that is the custom. But whether or not we did it in the meeting, 1 don't actually have a specific recollection.
Q. Well, is it possible for Penguin to have published a book without it being discussed at an editorial meeting?
A. Well, it's -- the discussion would be --
MR. DANNAY: You can answer. THE WITNESS: Okay. Thank you.
1 M. Millman 2 short, is my guess. 3 Q. Okay. 4 A. Which is to say -- again, I'm 5 sony, if I'm making speeches here, but just 6 to explain, we have a single editorial meeting 7 to do all of the business. It's all of the 8 paperbacks, it's all of the hardcovers, it's a 9 weekly meeting. Penguin Classics is a very
10 small part of that larger procedure. 1 1 All of the editors are in that 12 room, time is of the essence, we go through 13 the business as quickly as we can. For the 14 most part, discussions concerning the Penguin 15 Classics and the classics are extremely 16 limited. I mean, I think even characterizing 17 them as discussions might be overstating the 18 case. 19 Q. Well, would you raise the issue 20 of I want to publish a complete volume of 2 1 Dorothy Parker's works? 22 A. Yes. 23 Q. And then I'm assuming, just 24 making that statement, somebody would respond 25 to that statement?
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1 M. Millman 2 A. Yes, but the response might be 3 simply limited to sounds like a great idea, 4 Michael. To me, that's not a discussion. 5 Q. For the record, that, in my mind, 6 is a discussion. 7 A. Okay. 8 Q. Whether it's extended or it's 9 five words, it's a discussion. 10 MR. DANNAY: Well, objection as I I to form. Whatever it is, it is. Let's 12 just have testimony as to what took 13 place. 14 A. That -- that, to me, is not a 15 discussion. 16 Q. Was the -- well, and I am telling 17 you, for the purposes of this deposition, 18 discussion means if you -- you said something 19 and someone else said something back, that's a 20 discussion. 1 don't want to go over the 2 1 Oxford English Dictionary's definition of 22 discussion. 23 How would you characterize that? 24 What would you call it? 2 5 A. Call what? I'm sorry, could
- < ... A .
MILLMAN 30, 200 1
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1 M. Millman 2 you -- 3 Q. Your saying, I want to publish 4 the Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker, and 5 someone responding, that sounds like a good 6 idea, and someone else says, yes, I agree. 7 A. I don't think I said anyone else 8 said I agree. To me, that's more of me 9 reporting Penguin Classics' business than it
10 is an editorial discussion. 1 1 Q. So you would report business at 12 these editorial meetings? 13 A. Yes. 14 Q. And you did, in fact, report -- 15 A. I have absolutely no specific 16 recollection of having done it, but that is 17 our custom and I assume I did. 18 Q. In fact, there is list of 19 publications that are going to be published by 20 Penguin Putnam; is there not? 2 1 A. Which list do you mean? 22 Q. The list of publications that are 23 going to be coming out -- 24 A. Our -- 25 Q. -- are going to be published by
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1 M. Millman 2 Penguin. 3 A. We have a publication schedule, 4 is that what you are referring to? 5 Q. Jane von Mehren referred to it as 6 the list. 7 A. I'm not exactly sure what Jane 8 meant by that. 9 Q. There is a list of books that are 10 going to be published by Penguin that -- I1 A. That we circulate internally? 12 Q. Yes, yes. 13 A. Yes, there is. 14 Q. And was this book on that list? 15 A. Absolutely. 16 Q. And did you have any kind of 17 discussion with anyone about this book being 18 on the list? 19 A. I don't -- I mean, I think again, 20 going with your definition of discussion, I 2 1 don't -- I'm not exactly sure how to answer 22 that question. 23 MR. DANNAY: Can I just interject 24 that we don't have to agree on what a 2 5 discussion is, just ask the question to
2 1 (Pages 8 1 to
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
Page 89
M. Millman delivered the typed script, I was in charge of overseeing its production.
So working with my then assistant Ms. Wanapun, I believe it was. which would have put the typed scripts into production, transmitting it to my production editor, and then working with the production editor who had been assigned to the book, through all aspects of it until it came out and then beyond.
Q. Okay. Is it usual or common that there's more than one editorial assistant working on a book?
A. It's unusual. Again, I'm sorry, too, if I'm mincing here, but --
Q. No. Go right ahead. A. And, again, this probably is
obvious. If your editorial assistant changes in midstream, obviously, there is another editorial assistant working on it.
Q. But I mean simultaneously? A. That's pretty unusual. Q. And part of your job in terms of
books that you edited, was it your job to flag
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M. Millman potential copyright issues?
A. Yes. Q. And to flag potential libel
issues? A. Yes. Q. And to flag potential trademark
or trade name kind of issues? A. Yes. But I think the former two
much more than the last one. Q. And who would be in charge of the
last one? A. I think I would have relied more
on my legal department for that. I don't know anything about trademark law, for instance.
Q. When I mean flag, I mean raise the issue -- raise a question to someone else in the company?
A. I think the policy of Viking Penguin is that it's the editor's responsibility to raise any of those issues. We are the ones who are supposed to flag it for the legal department to look at it.
Q. Have you, in fact, while you've been in Penguin, flagged such issues to the
Page 9 I
M. Millman legal department?
A. I think so, yes. Q. Do you recall flagging any issues
on Complete Poems to the legal department? A. I don't -- I think it's a
question of when -- you mean at any point? Q. At any point during the process. A. Well, making the new contract,
for instance, with NAACP. I don't know, again, if I would characterize it a flagging the issue, but that's the responsibility of my legal department to create those contracts.
Q. Any other issue? A. I don't think so. Q. Okay.
MS. McCABE: Mark this as Plaintiffs 12, please.
(Fax cover letter with attached letter dated August 12, 1996 from Ned Himmelrich to Michael Millman with attachments bearing production Nos. D 00243 through D 0025 1 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 12 for identification, as of this
Page 92
M. Millman date.) MS. McCABE: We are just going to
take a real quick break. MR. DANNAY: Sure. (Recess taken at 12:07 P.M.) MS. McCABE: You know what? We
are going to strike that one for now. MR. DANNAY: You mean Exhibit 12? MS. McCABE: Yes. I'm sorry, we'll leave it.
Q. If you could take a look at that. A. Do we share or --
MR. DANNAY: She has another one. THE WITNESS: Excuse me again.
Q. Do you recognize this document? A. I do. Q. Was this a document sent to you
by fax from Ned Himmelrich? A. I don't know by fax, it looks
like by fax. Q. Does the cover page look like a
fax page -- A. It says by telecopy -- Q. The page Bates stamped 243?
stamped 00243 to 0025 1. Do you recall receiving this from
Mr. Himmelrich? A. No. Q. Does it look like a document you
would have received? A. It sure does. Q. Mr. Himmelrich, you testified, is
a lawyer for the NAACP? A. Yes. Q. And they had the rights to some
of Dorothy Parker's poems? A. They, as far as I know, have the
rights of all of Dorothy Parker's poems. I'm not an expert here, but when she passed away, I think everything was left to NAACP and I thought Gordon, Feinblatt, Hoffberger -- and Mr. Himmelrich is one of the attorneys for that firm who represents the NAACP.
Q. So you had some conversations back and forth with Mr. Himmelrich regarding the use of Dorothy Parker's poems?
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M. Millman A. I'm sorry, do you mind repeating
that one? (Record read.)
A. Yes. Q. Okay. And attached from pages
00245 to 0025 1, is that the agreement that you were talking about earlier that grants Penguin permission to use the Dorothy Parker poems?
MR. DANNAY: Objection as to form. A. I believe it's the first draft of
the agreement. Q. Okay. And do you know what the
date on Mr. Himmelrich's correspondence is? A. Yes. Should I read it? Q. Yes. A. August the 12th, 1996. Q. And does this refresh your
recollection in terms of when you first started thinking about publishing the poems of Dorothy Parker?
A. No. I mean, as you can see from -- from Ned's letter: "I plan to be more timely in my subsequent replies," I don't know
Page 95
M. Millman that the papers are going to give a very good chronology.
I mean, we would talk about something and a lot of time would elapse before something happened. It looks to me the contract was dated in April, but we didn't get it back until August. What might have happened is it might have moved sporadically. So I guess what I'm trying to say is it doesn't actuallv h e l ~ .
12 Q. But this is'sometime after Mr. 13 Silverstein would have submitted his 14 manuscript to Penguin; is that correct? 15 A. If the submission was -- 16 Q. The submission was in 1994. 17 A. Yes. 18 Q. Okay. You can put that one 19 aside. 2 0 MS. McCABE: I'm going to mark 2 1 this as Plaintiffs 13. 22 (Letter dated February 27, 1997 23 from Judy Ronayne to Ned 24 Himmelrich bearing production No. 2 5 D 00026 marked Plaintiffs
Page 96
M. Millman Exhibit 13 for identification, as of this date.) MS. McCABE: I'm also going to
mark this one at the same time, which is Plaintiffs 14.
(Letter dated April 1 I, 1997 from Ned Himmelrich to Michael Millman with attachments bearing production Nos. D 00285 through D 00298 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 14 for identification, as of this date.) MS. McCABE: For the record,
Plaintiffs 13 is Bates stamped D 00026 and Plaintiffs 14 is Bates stamped D 00285 through 298. Q. Can you tell me who Judy Ronayne
is? .-
A. I'm not certain of her title, but I think she was and is a contract manager for Viking Penguin.
Q. IS she an attorney? A. No. Q. And did she assist you in terms
M. Millman of obtaining the rights from the NAACP for the Dorothy Parker poems?
A. Sony, I was going to say I object. Assisted -- I'm sony to be facetious, assisted me in the sense that she's the one who actually draws up the contract.
Q. So you would have conversations with her about this?
A. Absolutely. Q. Okay. Do you recall seeing this,
what's been marked as Plaintiffs Exhibit 13? A. Yes. Q. Okay. And what is it? A. Oh, it seems to be a faxed
memorandum from Judy Ronayne in our contracts department to Ned Himmelrich from Gordon, Feinblatt, Rothman, et cetera, et cetera.
Q. Okay. And I would like to draw your attention to paragraph 2, it says:
"I think the contract makes clear that the poems listed in the addendum as being included NOT MUCH FUN, except those listed in Clause 3, are in the public domain and obviously you (and
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M. Millman we) are free to publish them anyway you and we wish."
Do you recall reading that statement?
A. Yes. Q. Okay. And did you discuss that
statement at all with -- before I start that, Not Much Fun is referring Mr. Silverstein's book; is that correct?
A. Absolutely, yes. Q. Do you recall discussing that
statement with Judy Ronayne? A. I don't -- I don't have a
specific discussion -- excuse me, memory of -- of this memorandum. But I certainly remember talking to Judy about the contract. And I do think that Clause 3 pretty much reflects my understanding as well.
Q. Okay. And it was your understanding that you were free to publish the poems listed in the addendum to Not Much Fun in any way that you wished; is that correct?
A. Yes. With the exclusion of
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M. Millman marked below, right?
Q. "We will have to clear rights to the poems listed in Clause 3 and will only be getting non-exclusive rights."
Did you discuss that proposition with a lawyer at the company?
A. I -- not -- I don't remember doing so, no.
Q. Do you know if Judy did? A. I don't remember that either.
She -- she -- well, I won't say she may have. She may have, yes.
Q. Do you know who she may have discussed it with?
A. I guess if she talked to anyone, she would have talked to her superior, who is Judy Morse, who was the director of the contracts department.
Q. Directing your attention to Plaintiffs 14, do you recognize this document?
A. Yes. Q. Okay. And is this -- the first
page, which is Bates 285, is a letter to you
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M. Millman from Ned Himmelrich dated April 11, 1997; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And does it say:
"Enclosed are three execution copies of the Agreement between Penguin and the NAACP relating to the collection of Dorothy Parker's poems." A. That's how I read it, yes. Q. And, in fact, is there an
execution copy attached? A. There seems to be. Q. Okay. Do you see Kathryn Court's
signature on 292? A. I do. Q. And also Dennis Hayes, the
SecretaryICounsel of the NAACP? A. I do. Q. And do you know who the witness
is next to his name? A. I have no idea. Q. Okay. Going back to paragraph 2,
it refers to clause 3? A. Hang on one second, which
Q. Plaintiffs 13. A. Okay. Q. Paragraph 2 refers to clause 3;
is that correct? A. Itdoes. Q. Okay. And then in the contract,
clause 3 says: "It is understood and agreed that
permissions clearances are only required for the following poems:"
And then it gives a list of a number of poems including:
Letter to Robert Benchley; Rosemary [I]; Song [I]; Grandfather Said It; Monody; Somewhat Delayed Spring Song; Sonnet [I]; To a Lady; Rondeau [2]; Song of the Conventions; Song [2]; Ballad of Understandable Ambitions; Song of a Contented Heart; Song of the Wilderness; A Triolet; Paean; Song [3]; --And Oblige; Triolet [2]; Christopher Morley goes hippetty, hoppetty ... ; and Theodore Dreiser should ought to write nicer."
Page 102
M. Millman Is that a correct rendition of
what's contained in paragraph 3? A. It seems to be, yes. Q. Okay. And are those, in fact,
several of the poems that were included in Mr. Silverstein's Not Much Fun?
A. I -- I believe so, yes. Q. And if you go to Bates number
293 -- A. 293. Q. -- is that, in fact, a Xerox from
Mr. Silverstein's book Not Much Fun? A. That's exactly what it is, yes. Q. So is it fair to say you were
heavily relying on Not Much Fun in putting together the uncollected poems in Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems?
A. Again, it depends on what you mean by heavily relying. We were certainly relying on the research that was done.
Q. And, in fact, were you actually relying on the titles Mr. Silverstein came up with?
A. I don't know.
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M. Millman Q. Going back to paragraph 3, do you
know if Dorothy Parker originally called these poems the titles in which they are, in fact. listed here?
MR. DANNAY: I object to the form.
MS. McCABE: Strike that.
Q. Do you know if, in fact. Dorothy Parker titled her poems the titles that are given here in paragraph 3?
MR. DANNAY: I object to the form. A. I don't know that for a fact, no. Q. Okay. Do you know, for instance.
if she would have titled Rosemary [I] , if she would have used numbers in her poem titles?
MR. DANNAY: Object to the form. Q. Poem or verse title? A. If she would have, you mean, when
she was alive? Q. Did she, in fact? A. I don't know, to tell you the
truth.
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M. Millman Q. But you are a pretty well-known
or well-versed person in Dorothy Parker poetry?
A. I don't even know that I would go so far as to say that, but I am a big fan.
Q. I think you earlier testified that you had a pretty in-depth knowledge of Dorothy Parker, no?
MR. DANNAY: Object to the form. A. If you want to read it back, [
can tell you -- MS. McCABE: That's another thing
to mark over lunch. Q. Did you ever, in fact, ever say
to your legal department -- anyone in your legal department can we use the poems as they appear in Not Much Fun in the Complete Poems?
A. I don't -- I don't remember having such a conversation.
Q. Did you ever have a conversation with anyone in the legal department about any use of any of the poems that appeared in Not Much Fun?
M. Millman MR. DANNAY: Hold it. THE WITNESS: Excuse me. MR. DANNAY: Let me just tell the
witness that he should not disclose any attorneylclient material.
MS. McCABE: I'm asking if he had a conversation or a discussion or whatever you want to call it. A. I don't remember having one. Q. Did you ever have a discussion
with Judy Ronayne about that topic? A. I don't remember it, but I think
I must have, because judging from that memorandum, as I say, I -- that is what I recall as well. That that was our understanding at the time so --
Q. Do you remember the substance of the conversation?
A. I don't. Q. In general? A. I don't. I mean -- no, I don't. Q. But you concluded that it was
okay, it was okay to use the poems as they appeared in Not Much Fun in Complete Poems?
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M. Millman A. Absolutely. We hadn't a doubt in
our mind that the material was either public domain or could we clear for the permission ourselves.
Q. You felt it was okay not to consult a lawyer regarding that topic?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. I don't -- could you -- do you
mind asking it again or do you mind repeating it?
MS. McCABE: Go ahead. (Record read.)
A. It's a funny way to phrase -- Q. Let me rephrase. A. Thank you. Q. Did you not feel it necessary to
consult an attorney regarding the topic of whether it was permissible to use any of the work of Not Much Fun in the Complete Poems?
MR. DANNAY: Object to form. MS. McCABE: You can answer it.
A. I don't remember having such a conversation, no. And I don't -- I don't remember feeling the necessity. But again,
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M. Millman hearkening back to the earlier testimony, there was sort of a pecking order in that contracts department of who I would speak to and I -- I don't -- I don't remember speaking to any of our lawyers at that point, to tell you the truth.
Q. But you were the person in charge of putting this book out --
A. Absolutely. I would be the person who would -- who instructed Judy Ronayne to draw up the contract.
Q. Okay. MS. McCABE: I think now might be
a good time to break. (Luncheon recess: 12:28 P.M.)
Page 108
M. Millman A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N
October 26,200 1 1 :30 P.M.
M I C H A E L M I L L M A N , resumed and testified further as follows:
EXAMINATION (Continued) BY MS. McCABE:
Q. So, to clarify, during your previous testimony, you said you were fairly intimate with Dorothy Parker's works; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And you also said that when Mr.
Silverstein presented his manuscript at Penguin, you were surprised to learn of their existence --
A. Yes. Q. -- meaning the existence of the
"lost poems"; is that correct? A. Yes. Q. How did you first come to know
Colleen Breese? A. I don't, again, remember the
27 (Pages 105 to 108)
E-mail: ClassRe~tg;6i?aol.com . -- CLASSIC REPORTING, INC.
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
Page 109
M. Millman specifics, but I believe she contacted me sometime in the very early '90s. She was a Dorothy Parker enthusiast and as I remember it, she compiled a fairly comprehensive bibliography of Dorothy Parker's stories. I'm sorry, I don't have the particulars.
This is the time just before Ms. Parker's centennial, which 1 think was 1993. And I think Colleen Breese came to me to suggest that maybe -- if Penguin would be interested in some publication around the time the centennial.
Now, again, I -- this is an old memory of ten years ago now, I think even at that time, she was saying would we be interested in doing a complete stories.
Q. And were you interested in doing the Complete Stories?
A. Ultimately, I was. As I guess, you can pick up from this, we move extremely slowly. I think I may have corresponded with' her for years before it came to fruition.
I'm sorry if I'm interrupting you and I'm misremembering. I think I contacted
Page l I0
M. Millman her before the centennial and we didn't get around to publishing the book until afterwards.
Q. Did someone recommend her to you? A. Not that I'm aware of. Q. Did someone recommend you to her? A. I have no idea. And I'm sure I
shouldn't speculate, but if she had called up in the early '90s to say, can I talk to the editor of the Portable Dorothy Parker, my name would have been the one, one of my colleagues would have given out.
Q. And Penguin would have taken unsolicited calls like that?
A. Sure. Q. And did you, in fact, work with
her on the Complete Stories? A. Yes. Q. And I think you said you were the
one that approached her to become editor of the Complete Poems; is that correct?
A. Correct. Q. Who determined how much she would
get paid for her work on Complete Poems?
Page I I I
M. Millman A. I did. Q. And how much did she, in fact,
get paid? A. I don't -- I think $2,000, but I
would have to look at the contract. Q. On -- that's a fairly low sum of
money, wouldn't you say? MR. DANNAY: I object to the
form. A. I wouldn't say. In -- again,
too, if it's helpful, I think that was pretty much the standard fee that we were paying everyone at that point. It certainly wouldn't have varied -- maybe another $1000 tops on either side. But part of the way you can establish the standard fee is to say we pay everyone $2,000.
Q. Did you actually check any references on her before you hired her for Complete Stories?
a A. What kind of references do you mean?
Q. Just a general background in terms of what she did.
Page I I2
M. Millman A. As I say, i don't -- I don't have
a specific recollection of it. I think -- and this might be in the prior testimony and I might be repeating myself, I may have gone to John Seelye and said, do you know who this woman is? Does this make sense to you? You know, this seems like a good project, but does she have the right bona fides, et cetera. I don't know that I did any of those things. It's just that was the custom at that point.
Q. And you'll check your file to see if you have anything going back --
A. Yes, 1 will. Q. I'm talking about the Complete
Stories. A. I'll check. Q. And Dorothy Parker, you say, is a
fairly well-known and popular literary figure in American literature?
A. Today? Q. Yes. A. Yes. Q. And why didn't you want to get a
Q. The Complete Poems -- when I say a bigger name, I mean a more well-known name from a more well-known university.
MR. DANNAY: I'll object to the form. A. For the poems, I believe I
actually did want to get a bigger name and I seem to remember actually writing to Calvin Trilon at The New Yorker to see if he will write the introduction.
Q. And did you, in fact, write to him?
A. I did. Q. And what was his response? A. I think he wrote me a funny
little note saying he really doesn't do introductions anymore. I thought Trilon, actually, would be perfect for all the reasons I thought would be apparent to you. He writes light verse, he writes for The New Yorker.
Q. Did you ask anyone else? A. I don't think so. Q. So you sent to Trilon, he said
Page l I4
M. Millman no, and then you decided to use Colleen Breese?
A. Yes. Q. Did you discuss that decision
with anybody else at Penguin? A. I don't remember. Q. Would you have discussed it with
Kathryn Court; do you remember? A. I doubt it. Again, if I haven't
made this clear, I have now and had then the authority to do some of these things on my own. I wouldn't have to clear with anyone to -- for me to write a letter to --
Q. I don't even mean clearance, but just to get her opinion, what she thought?
A. I've been working for her for a long time. She trusts me.
Q. Not trusting you, to see what she thought, was this a good idea or not a good idea. Not in the sense she is approving or not approving, just to get your colleague's point of view on the topic?
A. I may have. I certainly don't remember doing it. Again, I'm sony if I said
Page I I 5
M. Millman this also before, the Penguin Classics and Penguin 20th Century Classics are a relatively small part of what our corporation does.
And at that point, I was really the only person in the editorial department who had anything to do with them. So there wasn't -- there weren't a lot of other people in the department I was discussing Penguin Classics matters with.
Q. I'm assuming you are saying that in addition to Caroline White?
A. She wasn't even involved with them at that point.
Q. When did she become involved? A. Last few years, I guess. Q. After the publication of the
Complete Poems? A. I believe so, yes.
MS. McCABE: All right. I'm going to mark what's been Bates stamped as CB 89 as Plaintiffs 15.
(Letter dated September 30, 1996 from Mikki Breese to Michael Millman bearing production No. CB
Page 1 16
M. Millman 00089 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 15 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Let me know when you are done reading it.
A. Okay. Q. Do you recall seeing -- A. No. Q. -- this fax to you from Mikki
Breese? A. No, I do not. Q. Do you --
MS. McCABE: Excuse me one second.
THE WITNESS: Sure. Q. So are you saying you never
actually received this? A. No, I'm saying I don't recall --
I'm sorry, what was your question? Q. I said do you recall seeing it,
you said no. Do you believe you received it,
to the best of your knowledge? MR. DANNAY: I object to the
A. I think we could only go back two or three years, to tell you the truth. We didn't seem to have anything that went back this far.
Q. Are they kept on any kind of electronic form; computer, disk --
A. Now they are produced on it, but how they were done back then, I'm not sure, to tell you the truth.
Q. Do you know if anybody checked the computer records or other electronic records?
A. I can ask. Q. I would appreciate that.
"So much as the 2nd half of the deal," what does "the deal" refer to?
A. The deal for the Complete Poems
Page 126
M. Millman that we had just struck with the NAACP. The -- can I explicate a little bit?
In the first paragraph, the fourth line, parenthetical line:
"Do we need to do 'another' OAM for this?"
The OAM is an acronym, original acquisitions memorandum. Every time we want to generate a contract, I need to prepare this original acquisitions memorandum, which is signed off on by our publisher.
So my question to my assistant may even have been a rhetorical one. There was no need to duplicate that work again. All the -- that this memorandum was supposed to do was to create that -- if you will, side letter with Breese.
Q. Okay. And the OAM, you had done it previously, is what you are saying?
And who was the publisher that would had to have signed off on Dorothy Parker's Complete Poems OAM?
A. Kathryn Court. Q. And did she, in fact, sign off on
Page 127
M. Millman the OAM?
A. To the best of my knowledge. I mean, another way to put it, if she didn't, I wouldn't have gotten the contract.
Q. And did you search the files for that OAM?
A. I didn't search -- I mean, I merely turned our files over to Mr. Gigante. I'm actually surprised it was not in there. It wasn't?
Q. No. A. Okay. Q. Does Penguin ordinarily keep the
OAM's? A. Yes. Q. And who would keep them, who
would be in charge of keeping them? A. There should have been one in my
file, there should have been a duplicate one customarily in our file for the contract work because that's the memorandum that generates the contract in the first place.
Q. Okay. MS. McCABE: I call for the
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M. Millman production of those.
MR. DANNAY: I think we turned over every document that was responsive; so apparently, it was not there. Q. Was the -- A. It's not a very interesting
document, I can tell you. MS. McCABE: If the second file
wasn't checked, it should be checked. That's all. Q. And why do you say:
"If you know what I mean ..." At the end.
A. I think I am referring back to the clause above it that says:
"This isn't really a 'new' one." Just to let Jariya know that I'm
referring to the previous agreement. Q. Okay. A. But we had an informal
correspondence, as you can see. Q. And do you recall if Ms. Breese
her introduction and her work on Complete Poems as a work for hire?
A. I don't -- I don't remember that. I assume it's all explicit in the --
Q. Okay. I'm going to show you what's been marked -- what's Bates stamped as D 00232 through 234 and I would like to mark this as Plaintiffs 17.
(Original acquisitions memorandum for Complete Poems bearing production Nos. D 00232 through D 00234 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 17 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Are you done reviewing it? A. One moment. Q. Okay.
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M. Millman A. Yes. Q. And do you recognize this
document? A. Yes. Q. Can you tell me what it is? A. This is the mysterious OAM. Q. Thank you for that clarification. A. The OA -- it must be -- At this
point, it was already an -- an -- acronym for our previous incarnation. I guess by '97, we stopped calling it OAM, although clearly, I was still using that terminology.
Q. Is it now called "Division: Viking Penguin Submission #35652"?
A. Sure seems to be. It was a new computer system at that point.
Q. And it's dated 1 1/3/97? A. Yes, it is. Q. And is that your handwriting
there where on the first page, it says: "Readings and Notes"?
A. No, it is not. Q. Do you know whose it is? A. I believe it is Jariya Wanapun's.
Page 13 1
M. Millman Q. If I can refer you to page 233.
On the top, it says: "Boiler Plate." I believe it says: "W-R-K for hire."
Do you understand that to mean work for hire?
A. I do. Q. Does it refresh your recollection
that Colleen Breese did this as a work for hire?
A. No. I think if it was a work for hire, it would be in the contract we had with her. This is what we wanted generally.
Q. So it was intended that it was a work for hire?
A. From this, it looks that way, yes.
Q. Is it also intended that the territorial rights were throughout the world?
A. That seems to be the intent. Q. And it would be hardcover and
softcover? A. That we would reserve those
rights. Q. Meaning Penguin would reserve
Page 132
M. Millman those rights?
A. Right, yes, thank you. Q. And that Penguin would reserve
the subrights; is that correct? A. Yes. Which is to say this is the
standard policy boilerplate I think for every single book we sign up. Unless you say to the contrary, this is the default, to the best of my knowledge, or was at that point.
Q. And it indicates the author gets zero percent on hardcover, paperback, mass market?
A. No royalties. Again, to expand on, which is the custom with all the Penguin Classics we were doing at that point.
Q. And on page 234, the "Schedule Information," it says: "Schedule 100% Colleen Breese."
And it says, as you go down the line, from hardcover to sheets to prebinders: "Royalty deleted."
Can you explain what that means? A. I'm sure it's simply the way the
M. Millman that it was going to be work for hire, that there would be no royalties.
Q. And do you recall if, in fact, this work was done as a work for hire?
A. I don't. But if you refresh my memory with a document, I might be able to help out.
Q. Do you recall if she, in fact, did get any kind of royalties?
A. I don't recall it. Q. What was Carole McCurdy's role in
connection with the Complete Poems? A. I believe she was the freelance
copy editor that we hired. Q. Okay. And what about Barbara
Campo? A. She was the production editor who
was assigned to work on the book. Q. Anyone that you recall worked on
the book from the production standpoint? A. No. Q. Did Jane von Mehren have any role
in connection with Complete Poems? A. I do not believe so.
Page 134
M. Millman Q. Do you know if she was aware that
it was going to be published? A. She should have been. Q. Why should Jane von Mehren been
aware of it being published? Was it because of her title or
position? A. I'm sorry if I answered the other
question too quickly too. I mean at what point are you asking would Jane have been aware of it?
Q. During the production period. A. I -- I mean, I shouldn't be
assuming anything, should I? If it was reported that we were
going to publish the book in an editorial meeting and she happened to be in the meeting that day, she should have known then.
If she wasn't in the meeting, but saw it reported in the minutes the following week, she might have known then.
While it was in production, if we were preparing materials to announce publication in the catalog and she happened to
Page 135
M. Millman see the page, she would have known then. Whether or not she did know, I don't know.
If you quiz me on the books on what Jane was publishing during that period, I probably would get very low grades.
Q. Okay. MS. McCABE: Okay. I'm going to
mark this as Plaintiffs 18. (Letter dated March 26, 1996 from Michael Millman to Judy Ronayne bearing production No. D 0000 I marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 18 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Just let me know when you're done.
A. Yeah, I think I'm good. Q. This has been Bates stamped 0000 1
dated March 26, 1996; is that correct? A. Yes. Q. And do you recognize the
document? A. I do. Q. And is it a memo from you to Judy
Ronayne?
Page I36
M. Millman A. It is. Q. Okay. And do you recall having
sent this memo? A. I do. Q. Okay. Does it, in fact, say
interoffice memo at the top? A. Yes, it does. And not OAM. Q. Earlier, we spoke about where the
idea came from to collect the previously uncollected poems.
Does this refresh your recollection about where the idea came from?
MR. DANNAY: Object to form. A. No, it doesn't refresh my memory.
I mean, I don't think this speaks to the idea at all.
Q. Well, in the 1,2,3,4, 5th paragraph, you say:
"What this new volume will do will allow us to gather all the previously uncollected poems (another hundred or so) together in one volume."
your uncollected poems in with the collected poems; is that correct?
A. Absolutely. Q. Okay. Prior to Mr. Silverstein
submitting his manuscript, you were not aware that there were poems of Dorothy Parker that were previously uncollected; is that correct?
THE WITNESS: Could you read that one back.
(Record read.) MR. DANNAY: I object to the
form. A. To the best of my knowledge, I
don't believe -- I believe I was not aware of them. I don't want to change what I said earlier, but if someone had written to me to alert me of the existence of poems which were not in print with Viking at that point, 1 have no memory of it, but I suppose it's possible that it may have happened.
Q. Do you, in fact, have any kind of document that would indicate so?
A. I don't think so. But as I say,
Page 138
M. Millman when -- or said before, excuse me -- when Colleen Breese contacted me in the early '90s, she -- she was bombarding me with all sorts of bibliographical research she had done then. That's when I learned of the existence of all the uncollected stories. If she said something to me at that point about poems, I just -- I don't have a recollection of it.
But I don't think she confined her interest in Dorothy Parker purely to the fiction. I think she talked about the fiction and she had published a study of the fiction, but I think her interest in Parker has always been all of Parker's work.
Q. Do you know if she had, in fact, collected the uncollected poems prior to 1996?
MR. DANNAY: I object to the , form. Q. Prior to 1996 -- I'm talking
about the uncollected poems. A. If Colleen Breese had -- I'm
sorry, could you read it back. (Record read.)
A. I do not know that, no.
Page I
M. Millman Q. You do not know that she did or
you just don't know the answer? A. I don't know the answer. Q. I'm just going to show you again
what's previously been marked as Plaintiffs Exhibit 10. And I'm going to direct your attention to the third paragraph.
MS. McCABE: You should have a copy of it.
MR. DANNAY: I do, I just don't have one in hand, so --
MS. McCABE: Okay. Q. And here -- A. I saw the same thing, yes.
Sorry, your question? Q. -- Colleen Breese is writing to
you saying: "Perhaps there is the germ of an
idea for another Parker project---a collection of all of her poems?"
Is that correct? A. Is what -- is what -- Q. Was my reading just correct? A. Yes, that's what it says.
Page 140
M. Millman Q. And is there any mention in this
letter at all of the uncollected poems? MR. DANNAY: I object as to form.
A. Is there any mention of the uncollected --
Q. Poems of Dorothy Parker or quote, unquote, lost poems, however you want to call them?
MR. DANNAY: Objection as to form.
MS. McCABE: What's your objection?
MR. DANNAY: You want me to tell you?
MS. McCABE: Yes. MR. DANNAY: A collection of all
of her poems, by definition, is collected and uncollected. I don't know what "all" means other than "all." The fact that it's -- A. And what I was -- oh, I'm sorry. Q. Let me rephrase the question.
Is there any specific reference in here to Dorothy Parker's uncollected or
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. MS. McCABE: Fine. MR. DANNAY: Same objection.
A. Yeah, I mean, I hate to keep splitting the hairs, but a collection of all of her poems, to me, would be defined as including the uncollected ones.
Q. But in 1995, you, yourself, say you weren't aware of the uncollected ones?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. What I find interesting -- Q. Could you answer my question? A. ['m sorry, read it back again.
(Record read.) Q. You know what? Strike it. A. Can I say something?
MR. DANNAY: No. Q. There's no --
MR. DANNAY: Just respond to the question. Unless you have not completed an earlier --
THE WITNESS: No. MR. DANNAY: -- response.
Page 142
M. Millman Q. Let me put this aside.
Were you involved in the selection of the poems that went into Complete Poems?
A. Yes. Q. And how did you come up with the
selection; do you recall? MR. DANNAY: Go ahead.
Q. How did you come up with the selection that appeared in Complete Poems?
A. We combined the tables of contents of all of the previous individual Parker poetry collections that Viking had published with a list of those that we thought were previously uncollected and we assumed that adding those for you would come up with the Complete Poems.
Q. And how did you come up with a list o f the Complete Poems?
A. From Mr. Silverstein's book. Q. Okay.
MS. McCABE: I'm going to mark this as Plaintiffs 19
(Letter dated October 10, 1996
Page 113
M. Millman from Michael Millman to Judy Ronayne bearing production Nos. D 00024 and D 00025 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 19 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. And this is a memo to Judy Ronayne from yourself?
A. Sorry? Q. Let me know when you're done. A. Yes, ma'am. Q. Okay. I'm going to -- do you
recognize the document? A. I do. Q. And is it an interoffice memo
dated October 10, 1996? A. It is. Q. To Judy Ronayne from yourself? A. Yes. Q. And the second paragraph says:
"I enclose as well a complete annotated list of all the poems Parker ever published, taken from the recently-published NOT MUCH FUN: THE LOST POEMS OF DOROTHY PARKER edited by
Page I44
I M. Millman 2 Stuart Silverstein (Scribner, '96)." 3 I'm going skip the next sentence. 4 The following sentence: 5 "This list, then, reflects the 6 exact contents of the COMPLETE POEMS we
propose publishing." Is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. Is it fair to say you basically
relied on Mr. Silverstein's list of lost poems in putting together the uncollected poems in the Complete Poems?
A. Would you mind reading that one back, please.
(Record read.) MR. DANNAY: I have an objection
as to form, but you can read it again if you want. Q. Is it fair to say that Penguin
and yourself relied on the list that Mr. Silverstein had compiled of Dorothy's uncollected poems in their selection of the Complete -- of the uncollected poems to be put in the Complete Poems book?
A. Yeah. It's a little -- you cannot -- can you untangle it a little bit for me?
Q. We'll do it one by one. A. Thank you. Q. The letter seems to say that you
had a list of the poems that was taken from Stuart Silverstein's Not Much Fun; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And Stuart Silverstein's Not Much
Fun comprised some of Dorothy Parker's, quote, unquote, lost poems or uncollected poems; is that correct?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. THE WITNESS: Read that one back,
please. (Record read.) MS. McCABE: Strike it.
Q. In Stuart Silverstein's Not Much Fun, were there any previously collected poems included in the text?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form.
Page 146
M. Millman A. I honestly don't know. Q. Sitting here today, do you know
the difference between the previously collected poems and the previously uncollected poems?
A. What do you mean? Q. If you were to go down the
content list, could you tell us whether those -- whether those poems are previously collected?
A. Go down the contents page of -- Q. Not Much Fun, yes. A. I don't think that I could.
But -- no. I could not. Q. But is it your understanding --
well, let me look at this book. In fact, the title is called "Not Much Fun, The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker.''
Is it a fair assumption that in the book is included the lost poems?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. Q. Quote, unquote, lost poems? A. It depends on how one defines
lost poem.
Page 147
M. Millman Q. If we define lost as previously
uncollected poems, do you agree -- A. Do I agree what? Q. -- that the book primarily
includes -- A. All of the uncollected poems. Q. -- or some of the uncollected
poems? MR. DANNAY: I object as to form.
A. Which do you mean? Q. Does it include some of the
uncollected poems? A. As a subset of all? Q. No, just some of them.
Does it contain uncollected poems?
A. As far as I know, yes. Q. Okay. And you took the list from
this book of the uncollected poems and used it as the exact contents, as you say, for the Complete Poems that you proposed publishing at this point?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. Was that a question?
Page 148
M. Millman Q. Yes.
THE WITNESS: Can you read it back.
(Record read.) MR. DANNAY: Objection as to
form. A. No, no, and the answer is no.
May I -- Q. Why not? A. Thank you.
MR. DANNAY: Go ahead. A. I think that the memorandum
doesn't actually reflect what we did. I believe, in fact, the appendix
that was attached to the contract with the NAACP was not the table of contents, it was the chronology at the back of all of the poems.
And -- as a -- again, I'm doing this from memory, but as I remember it, the complete chronology of all of the poems in the back of Not Much Fun does not mirror the table of contents.
A. I'm sure I made a mistake. 1 think the mistakes, if you will, is borne out in the actual attachment to the contract, which isn't the table of contents, it's the chronology.
Q. And the chronology was taken from Mr. Silverstein; is that correct?
A. It was xeroxed out of the back of the book, yes.
Q. Go to the second page, D 25. At the time it says:
"A different symbol (dagger?) could be used to designate the following titles, which Silverstein credits as belonging to The Saturday Evening Post, The New Yorker, and Boston University's Mugar Memorial Library:"
And then it lists the poems; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And did you, in fact, use a
different symbol to designate those titles?
Page I50
M. Millman A. I don't know, but we can look at
the contract if you want to. I can't remember which exhibit it is. . .
Q. Which contract? A. With the NAACP. Q. So -- A. Sorry, I'm working on it.
Judging from the Xerox, it looks like it wasn't annotated at all.
Q. Okay. A. But -- Q. But my question was: Was there a
different symbol designating those titles? A. Not according to Exhibit 14, no. Q. Okay. And does this refresh your
recollection in terms of earlier, you said that you believed all of Dorothy Parker's poems to be owned by the NAACP?
A. Yes, it does. Q. And what is your answer now in
terms of who has the ownership of the -- or the alleged ownership of the Dorothy Parker poems?
A. That the vast -- although the
Page 15 1
M. Millman vast majority of Ms. Parker's works are controlled by the NAACP, not all of them are.
Q. Is it true to say that Colleen Breese contacted you and your staff fairly regularly regarding the production of the book, production and editing of the book?
A. Yeah. I mean, depending on how we define fairly regularly.
Q. Did she, in fact, send you correspondence regarding the book?
A. I believe so, yes. MS. McCABE: I'm going to mark
this as Plaintiffs 20. (Letter dated March 24, 1998 from Mikki Breese to Michael Millman with attached document entitled "Dorothy Parker: Complete Poems, Introduction" bearing production Nos. D 00 135 through D 00 17 1 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 20 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. You don't have to read every word of this.
A. Thank you.
Page 152
M. Millman Q. Just read the cover page and
enough to identify the attachment. A. Okay. Q. Okay. Is this, in fact, a letter
that Mikki Breese sent to you on March 24, 1998 or thereabouts?
A. Yes. Q. And do you recognize her
signature down there as Mikki? A. It looks like Mikki. Q. Okay. And does it attach the
introduction -- A. Yes. Q. -- of the Complete Poems? A. It -- it does. Q. And the purpose of her attaching
the introduction is to have you review it? MR. DANNAY: I object to the
form, but go ahead and answer. A. The attachment, to tell you the
truth, doesn't necessarily, in my mind, match up with the cover letter since what's attached to it is the edited version with my handwriting on it.
what she sent -- I mean, she couldn't have sent me my comments, if you see what I mean.
Q. Okay. So this might have been the copy marked up --
A. Yes. Q. -- after she sent it to you? A. Yes. But then as I say, it
wouldn't probably have been the enclosure for this particular letter.
Q. And I presume that although in your file, you could have attached this letter --
A. Happens all the time. Q. -- attached this letter to this? A. Yes, I could have done it, it
happens all the time. Q. I will represent it was produced
by your lawyer and Bates stamped D 00 135 to D 00171.
Is it true you gave her a 5,000-word limit?
A. I have to refer back to that contract and I don't remember --
Page 154
M. Millman Q. Does it say:
"I've stayed within your 5,000-word limit." A. She seems to be saying that.
MS. McCABE: Okay. I'm going to mark this as Plaintiffs Exhibit 21.
(Letter dated September 28, 1998 from Mikki Breese to Michael Millman bearing production No. CB 00096 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 2 1 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Let me know when you are done reading it.
A. I'm done. Q. Is this a letter that Mikki
Breese -- well, let me represent that this was produced from Colleen Breese's files, CB 00096, and it's dated September 28, 1998.
Is this a letter that Colleen Breese would have sent to you?
A. It -- yes, very likely. Q. And presumably attached to this
letter was the amended copy for the Complete
Page 155
M. Millman Poems?
A. Sure, presumably. Q. Okay. It does, in fact, say:
"I've enclosed the corrected and emended" -- that is probably a typo -- "copy for the DP Complete Poems along with comments to Carole McCurdy."
Is that correct? A. Yes. Q. And Carole McCurdy, I believe you
mentioned was on your staff! A. No, she's a freelance editor. Q. But she was under contract to
produce this book? A. Yes. Q. Is it fair to say that you had a
fairly close working relationship with Colleen Breese during the time you were working on Complete Poems?
A. Fairly close. Q. Fairly close. A. I don't know what that means. Do
you mind saying it a little more exactly? Q. Well, when working with an editor
Page 156
1 M. Millman 2 like Colleen Breese, that you had a business 3 relationship with her? 4 A. I had a business relationship 5 with her, certainly, yes. 6 Q. And you had a fair amount of 7 telephone calls and correspondence with her? 8 A. However you want to define fair 9 amount, yes. 10 Q. Regarding Complete Poems? 11 A. We had correspondence. 12 Q. And does she not, in fact, say: 13 "Stay in touch. It's been a joy 14 working on these two projects with you. 15 I can't thank you enough for your 16 patience, help, and interest." 17 A. Yes, she does seem to be saying 18 that. 19 Q. Okay. 20 A. I am a joy to work with. 2 1 Q. I bet you are. 22 MR. DANNAY: Is this in the 23 category of kindest personal regards? 24 Q. And do you recall actually 25 getting correspondence from her on University
A. Not intentionally, certainly. Q. You did know that Mr. Silverstein
was claiming a compilation copyright in his book, didn't you?
A. I assume I must have. MS. McCABE: I would like to have
this marked as Plaintiff's 22. (Letter dated February 2, 1998 from Mikki Breese to Michael Millman and Jariya Wanapun bearing production No. CB 0009 1 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 22 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Okay. I'll represent this came from Colleen Breese's file and it's marked CB 0009 1.
Do you recall receiving -- A. Can I just read it? Q. Sure. I thought you had read it. A. Okay. Q. Can you tell me what this
document is? A. It appears to be a fax from Mikki
Page 162
M. Millman Breese to Jariya Wanapun and myself dated February 2, 1998.
Q. Do you recall receiving this document?
A. No. Q. Do you have any -- A. I'm sony, this is from my file?
I don't remember seeing it. Q. Do you have any reason to believe
you did not receive it? A. Only as much as I did. Q. Do you recall her asking about
format? A. I -- I don't actually recall
receiving it. I don't fecal1 any of these particular things at all.
Q. Well, I'm going read you the second paragraph:
"Second, what are your thoughts about format? Will we follow that of her collections, then the recently published 'lost' poems, and finally any not yet previously collected?"
Do you recall discussing that
Page 163
M. Millman with her?
A. No. Q. Do you recall sending her a
response? A. No. Q. Do you recall Jariya Wanapun
sending her a response? A. No, I don't. Q. Do you recall discussing this
document with Jariya Wanapun? A. 1 don't recall the document, so I
don't recall anything around it. Q. Just this one you don't recall,
hmm? MR. DANNAY: I object to the form
of that. Q. I'm going to continue reading:
"I'm double checking Silverstein, but the old sources are not easy to locate."
22 Did she tell you that she was 23 double-checking Silverstein, which presumably 24 is Stuart Silverstein? 25 A. If I received this, then I guess
Page 164
M. Millman she told me that in this fax, yes.
Q. Did she ever tell you that other than this fax?
A. I don't remember. Q. Do you recall any kind of
conversation or communication about her trying to find the quote, unquote, old sources?
A. I don't. MS. McCABE: One second, then we
can break. Q. Did Colleen Breese ever discuss
her research methodology at all with you -- A. I -- Q. -- regarding the uncollected
poems? A. If she did, I have absolutely no
recollection of it. Q. I also note for the record that
she refers in here to these as lost, quote, unquote, lost poems.
MR. DANNAY: Excuse me. Could you just read that back.
MS. McCABE: I said I also note that she refers to the uncollected
M. Millman poems as the quote, unquote, lost poems in the second paragraph.
MR. DANNAY: I think the letter speaks for itself. I'm not quite sure what you are saying, but you are allowed to say it. Q. So you were the primary editor
for the Complete Poems at Penguin, but you never discussed Colleen Breese's research with her or her methodology?
A. I don't believe I said that, but we can go back and read it. I think what I said was I don't remember discussing it.
Q. You don't remember discussing it. But normally, wouldn't you have
with an outside editor? A. To one degree or another. But,
again, despite my fairly intimate knowledge of Dorothy Parker, you can put that in quotes too, please, I'm not a Dorothy Parker scholar.
We publish all kinds of books in Penguin Classics, I'm not an expert in John Milton --
Q. But --
Page 166
M. Millman MR. DANNAY: Let him finish.
A. I need to rely on the scholars 1 hire.
Q. But -- MR. DANNAY: Wait. MS. McCABE: I thought he was
done. Q. Go ahead. A. I can talk to them about
methodology, but I am not, myself, a scholar. 1 mean, I generally have to defer to the expert that I hired.
Q. Now, maybe you wouldn't discuss every last poem with her or even the vast majority of the poems particularly, but in terms of how she goes about double-checking if another author is correct in his selection of the poems, you wouldn't discuss that with the editor?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. THE WITNESS: Do you mind reading
back, please. (Record read.)
A. I probably wouldn't.
Page 167
M. Millman Q. You would just solely rely on
what the editor told you, even though it was your responsibility to have the book -- to edit the book at Penguin?
A. Yes. MR. DANNAY: Can I just -- I
think the witness nodded his head to your question, you would rely. I don't know how it came up.
MS. McCABE: He said yes. MR. DANNAY: Did you say yes?
I'm sorry. I didn't hear the question. Q. So if she xeroxed Not Much Fun -- A. "She," being? Q. Colleen Breese.
-- and submitted it as the uncollected section for Complete Poems, you would be none the wiser to that?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form MS. McCABE: I' l l rephrase. THE WITNESS: Thank you.
Q. So if Colleen Breese copied Not Much Fun and submitted it as part of the uncollected poems for Complete Poems, you
Page 168
M. Millman wouldn't be aware of that?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. You mean, if she -- if Colleen
Breese xeroxed it, would I recognize it as having come from this book, is that your question? Would I recognize the page makeup and so forth?
Q. Yes. A. I may. Q. We've had several documents now
where Mr. Silverstein's book is referenced, so I'm assuming that you had some familiarity with Mr. Silverstein's book; is that correct?
A. Absolutely. And as I think I said, I sent it to Colleen Breese, the book itself or a Xerox of it, I think, I can't remember which, as a research tool.
So, you know, there really isn't a whole lot of point in reinventing the wheel. If someone has gone out and looked for the previously uncollected works, I think Breese said in one of these things, which I didn't even remember getting, she was actually double-checking the work.
distinction between the typed script and a photocopy of a previously published work?
A. Oh, better say that one again. Would I recognize the difference between --
Q. The distinction between a typed script and a photocopy of a published book?
A. Oh, of course. MS. McCABE: Okay. Why don't we
take our break. (Recess taken from 2:42 P.M.
until 2:48 P.M.) Q. Okay. Do you know how Ms. Breese
selected the poems that she -- strike that. Do you know how Ms. Breese
selected the previously uncollected poems that were included in the book Complete Poems?
A. rm not exactly sure, no. Q. Do you have any knowledge of how
she selected them? A. I think -- I mean, I think you
are better off talking to her about how exactly she did it. I supplied her with some materials, as I said, which I certainly
Page 170
M. Millman thought would get her moving along on the right path.
Q. And included ,in those materials was Silverstein's Not Much Fun?
A. Yes. Q. Did you ever discuss with her
what constituted a poem? A. No. Q. Did you ever discuss with her
what constituted a verse? A. No. Q. Did you give her any guidelines
in terms of what should be included in Complete Poems?
A. Well, as I -- as I think I said, we -- I believe we had drawn up the contract with the NAACP with a pretty clear, if you will, speculative table of contents about what at that point we thought the Complete Poems would consist of, which as far as we could tell from the NAACP themselves, Mr. Himmelrich, they weren't aware of any poems beyond that either. So I think she certainly had quite a head start from that list which I
Page 17 1
M. Millman supplied her.
Q. And did you, in fact, get that list from Mr. Silverstein's Not Much Fun?
A. Well, we xeroxed the chronology out of the end of the book, which I believe was represented to be a complete listing of italicized Dorothy Parker's poems.
I may have said to Professor Breese if there is some way you can double-check this. But again, I don't know how she would go about double-checking it herself. It looked pretty thorough for me as a bibliographic source. I saw no reason to doubt it.
Q. When you sent her either the book Not Much Fun or the photocopy of it, did you send her a cover letter with it?
A. Probably, but I may not have. If I had called her and said it's on the way, I might have saved myself the trouble of looking for a cover letter.
Q. Did you look for a copy of that in the files?
A. Yes, we looked for everything in
Page 172
1 M. Millman 2 my files. 3 Q. And as of today, you don't have a 4 copy of a cover letter? 5 A. No. 6 Q. Would it be existing anywhere on 7 the computer? 8 A. No. 9 Q. And if you had a conversation
10 that you were going to send her the book, what 1 1 would you have said in that conversation or 12 what did you say in that conversation? 13 A. I really don't remember, to tell 14 you the truth. 15 Q. No idea what you said in that 16 conversation? 17 A. Well -- no. 18 MS. McCABE: I would like to have 19 this marked as Plaintiffs 23, a 20 document which has been Bates stamped 2 1 CB 0093. 22 (Letter dated August 23, 1998 23 from Mikki Breese to Michael 24 Millman bearing production No. CB 2 5 00093 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit
M. Millman 23 for identification, as of this date.)
A. Okay. Q. I saw you nodding your head as
you were reviewing it. Is it because you recognize some
of this document? A. Yeah -- I mean, I think I saw it
recently when the material was produced. Q. And do you recall this document? A. I -- I have no personal
recollection other than having it, you know, recently put before my eyes.
Q. And is it a document that Mikki or Colleen Breese would have sent to you?
A. It appears to be so, yes. Q. And it's dated August 23, 1998? A. Yes. Q. And you were shown this document
while preparing for your deposition? A. I -- I believe so, but maybe I'm
wrong. Q. I want to refer you to the second
paragraph:
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M. Millman "Probably changes were made in
the order of the appearance that had to due with typesetting and aesthetics. Silverstein does the same thing in his Not Much Fun (which I call 'Uncollected by Parker'). He reverses the order of several poems and groups all the 'Hate Songs' together. "
Do you recollect having a conversation with Colleen Breese regarding the ordering of the poems in the book?
A. I -- I don't. Q. Would that be a topic that you
would discuss with one of your outside editors?
A. Sure. Q. I'm going to continue reading:
"I have reinserted them in their chronological order, the reason you see so much cutting and pasting." Q. I'm assuming there was an
attachment to this document when you received it?
A. Urn-hmm.
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M. Millman Q. Okay. And she's saying, is she
not, that Silverstein reverses the order of a number of poems from a chronological order as he used them in his'book?
MR. DANNAY: Objection. The document speaks for itself, but go ahead.
THE WITNESS: Read it back, please.
(Record read.) A. She's saying he reverses the
order of several poems and groups all the hate songs together.
Q. And is she then saying that she reinserted them into their chronological order?
A. She says: "I have reinserted them in their
chronological order." Q. And by "them," do you understand
that to mean the poems from Silverstein's book?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. Well, by "them," she's referring
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M. Millman to those poems that happen to be in Mr. Silverstein's book, yes.
Q. And did she, in fact, cut and paste the poems that appeared --
MR. DANNAY: Object. Q. -- in Mr. Silverstein's book, Not
Much Fun? MR. DANNAY: Object as to form.
A. I don't know the answer. Q. Do you have any other reason as
to why she would use the terminology "cutting and pasting"?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A, I mean, it would -- it's not
unusual on the typed scripts that we get for the classics that they are on what we call tear sheets, so they are often taken from several different sources.
And the outside editor often takes xeroxes from one book, takes a piece out of it, cuts one poem out, and puts it there, takes something from another source, puts it there. So sometimes it looks like a wreck, but I think that's probably what she means.
44 (Pages 173 to 176)
E-mail: ClassReptg@?aol.com CLASSIC REPORTING, INC.
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
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M. Millman She must have been cutting and pasting from different sources.
Q. Does she indicate any other source that she uses here --
MR. DANNAY: I object as to the form. Q. -- with regard to the uncollected
poems? MR. DANNAY: Again, object as to
form. A. I don't know. It seems to me
maybe the cutting and pasting is referring to the whole thing. I wish I remember what the script looked like when it came back, but I guess it was a mess.
Q. But she explicitly states that the material contained in this cover letter is cut and pasted, doesn't she?
A. Yes. But -- yes. MS. McCABE: I'm going show you
what I am marking as Plaintiffs 24. (Letter dated August 23, 1998 from Mikki Breese to Michael Millman bearing production No. D
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M. Millman 000 15 marked Plaintiff's Exhibit 24 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Do you recognize Plaintiffs Exhibit 24?
A. Recognize it as a letter? Yes. Q. And a letter you would have
received? A. It's addressed to me, yes. Q. And is it signed by -- A. Mikki. Q. Mikki, yes. And is that the
usual way Colleen Breese signed her letters to vou?
A. Yes. Q. Okay. And is it dated August 23,
l998? A. Yes. Q. And do you recall receiving this
letter? A. No. Although it seems to bear an
uncanny resemblance to the previous exhibit. Q. And I will represent that it's
produced from Penguin's files.
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M. Millman A. Okay. Q. D 000 15. Okay. Do you have any
reason to believe that you did not receive it if it came from Penguin's files?
A. No, I'm sure I received it. Q. I want to point your attention to
the last sentence in paragraph 2, which says: "I have reinserted them in their
chronological order, the reason you see so much cutting as pasting." A. Okay. Thank you for drawing it
to my attention. Q. Do you see that? A. Yes, I do. Q. And do you see that the other one
I showed you, Plaintiffs 23, says: "I have reinserted them in their
chronological order, the reason you see so much cutting and pasting." A. Yes, I do. Q. Do you know why there is a
difference? A. Yes, I do. Q. Do you make a change to this
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M. Millman letter, Plaintiffs 24?
A. No, I didn't. Q. Does it refresh any of your
recollection regarding discussions you may have had regarding cutting and pasting Silverstein's poems?
A. No. Q. Okay. I'm going to -- is it --
you see a lot of business correspondence, I'm assuming?
A. Yes, I do. Q. Have you ever seen an original
letter that seemed to be without a typographical error and then the final copy to actually contain the typographical error?
MR. DANNAY: I object as to the form.
THE WITNESS: Can you read that one back.
(Record read.) MR. DANNAY: Again, object as to
form. A. I don't -- I don't think so. Q. Okay. I'm going to direct your
M. Millman attention to the third paragraph, which says --
MR. DANNAY: Of which exhibit? Q. 24, since that was produced from
the defendant's files: "I see no need to change the
biographical notes on Parker, so I have merely reproduced them. The only new work is Silverstein's, and I don't think we want to direct people to the competition, so suggestions for further reading can be duplicated from The Complete Stories." Q. Is Ms. Colleen Breese suggesting
here not to include Mr. Silverstein's work in the Complete Poems -- a reference to it?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. THE WITNESS: Please read. (Record read.) MS. McCABE: Let me strike it. THE WITNESS: Thank you.
Q. Is Ms. Breese suggesting here making no reference to Not Much Fun, Mr. Silverstein's book, in the Complete Poems?
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1 M. Millman 2 MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. 3 Go ahead and answer. 4 A. I don't know if that's what she's
doing. Q. Well, what do you think she's
doing? A. In that sentence? Q. Yes.
"The only new work is Silverstein's, and I don't think we want to direct people to the competition, so suggestions for further reading can be duplicated from The Complete Stories." A. I mean, it seems to me she's
trying to do too much in one sentence. Sony to sound like an editor.
I think what she's saying is to simplify things on our end, all we need to do for the list of suggestions for further reading for the Complete Poems is pretty much reproduce exactly the list of suggestions for further reading that she did for the Complete Stories that we published.
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M. Millman Q. Okay. And the Complete Stories
did not, of course, list Mr. Silverstein's work?
A. Correct. Q. So, therefore, Complete Poems did
not list Mr. Silverstein's work; is that correct?
A. As far as I remember, yes, that's correct.
Q. And is it fair to say that Mr. Silverstein's work was a competitor of the Complete Poems?
MR. DANNAY: I object as to the form. A. I don't -- I mean, it's such a --
it's such a -- Q. Well, doesn't she directly say --
MR. DANNAY: He didn't finish his answer.
THE WITNESS: Sorry. Can you read that one back?
MS. McCABE: Every time your lawyer makes a comment, you don't have to get it read back. Otherwise, we
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M. Millman will be here forever. A. Would you prefer I not? Q. You started to answer the
question, so I presume you understood the question.
A. I guess I just wanted to have it clarified.
MR. DANNAY: You can complain about my objections, but an objection to form usually means, at least 1 think -- I think there is a problem with the form and I think the witness is being responsible by listening to it correctly and answering it.
MS. McCABE: Every time you object to form, he asks to have it read back.
Any question that is going to mean anything, you are going to object to form.
Why don't you read it back. MR. DANNAY: Let's not wrangle. (Record read.)
Q. However you want to define it. A. Okay. In some absolute sense,
I'm sure it was competition. Because as 1 remember it at the time, it was the only other selection of Ms. Parker's poems that were available.
But in our experience, we can have selections of poems by individual poets complemented by complete poems by the same poets and they don't fully interfere with each other.
I mean, to go back to John Milton, we can sell Paradise Lost perfectly well in Penguin Classics in a stand-alone edition and also sell the Complete Poems of John Milton as an edition and they are at a different price point generally and it's a different audience.
A person who wants Paradise Lost is probably not the same person who wants the Complete Poems.
Q. Let me ask you this: If I were to buy a Complete Poems, I would have no need
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M. Millman to buy Not Much Fun because the uncollected poems are in the Complete Poems by definition, no?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. Go ahead. A. I don't want to slow things down
and have you reread that again, but I think what you just did was to devalue the introduction that Mr. Silverstein writes.
I mean, are you saying then that that has no value, so no one would want to buy it?
Q. Regardless of the introduction. A. Well, that's a -- Q. If I wanted to get all of the
uncollected poems and I also wanted the collected poems, I would buy your book, right?
A. I would hope you would, yes. Q. Right. Well, is there any other
book that contains both that you know of? A. No.
MR. DANNAY: Both what? MS. McCABE: The collected and
uncollected poems.
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M. Millman THE WITNESS: I understood that,
but thank you for clarifying. Q. If I bought that book, I would
have all the collected and uncollected poems, right?
A. I assume all the uncollected poems are indeed in there. And I assume that if you buy the book we advertise as the Complete Poems, you are getting the Complete Poems. Which is not to say that a Parker expert doesn't discover a cache of them.
Q. At this point in time -- MR. DANNAY: Just a moment, let
the witness finish his answer, please. A. 1 think I was pretty much done. Q. And when I say poems, it's --
it's Penguin's definition of what may be a poem or a verse; is that correct?
MR. DANNAY: I object to the form. A. I mean, I don't know if it's
Penguin's definition. It's -- Q. Whose definition would it be
then?
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M. Millman A. I guess, ultimately, it's Colleen
Breese's and Ms. Parker's. Q. Okay. Do you know if, with
respect to the uncollected poems, that Dorothy Parker ever said what was poems and what was verses?
A. I don't. Q. Do you know of any definitions
she may have given either of those? A. I don't. Q. Is it fair to say that from
Colleen Breese's standpoint, she regarded Silverstein's work as the competition?
A. I think you would have to hear that from Colleen Breese.
Q. But isn't that what she's saying here --
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. Q. --just based on your reading
here? A. I don't want to rephrase what she
says. I think she says exactly what she says in the letter. If you want to find out what she meant by it, I don't think I'm in a
Q. I'm not asking what she meant by it. All I'm asking you to say is, she regarded Mr. Silverstein's work as, quote, unquote, the competition?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. A. I really think you need to get
that from Colleen Breese. Q. So are you telling me now you
can't read the English language? Is there any other meaning that
that sentence could possibly have? MR. DANNAY: Object to the form
to the nth power. Come on, this is silly. Q. When she refers to the
competition, just tell me what she's referring to in your mind.
MR. DANNAY: Objection to form. Asked and answered several time. Q. Based on your plain reading of
the document, what is it she's referring to as the competition?
MR. DANNAY: Highly
Page I90
M. Millman argumentative. A. My reading of Colleen Breese's
sentence in a letter written to me of August 23, 1998 is that she seems to be identifying Mr. Silverstein's book as, quote, unquote, the competition.
Q. Okay. Going back to Plaintiffs 24, does the term "cutting as pasting" have any meaning to you?
A. It's probably similar to the scraping and scrapping of that earlier letter of Colleen Breese.
Q. Meaning it's a typographical error?
A. That's how I would interpret it, yes.
Q. And cutting and pasting is presumably what was meant to be said there?
MR. DANNAY: I object as to form. A. That would be my assumption as
well, yes. MS. McCABE: I'm going to now
mark this as Plaintiffs 25. The hardcover volume of the Lost Poems of
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M. Millman Dorothy Parker, Not Much Fun, by Stuart Silverstein. I probably read that backwards. It probably should be Not Much Fun, The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker, by Stuart Silverstein.
(Hardcover volume of Not Much Fun, The Lost Poems of Dorothy Parker, by Stuart Silverstein marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 25 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. I'm going to ask you to look at the contents of Not Much Fun, which has previously been marked as Plaintiffs 9.
And then open what's been marked as Plaintiffs 25.
A. I'm sorry, that's this? Yes. To the same page?
Q. Strike all of that. Excuse me. I'm sorry, I'm confusing myself.
Open the hardbound copy of Not Much Fun marked as Plaintiffs 25.
A. Got it. Q. And open to the contents.
And then I am going to ask you to
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M. Millman look at what's been marked as Plaintiffs 11, which is the Complete Poems volume.
And in the Complete Poems volume, if you look at the table of contents of the uncollected poems?
A. Okay. Q. Previously uncollected poems? A. Oh, oh, sorry. Poems Uncollected
by Parker. Q. Right, that's correct. A. On page Roman XI. Q. Okay. I'm going try to do this
quickly and if we can't, we'll do it more mechanically.
Can you tell me today, with one exception, if those contents are not identical, the contents are identical with one exception?
A. I'm sony, can I tell you what? Q. If the titles in the contents of
Not Much Fun are identical to the poems uncollected in Complete Poems.
MR. DANNAY: I object as to form. A. What do you mean, can I tell you?
M. Millman I'm sorry, it's getting late in the day.
Q. Can you tell me if, in fact, the collections are the same, if they are the same poems with one exception?
MR. DANNAY: Object as to form. Q. With one exception, "Day-Dreams"? A. Can I tell you without
comparison? Q. Yes, can you tell. You can't
tell, but for one, they are exactly the same, but for one poem, "Day-Dreams"?
A. I can't do that. MS. McCABE: Can you stipulate to
that without him making the comparison? MR. DANNAY: I think it's in the
record from prior pleadings, his testimony, the books themselves. The order in the books is completely different. What --
MS. McCABE: It's foundation for further questioning. I need him to look at the -- to look at the contents and see if there is any differences.
MR. DANNAY: I think that's an
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M. Millman improper exercise with this witness.
MS. McCABE: Are you telling him not to do it or are you making an objection?
MR. DANNAY: I'm making an objection. I can't tell you not to do it, but I think it's a waste of time.
THE WITNESS: I'm sorry, so what am I supposed to be doing? Q. Comparing the contents of --
MR. DANNAY: Do you want to tell him what you believe is the case and work from that as a hypothetical?
MS. McCABE: Well, that's what I thought I did.
MR. DANNAY: No, you can tell him, without asking him to check, to assume it as a hypothetical as a base for your further questions. He doesn't know this.
MS. McCABE: No. I need him to go through it. Unless you don't want rely on my say-so.
MR. DANNAY: I don't know what
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M. Millman the further questions are, so I can't do it. I'm perfectly to willing to have her question you and assume it for question purposes. A. What would the hypothetical be?
I'm sorry, you are losing me now. Q. That the contents of Not Much
Fun, with one exception, "Day-Dreams," are the same exact contents that you find in the poems uncollected in Complete Poems.
MR. DANNAY: Can I make another statement and you can go through whatever exercise you want. It's really an ambiguous question because the table of contents page is not necessarily the same as the contents of the book and the labeling of the individual poems isn't necessarily the same, even though the poems do appear to be the same within the contents of the book.
So I think it's a much more complicated question than just "Day-Dreams". We all know, and I'm not
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M. Millman letting anything out the bag, that "Day-Dreams" appears in Mr. Silverstein's book and does not appear in the uncollected section of the Penguin book. But they will not correspond and I think your own client will tell you that.
Am I wrong? I'm sure you've done a close examination.
Look, I, myself, have compared the contents pages and there are differences and I think your client's conform it simply in the labeling as you go down the contents page. So the only way you would really match poem against poem is by turning to every single page and then you would have to make a leap from the way they are presented in their titles and the way they appear in the book. I think that's an accurate statement.
MS. McCABE: Let's put the titles aside for a moment.
M. Millman for themselves. This is an exercise that makes no sense.
MS. McCABE: Is defendant willing to stipulate that, not the contents page, as to the contents of the book of Not Much Fun and the contents -- what's the actual poems in the poems uncollected section of Complete Poems, that the selection is exactly the same but for the poem "Day-Dreams"?
MR. DANNAY: No, I couldn't agree -- the way you phrase it, I can't agree.
MS. McCABE: What could you agree to do?
MR. DANNAY: It would take us another two hours to do it. So continue with your questions. I don't think it's a proper exercise, in any event, to make that kind of comparison at a table while a reporter is taking it down. It's too complex a task.
MS. McCABE: What if we were to continue the deposition just for the
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M. Millman purposes of him making the comparison?
MR. DANNAY: You mean homework? MS. McCABE: Yes. MR. DANNAY: Honestly, I don't
think that's appropriate, I really don't. But what I would suggest is that if you are going into that task and it's going take hours, this is for your benefit as well as mine and the witness', that you continue your questioning on other matters before you -- and then leave that to the end. Q. Could you open to Complete Poems? A. Okay. Q. And to the -- open to the actual
section entitled "Poems Uncollected"? A. In the book? Q. Yes. A. Page211. Q. Okay. A. Okay. Q. Is "The Bridge Fiend," is that
found in Complete Poems? You could put that one aside.
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M. Millman A. Thank you. Q. What I'm going to be doing is
going through the poems in the order that they are listed in Not Much Fun and asking you if they appear in Complete Poems?
A. I have a handy-dandy index in this one. Can I look at that?
Yes, "The Bridge Fiend" is here. MR. DANNAY: Are you referring to
titles of poems? MS. McCABE: I'm looking at the
contents. Q. Did the actual poem appear in -- A. A poem called "The Bridge Fiend"
is in this. MR. DANNAY: You are not asking
him to make a comparison as to whether the poems are the same, are you? Q. Is the'poem "Any Porch" found in
Complete Poems? A. A poem called "Any Porch" is
indeed in here. Q. Is a poem entitled, "The Gunman
and the Debutante, A Moral Tale"?
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M. Millman A. Hang on.
MR. DANNAY: My objection as to all of this is noted as to form. A. A poem called "The Gunman and the
Debutante" is included, yes. Q. "The Lady in Back," is that poem
included in Complete Poems? A. A poem called "A Lady in Back" is
included, yes. Q. 1s "Oh, Look-I Can Do It, Too,"
Showing That Anyone Can Write Modernist verse, included in Complete Poems; is the poem itself included?
MR. DANNAY: Do you mean the poem itself? Q. The poem itself, not the title.
Let's call them items. MR. DANNAY: You are asking him
to look at something that amounts to a title or first line and asking him on the basis of that, whether the poem appears in the book. The poem is something different than the fi rst line on the title.
a -- a -- in a certain way, which would have to be read back in response to your question. You now seem to be changing your question.
MS. McCABE: It's the same question all along.
Does the item "Oh, Look-I Can Do It, Showing That Anyone Can Write Modernist Verse", appear in the Complete Poems? Not the title, does the item appear in the book?
[,really object as to form and unless you feel you can do that and go beyond what the poem is called and find some correspondence between the title of one and title of the other. A. I thought all I was doing is
simply confirming that what I was doing is there are indeed poems listed in this index that are there.
Q. I want to know: Are those titles included in Complete Poems?
A. The titles --
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M. Millman Q. Are the items included in
Complete Poems? A. Well, there are poems that
have -- that we're using those titles on in this book, yes.
Q. Okay. And can we make that for all of these, that there are poems with the titles I am reading to you in the Complete Poems?
A. Read that back, please. (Record read.) MR. DANNAY: No, I'm going to
object to that. Because you are not making an adequate distinction between the title itself, whatever its title might be, and the title of a poem, whatever the poem might be.
There is, at least in theory, a difference and since you seem to be dwelling -- trying to combine the two, I don't think it's an appropriate area of inquiry.
MS. McCABE: I'm not combining the two. We have no other way of
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M. Millman referring to the poems but for their titles.
MR. DANNAY: But as Mr. Silverstein would surely testify, there can be two poems, very different, with the same title, which might call forth the contribution of adding a 1 in the bracket or a 2 in the bracket.
MS. McCABE: And, in fact, he did add the 1 and 2 in the bracket in his book and I'm going to read the 1 and 2 so there is no confusion.
MR. DANNAY: But your question is confusing because you are referring to the existence of a poem which consists of any numbers of verse and asking if it's there by simply referring to the title and it can't be done unless -- this witness can't do it. You want to lay the foundation and he knows the poem so well.
Does he know it? THE WITNESS: I don't know the
poem so well.
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M. Millman Q. So you are saying that by just
the title, you can't tell if the poem is in Complete Poems?
A. I'm telling you that there are poems using those titles in this book. If they match exactly the poems in Mr. Silverstein's book, I can't tell you that.
Maybe that's not what you are asking.
Q. I didn't ask if they matched exactly.
Is there a poem entitled "Oh, Look-I Can Do It, Too" in Complete Poems?
MR. DANNAY: That's very different than what you said before and the reporter could read it back and tell you it's very different. A. Yes, there is. Q. Okay. Is there an item in
Complete Poems entitled "Letter to Robert Benchley, Roughing It in the Country at The Birches, Maine" in Complete Poems?
A. The index indicates there is, indeed, a poem called "Letter to Robert
M. Millman A. It's here. Q. Okay. Is there an item entitled
"Song [4]" included this Complete Poems? MR. DANNAY: Object as to form.
A. Yes. there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "Song
for an April Dusk" included in the Complete Poems?
A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled
"Rosemary [2]" included in Complete Poems? MR. DANNAY: Object as to form.
A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled
"Ballade of a Complete Flop" in Complete Poems?
A. Sounds familiar. Yes. Q. Is there an item entitled "Folk
Song" included in Complete Poems? A, Yes, we've got "Folk Song" and
"Folk Tuning", if that's helpful. Q. IS there an item entitled
"Balto", subtitled "The Lead Dog of the Team That Brought Antitoxin to Nome"?
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M. Millman A. Not in the index, let me check in
the book -- I mean the subtitle -- "Baito" "The -- open paren, "The Lead Dog of the Team That Brought Antitoxin to Nome", yes.
Q. And the subtitles are in parens? A. Yes. Q. Subtitle, singular? A. Yes. Q. Is there an item entitled
"Cassandra Drops into Verse" included in -- A. Yes, there is. Q. Okay. Is there an item titled
"Meeting-Place" with a dash included in Complete Poems?
A. "Meeting hyphen Place"? Q. Yes. A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "Song
of American Resident in France" -- A. Yes, there is. Q. -- included in Complete Poems? A. I'm sorry, excuse me. Yes, there
is. Q. Is there an item entitled "Rhyme
Page 223
M. Millman of an Involuntary Violet" included in the Complete Poems?
A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "The
Temptress" included in the Complete Poems? A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "To
Elspeth" included in Complete Poems? A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "When
We Were Very Sore "included in Complete Poems? A. Yes, there is. Q. And is there a subtitle? A. Hang on. Q. Okay. A. There is a subtitle. Q. And is it "(Lines on Discovering
That You Have Been Advertised as America's A.A. Milne.)"?
A. With a period, I hope. Q. Yes, with a period. A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "The
Accursed" in the Complete Poems?
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M. Millman A. Yes. Q. Is there an item title entitled
"Chris hyphen Cross". A. Yes, with a subtitle. Q. I'll tell you "On Confusing
Messieurs" -- abbreviated -- "Messrs. Morley and Robin"?
A. Yes, there is. Q. Is there an item entitled "Grande
Passion" included in Complete Poems? A. There is. Q. Is there an item entitled
"Excursion Into Assonance" included in complete poems?
A. "Assonance", yes, there is. Q. Again, forgive my pronunciation. A. That, I can forgive. Q. Is there an item entitled "-- And
Return" included in Complete Poems? A. I'm sorry, can you repeat that
one? Which one is it? Q. An item entitled "--And Return"
basically consisted of, as I said earlier, tear sheets. So there were xeroxes of poems that had already been published.
Q. So they were poems that had already been published and they were arranged in a certain order?
A. By virtue of being in a sequential manuscript, yes.
Q. Were they attached to a larger page?
A. I don't -- I don't have a memory of the thing itself.
Q. Okay. Is there a guide for writers in terms of how a manuscript is supposed to be submitted; as you recall?
A. I don't -- I don't recall. Q. Did you receive the whole
manuscript at once; do you recall? A. I don't. I think so, but I don't
remember. Q. If I can refresh your
recollection with Plaintiffs Exhibit 2.
Page 235
Page 234
M. Millman A. I'm sony, we are back to 2? Q. Yes. A. Right. Q. Does it -- the portion entitled
"Manuscript Preparation, 1. Preparing Your Text," page 7. It's Bates stamped D 00350.
Does the first line says: "Type or print" -- well, just prior to that, it says: " 1. Preparing Your Text" and then it says: "The Standard Manuscript;" is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And the first line reads:
"Type or print out your final manuscript on standard 8-112 x 1 I-inch white paper." A. Yes. Q. Do you recall if, in fact,
Colleen Breese did follow that guideline? A. I don't. But as I tried to
testify earlier, I don't think I ever sent this to Colleen Breese either.
Q. Wouldn't have you remembered if the manuscript didn't conform to Penguin's
59 (Pages 233 to 236)
M. Millman usual standard manuscript?
A. Well, it depends -- again, I don't know that you can use this standard as the standard for the Penguin Classics, that's the distinction I'm trying to make. These are instructions for original books. If someone's writing a novel --
Q. If-- MR. DANNAY: Let him finish his
answer. MS. McCABE: I'm sorry.
A. If someone was writing a novel, this is what we would expect. If someone was putting together a manuscript consisting of tear sheets for a Penguin Classic, needless to say, this description doesn't fit the bill.
That's why I don't think I ever sent this to any of the editors who prepared Penguin Classics. You know what I mean? It's just not appropriate for that. It's not what it was for.
Q. Right. So would the tear sheets be attached to anything?
A. Possibly. I wish I remembered
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M. Millman the actual thing. And maybe tear sheets is connoting something which I don't mean to. The --
Q. Explain what you mean by tear sheet.
A. And going back to Breese's earlier phrase about cutting and pasting, often, we actually get things that are cut and pasted. But if somebody submitted to me something that had poems taped on or pasted on, I think we would probably reject that manuscript and say, please give us clean xeroxes of it.
Q. Clean xeroxes. What would clean xeroxes be?
A. Something that can be reproduced without us doing anything extraordinary if they had something with pieces of paper that were taped on, it would be inconvenient to put into a Xerox machine.
Q. And while you were putting together complete poems, I'm assuming you were involved in the editing process?
A. When you say -- I'm sorry, I don't quite remember the beginning of it. You prefaced it. When I was editing, as though i was editing it, right?
Q. When Complete Poems was being put together, you do the production --
A. Yes. Q. -- manuscripts, etcetera. Did
you edit the manuscript? A. Yes. Q. And did you actually read the
manuscript? A. Yes. Q. And do you recall what it
consisted of? A. No. But I -- I -- what it should
have consisted of was the new front matter which Colleen Breese supplied, which is to say the introduction, the list of sources, firther reading, the chronology, then xeroxes of all of the poems which we wanted to go into the book in the order that we wanted them to go into the book.
Page 238
M. Millman Q. And those xeroxes would have
included the poems uncollected, as they are called in lost poems?
A. They should have been there, yes. Q. And do you recall where those
xeroxes for the poems uncollected would have come from originally?
A. I -- I don't. Q. Okay.
MS. McCABE: I'm going to mark as this as Plaintiffs 26, please.
(Document entitled "Copies from Microfilm of Original Media, Poems & Verses by Dorothy Parker*" bearing production Nos. 05 1 through 180 marked Plaintiffs Exhibit 26 for identification, as of this date.)
Q. Have you ever seen any of the original publications of Dorothy Parker's uncollected poems?
A. I believe I have, yes. Q. And do you recall when you saw
them?
Page 239
M. Millman A. No. Q. Would you have seen them during
the editorial production process or more recently?
A. I -- or before, for all I -- I think -- I think 1 was wondering if even -- if the original proposal somewhere some of the originals were xeroxed. I don't know. and I might be misremembering.
But I feel as though I've seen reproductions of maybe microfiche from Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. I might even be confusing it with the complete stories that Breese did.
Q. If you saw a photocopy of one of Dorothy Parker's poems, verses, whatever you want to call them, from Vanity Fair, let's say, would you recognize it?
A. I don't know that I would necessarily recognize it from Vanity Fair unless it was marked as such. But usually, when you see a piece of microfiche, all of that material is still there.
Q. Okay. I want to show you what's
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M. Millman been marked as Plaintiffs 26 and ask you to take a look at that.
MR. DANNAY: Has this been produced?
MS. JASKIEWICZ: Yes. MS. McCABE: Yes. MR. DANNAY: With Bates numbers? MS. JASKIE WICZ: Those don't have
Bates numbers. MR. DANNAY: This document
doesn't have Bates numbers? MS. JASKIEWICZ: No. But they
were produced. MR. DANNAY: Do you have a copy
that has Bates numbers? MS. JASKIEWICZ: We should. MS. McCABE: It was in the recent
production, wasn't it? MS. JASKIEWICZ: No. MR. DANNAY: In the recent
production? MS. McCABE: No, I'm misstating. MR. DANNAY: Do you have an extra
M. Millman MS. McCABE: We should. MR. DANNAY: Preferably one that
has Bates numbers. MS. JASKIEWICZ: 5 1 to -- what's
the last page? MS. JASKIEWICZ: To 181. MR. DANNAY: But this particular
copy we are looking at doesn't have Bates numbers.
MS. McCABE: We'll give you this COPY
MS. McCABE: All right. Could we take that back?
THE WITNESS: Sure. Q. If you could take a look at that,
please. MS. McCABE: Unless you want to
use that one. MR. DANNAY: I'm not going to be
able to follow -- follow along. Q. Do you recognize the documents
behind here? A. I mean, I think I recognize what
they are, but I don't know that I've ever seen
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M. Millman them before.
Q. What are they? A. They look to be microfilm copies
of the first publications of Ms. Parker's uncollected poems.
Q. Okay. If you could open to "The Bridge Fiend" which I believe is --
A. 118? Q. Yes. It's 1 18 in the original
version. Could you just read us the Bates
stamp on that when you get to that? A. What am I reading?
MS. McCABE: The Bates number on that page where "The Bridge Fiend" -- A. I'm sorry, where would that be?
Not this number? MS. JASKIEWICZ: The top of
the -- MR. DANNAY: He was reading the
Bates number. Q. That's not "The Bridge Fiend"? A. What page am I supposed to be on? Q. It's at the beginning. They are
Page 243
M. Millman chronological, so go to the January 16th --
A. There is no page number? Q. The January 1916. A. Okay, "The Bridge Fiend" -- oh,
gosh. MS. McCABE: That's a bad CODY. Could you refer to Mr. ~ a n n a ~ ' s -
copy? THE WITNESS: Sure.
Q. What's the Bates number on that one, now that we lost the page?
A. Is this the number I'm supposed to give?
MR. DANNAY: Yes? A. 55 , I think. Q. Bates No. 55, okay.
And if you also would open Plaintiffs Exhibit 11, the Complete Poems, and find the item entitled "The Bridge Fiend" on page 2 15, I believe.
Then, I would also like to you open Not Much Fun, which has been marked Plaintiffs 9, page 69.
A. Paperback --
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1 M. Millman 2 Q. Well, actually, let's use this 3 one since this is the one you've seen before. 4 THE WITNESS: Should be the same 5 page, though. 6 A. Okay. 7 Q. I'm going refer you to the line 8 in the first stanza that says: 9 "Partner, just look at my hand."
10 Do you see that line? 11 A. Yes. 12 Q. And in the Complete version, does 13 itsay: 14 "Partner, just look at my hand, 15 exclamation point." 16 A. In the Complete, it does. 17 Q. In the Not Much Fun, does it say 18 the same? 19 A. Yes, it does. 20 Q. And if you would go back to the 21 original and look at it, does that say: 22 "Partner, just look at my hand, 23 exclamation point M dash"? 24 A. It does. 25 Q. Do you know how you account for
M. Millman the difference from the original as opposed to the item that appeared in the Complete Poems?
MR. DANNAY: I object to the form. A. And I don't know how to account
for it. Q. Let me refer your attention to a
little bit later in the second stanza: "You made it lilies on those,
question mark." Is that how Not Much Fun reads?
A. Hang on one second. "You made it lilies on those1' --
Q. "On those, question mark." A. Question mark, yes. Q. And is that how it appears in the
Complete Poems? A. Yes. Q. Okay.
MR. DANNAY: I want to register a more general objection. That the quality of the reproduction of what we are looking at, the so-called original version, is poor. Better than the
Page 246
M. Millman other copy, because it can be at least partially read, but it does not have any clarity to make out some of the distinctions you are going over.
It's very difficult to follow, not surprisingly, because almost all m icrofilm or microfiche copies are poor quality, especially when you continue to reproduce them. Q. If you would refer to the line in
the original, Mr. Millman: "You make it lilies on those,
question mark M dash." Is that correct?
A. "You made it lilies on those?" Q. That's correct:
"You made it lilies on those, question mark M dash." A. It looks like. It's a really
poor xerox. I think that's what it says. Q. Okay. I want to refer -- A. It could be anything. Q. Do you know what would account
for the difference between the original in
Page 247
M. Millman comparison to the poem "The Bridge Fiend" that appeared in Complete Poems?
MR. DANNAY: I object. THE WITNESS: Can you read that
one back, please. (Record read.)
A. No, I don't. Q. Can you go chronologically now
nine pages back from the front page to "Oh, Look-I Can Do It, Too".
A. Nine pages from the back? MS. JASKIEWICZ: Nine pages from
the first page. MR. DANNAY: Nine including the
first page? MS. JASKIEWICZ: Yes.
Q. Okay. Is that item entitled "Oh, Look-I Can Do It, Too"?
A. Yes. Q. Okay. And do you understand that
to be the original version of the Dorothy Parker "Partner" or a representation of such?
A. Looks as such. MR. DANNAY: You are representing
Page 248
M. Millman that it is, are you not?
MS. McCABE: Yes, I am representing that it is.
MR. DANNAY: For present purposes, he is accepting your representation that it is. I don't think he knows of his own knowledge. Q. Do you have any reason to believe
that this is not a xerox of the original version of --
A. I have no reason to believe one thing or another. It looks like a microfiche from Vanity Fair and it's handwritten marked December 19 18.
Q. Okay. Could you now find the same poem "Oh, Look-I Can Do It, Too" in the Complete Poems on page 239?
A. Okay. MS. McCABE: For the record, the
original Vanity Fair poem we were looking at, or verse, is Bates stamped 059. Q. And if you could go to Mr.
MR. DANNAY: Object to the form. Q. If it's different, tell me. A. It looks the same to me. Q. Okay. And if you look at
Bates -- what has been marked as Bates 093 -- A. I mean, I guess the only
difference being the indentation, I'm sorry. Q. I'm focusing on that one line
right now. The one line that says: "Marking it"Fragile-don't break
it'." A. We seem to have a different
indentation. They are both indented, but for whatever reason, and I'm sony, I don't know what it is. [n the Complete Poems, it's not indented nearly as radically.
Q. Okay. Other than that, is there any difference?
A. In that one line? Q. That one line. A. I don't think so. Q. Okay. And in the one that
appears on page 093 --
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M. Millman MR. DANNAY: You mean is there
any difference between those two lines, not the whole poem?
MS. McCABE: Exactly. I said that. A. I understand. Q. Does that line read:
"Marking it, quote, 'Fragile"' -- A. Are we on to the original now? Q. Yes. Let me start over:
"Marking it, quote, 'Fragile M dash don't'", and the line stops; is that correct?
A. Well, I believe you call it a jammed line. Then it continues below. I would call that stylistically and similarly, the business with the "Herewith" we talked about before, that's a -- again, I'm sony if this is what you were focusing on, but that's a stylistic difference.
Q. And are stylistic differences important when you are publishing poetry?
A. It depends -- it depends on the specific case. But -- I mean, I would -- this
Page 263
M. Millman is completely speculation on my part.
Q. Then don't speculate. MR. DANNAY: Let him answer.
A. This is less than speculation on my part. On -- in my experience, writers and poets who publish in magazines have little control, actually, over the way the poems are presented there.
Q. So you are saying Dorothy -- MR. DANNAY: Please let him
finish. A. Yes. But you see where I'm
going. My assumption is that Dorothy Parker had absolutely nothing to do with it and editors of the magazine had everything to do with it.
Q. As editors always do -- strike it.
MR. DANNAY: Strike it? A. Thank you. Q. Actually, the last part of that
line is -- that sentence that ends with a period is on a new line starting with: "Break it, period" --
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M. Millman A. Yes. Q. -- quote. I'm going to take you
down to the last stanza or paragraph, it says: "Silenced forever my song M
dash." A. "Silenced forever my song M dash." Q. In Not Much Fun.
And is the Complete Poems -- is the Complete Poems the same thing, does it read the same way?
A. I believe so, yes. Q. Okay. And does the version that
appears on Bates 093, which is the xerox of the original, say:
"Silenced forever my song, period, M dash." A. It does in this xerox, yes.
MR. DANNAY: Well, I -- A. Again, it's a very poor Xerox.
It could be that or maybe a fly landed on the page, but it looks like there is a period there.
M. Millman you on to "Women: A Hate Song" on page 187 in Not Much Fun. And page --
MR. DANNAY: Tell me the page again in Not Much Fun?
MS. McCABE: 187. Q. I am -- I'm going to refer you to
page 2 17 in the Complete Poems. MR. DANNAY: What's the date at
the top? MS. JASKIEWICZ: August 1916.
A. Okay. I'm among the Hate Songs. MS. JASKIEWICZ: One page more.
Q. Okay. So -- A. I'm sorry, but what's the Bates
number of the -- MS. JASKIEWICZ: 161. MS. McCABE: I6 1 in the original.
Q. In the Not Much Fun, the first line reads:
"I hate women semi colon." IS that correct?
A. "I hate women" with a E semi colon. Q. Yes?
Page 266
M. Millman A. Yes. Q. And the complete -- the version
in Complete Poems says:. "I hate women, semi colon." Is that correct?
A. It is correct. Q. And the version that appears on
Bates No. 16 1, the first line says: ''I hate women, period."
A. Yes. Q. And going back to Not Much Fun
version, the "Hate" is in all lower case letters; is that correct?
A. Yes. Q. And in Complete Poems, it's all
in lower case? A. Yes. Q. And in the original version on
page 161, "Hate" is all in caps? A. I think as you said before, I
would call the "I" a drop cap and the "Hate" small caps. Again, it's a stylistic, and it's left up to the designers of the magazine.
Q. But it's all small caps "Hate"?
Page 267
M. Millman MR. DANNAY: I wish you would let
him finish. MS. McCABE: 1 thought he is
finished. A. Yes, it's all small caps, yes. Q. Moving on to the end of this
poem, at the end, it says: "I hate women semi colon" in
the -- A. I'm sorry, I'm on the next page.
Yes. Q. The second to last line says:
"I hate women, semi colon." Is that correct?
A. We're in the -- Q. Not Much Fun. A. Yes. Q. And in Complete Poems, does it
say the same? A. On page 2 19, yes, it seems to. Q. Okay. And in the original on
page 19 1 it says -- I'm sorry, 16 1, it says: "I hate women, period."
A. Yes.
Page 268
M. Millman Q. And is the "Women" capitalized in
Not Much Fun? A. The "Women" is capitalized, yes. Q. Is it capitalized in Complete
Poems? A. Yes. Q. Is it capitalized in the original
version appearing on 16 I? A. No. Q. Okay. And on the last line, you
see: "They got on my nerves, period."
A. Um-hmm. Q. Is "Nerves" capitalized in Not
Much Fun? A. No. Q. Is "Nerves" capitalized in
Complete Poems? A. No. Q. Is it capitalized in the original
version on 16 I? A. Yes. Q. Do you know what would account
for the differences between the original and
67 (Pages 265 to 268)
E-mail: ClassRevtgOaol.com (2 12) 268-2590 . -- CLASSIC REPORTING, INC.
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
Page 269
M. Millman the version that appears in Complete Poems?
A. I don't. Q. Okay. Moving on to "Our Office",
which appears on page 205 in Not Much Fun and it appears on Bates No. 167.
MR. DANNAY: Just while you were writing that, I would appreciate when I get the copy that it show clearly all of these things as well as the Bates stamps.
MS. McCABE: Yes. MR. DANNAY: In the copies you
gave me initially with the Bates stamps, many of the Bates stamps were not legible and much of the text wasn't legible.
MS. McCABE: We'll give you a better copy.
MR. DANNAY: In some cases, it wasn't readable at all.
MS. McCABE: Okay. Q. ' "Our" -- so you have it in Not
Much Fun on page 204; is that correct? A. 1 have the page open to me, yes.
Page 270
M. Millman Q. And you have the page open to you
in Complete Poems? A. Page 262, yes. Q. All right. The first line says:
"I hate the Office." Is "Off~ce" capitalized in Not
Much Fun? A. Yes. Q. Is it capitalized in Complete
Poems? A. Yes. Q. Is it capitalized in the original
on Bates No. l67? A. Are we on the right page here?
MR. DANNAY: I don't think so. A. It looks like lower case to me. Q. Okay. Going over to the -- looks
to be the fourth paragraph or -- A. Stanza. Q. -- stanza, and it starts -- it
says: "They say only wish" -- "they
only wish they could get away from the office M dash."
Page 27 1
M. Millman A. I'm sorry, where are we? Q. Third stanza. A. Oh. Q. It's the second to last line in
the third stanza. A. "They say they only wish." Q. That's correct. A. Okay. Q. Does that end with just an M
dash, that line? A. In the -- Q. In Not Much Fun? A. In Not Much Fun? Yes. Q. What about in Complete Poems? A. JustanMdash. Q. Okay. And in the original? A. Oh, it looks like there is a
comma between the "Office" and the M dash at the end.
Q. All right. A. Thank you.
MR. DANNAY: We're becoming comatose. Q. At the end of that poem, the last
Page 272
M. Millman couplet, I think it's called:
"I hate the Office." Is that "Office" capitalized or
not capitalized -- A. "I hate the Office" -- Q. -- in Not Much Fun? A. On page 206, it was capitalized
in Not Much Fun. Q. And in Complete Poems? A. It's capitalized. Q. And in the original on 168? A. It's lower case. Q. Okay. Did you know what
accounted for the differences between the original and the version published in Complete Poems?
A. I don't. Q. Okay: Moving just a few pages
back in the original to -- one page -- forward, I'm sorry, "Actors: A Hate Song."
MR. DANNAY: I'm sorry, this is 1 69?
MS. JASKIEWICZ: Bates stamped 169.
68 (Pages 269 to 272)
E-mail: ClassReptgOaol.com (2 12) 268-2590 . -- CLASSIC REPORTING, INC.
MICHAEL MILLMAN October 30,200 1
Page 273
M. Millman Q. Okay. If you can go to the line
in the first, second, third stanza, the second to last line.
MR. DANNAY: You mean the "Grand Canyon"?
MS. McCABE: Yes. Q. Is there a period -- well, is
there anything appearing before the M dash at the end of that line --
A. In -- Q. -- in Not Much Fun? A. It reads:
"On the extreme edge of the Grand Canyon M dash." Q. Okay. And how does Complete
Poems read? A. "On the extreme edge of the Grand Canyon M dash." Q. And how does the original read? A. Oh, boy:
"On the extreme edge of the Grand Canyon", maybe a period and then an M dash? Maybe a comma or it could go either way.
Page 274
M. Millman Q. A period or a comma? A. Looks like there is a. punctuation
mark there. Q. If you go to the line in Not Much
Fun in the following stanza, which is the first, second, third stanza -- well, let me point you to the original in this case first.
It's the stanza that appears in the top of the second column:
"Then there are the Tragedians." A. I know what you mean. Q. Forgive my translation. In the
1,2,3,4, 5,6, 7,8th line down? A. Just "Series II"? Q. What comes after "Series II"? A. Period. Q. And is that a Roman numeral II? A. Yes. Q. Okay. Could you go back -- A. I think it is, or else it's a
capital H. MR. DANNAY: There is something,
but I can't really decipher it. A. Looks like a Roman 11.
Page 275
M. Millman Q. And in the Not Much Fun -- A. Oh, it is an H, sorry, it seems
to -- it seems -- MR. DANNAY: On the Bates copy we
have, neither of us can tell if it's a Roman I1 or an H. Is that what you are trying to find out? Sorry.
It's very unclear on the original. Q. And then on the --
MR. DANNAY: Is there a question? Q. In the incomplete poems, what
does it appear to be? A. Series H. Q. Okay.
THE WITNESS: I think we've got ,a match-up this time. Q. Line -- going to the line in the
same stanza, the second to last line: "And shrieking at Heaven to do
its worst." A. Got you. Q. In Not Much Fun, is there
anything before the M dash at the end of the
Page 276
M. Millman line?
A. Just the word "worst." Q. Is there anything before the M
dash in Complete Poems? A. Just the word "worse." Q. Is there anything before the M
dash in the original appearing on page 169? A. Maybe a comma. Q. All right. Moving on to "The
Drama: A Hymn of Hate", which hears on page 2 12 in Not Much Fun, 264 in Complete Poems, and is Bates No. 171, it's just a couple of pages after where you are.
A. Yes. This is a very poor copy. Maybe we can peek at that one. MS. McCABE: Yes, why don't you
give him that one. Q. Okay. What is the title of the
work in Not Much Fun? A. The "The Drama" and then a
subtitle "A Hymn of Hate." Q. And what is the title in Complete
6 from Michael Millman to Jariva Wanapun bearing production '
7 No D 00282 I20 8 17 Original acqu~sitions memorandum
for Complete Poems bearing 9 production Nos. D 00232 through
D 00234 129 ~n
I 8 Lener dated March 26. 19% from Michael Millman to Judy Ronayne bearing production No D MXX)I 135
19 Lener dated October 10. 1996 from Michael Millman to Judy Ronayne bearmg roduction vos D OWZJ a n 8 ~ 00025 I43
20 Lener dated March 24. 1998 from Mikki Breese to Michael Millman with anached document entttled "Dorothy Parker- Complete Poems. Introduction" bearing production Nos. D001J5throughD00171 151
21 Lener dated September 28. 1998 from Mikki BreeK to Michael Millman bearing production No. CB 000% 154
22 Lener dated February 2. 1998 from Mikki Bmse to Michael Millman and Jariya Wanapun bearing production No. CB 00091 161
23 Lener dated August 23. 1998 From Mikki B r e to Michael Millman bearing production No CB W 3 172
Page 284
I 2 October 26.2001 3 E X H I B I T S
- - - - - - - - (Continued)
4 PLAINTIFF'S
5 FOR-IDENTIFICATION PAGE -
% Lener dated August 23, 1998 6 from M ikk i Breese to Michael
hl i l lman bearing production No. DO0015 178
Hardcover volume o f Not Much Fun. The Lost Poems o f Dorothy Parker. by S w S i l vmte in 191
Dofument entitled "Copies h m , Microf i lm o f Original Med ia Poems & Verses by Dorothy Parker*" bearing production Nos. 05 I through 180 238
