Hope's Edge_ The Next Diet for a Small Planet - Frances Moore Lappe [24]
Suddenly I was being courted by both the “counterculture” publisher and by Ballantine. At first the choice seemed clear. How could I compromise my principles with a New York publisher? Wouldn’t they operate like any other big business—looking only at the profit margin, not the value of my book?
But when Mrs. Ballantine telephoned, I couldn’t refuse to see her, could I? It wouldn’t hurt just to talk with her.
At the same time, the Berkeley outfit was wining and dining me. They took me to a fine French restaurant to “share” with me what they were sure I would want to know about Ballantine. First, did I know it was controlled by the Mafia? “No, really?” Second, did I know what Ballantine did with leftover books? Well, they would tell me. It shredded them and polluted San Francisco Bay with them! For a dutiful child of the ecology movement, this was just too much. I broke down in tears.
A few days later, Mrs. Ballantine arrived in Berkeley. I picked her up at the Durant Hotel, expecting to meet a tough businesswoman—maybe not gloves and hat, but certainly someone who could adequately represent a fat-cat New York firm. Out the door came a middle-aged woman in flowered cotton pants and tennis shoes. Her face was warm and natural. No makeup. Her hair was soft and gray. No coloring. But wait! This couldn’t be Betty Ballantine!
Betty Ballantine and I spent the day together. I served her a Diet for a Small Planet meal—Mediterranean Lemon Soup and Middle Eastern Tacos. She loved it. I told her my concerns about who should publish the book and how I wanted it to be published. Never did she try to convince me to publish with Ballantine. As she left that evening she said, “Whoever publishes the book, I’ll buy it.”
What was I to do? All my stereotypes had been smashed. If I couldn’t make a decision based on my stereotypes, I had to make one based on which choice would ensure that my book got read by the most people. I knew that Ballantine Books reached into grocery stores, bus stations, and airports. The choice became clear. I chose Ballantine and have never regretted it, although the Ballantines later sold the company to Random House, owned by the multinational conglomerate RCA, which in 1980 sold it to the Newhouse Brothers.
Betty Ballantine kept her word. She did everything I had hoped for. She didn’t change a word I had written. She took great care in choosing the graphics.
The Julia Child of the Soybean Circuit
Nineteen seventy-one was a year of tremendous change. My first child, Anthony, was born in June. I moved to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, in August. Diet for a Small Planet was published in September.
Looking back, I realize I still felt like the little boy who says, “The emperor has no clothes.” I was terrified when the book first appeared. My message seemed so obvious it couldn’t be correct, I thought.
As the author of Diet for a Small Planet, I began a new period of my life. But it was not quite what I had bargained for. Ovenight I became the Julia Child of the soybean circuit. I was asked to go on TV talk shows—as long as I brought along my own beans and rice! I was asked to stir them on camera, explaining how to combine protein. As my future colleague Joe Collins later said, “They wanted you to tell people how to lose weight and save money in the coming world food crisis.” Such was the intellectual and humanitarian depth of most of these shows.
So I found myself in another apparent ethical dilemma. Did I refuse to be put in the woman’s slot on the talk shows, as the writer of a “cookbook,” or did I seize the opportunity to reach out to people who would never pick up my book if they knew it was about politics and economics? I chose the latter course. From Boston to San Francisco,