Visitors to my office at Penguin Random House often ask me to explain the cheap blue folding chair that hangs (as if modern art) on a narrow wall. The question prompts me to tell an abridged account of my seven-and-a-half-year tenure on the legal staff of Harper & Row/HarperCollins, beginning in the fall of 1989, when I worked under the generous and thoughtful tutelage of Jim Fox, Harper’s general counsel, a true gentleman and a great in-house lawyer.
Jim died on May 2, 2024, his 85th birthday, after an extended illness. He favored Brooks Brothers suits and bow-ties, was a first-rate bridge player, and loved to tell long, funny, drawn-out stories, full of digressions, sarcastic asides, and plenty of hyperbole.
Jim was a brilliant writer and a remarkably fast typist, a skill he learned as a clerk in the Army. He composed flawlessly worded contracts and letters off the top of his head, seemingly without effort. I would bring Jim a work issue, hoping he would talk it through with me in general terms, guide me, or suggest another person I could turn to for help. Invariably, though, Jim would swivel his chair to his computer on the credenza behind his desk and begin typing. That is how Jim worked. He problem-solved as he typed.
There was no room behind his desk for a proper guest chair, so Jim kept an old card chair folded up and leaning against the wall, a metal-framed contraption with a blue plastic seat and back. It was narrow and rickety, and too low to the floor—hardly a model of ergonomic support. To work with Jim was to sit beside him as he typed, watching him think by writing, knowing he was always willing to consider input, revision, or correction. It was a full-on collaboration.
A lot of people found themselves sitting in that blue chair: young lawyers, editors, publicists, business managers, subsidiary rights associates, contracts administrators—even publishers, I suspect. No one liked the chair, but it was time spent with Jim: learning from a master, having a laugh, trading a story, and ultimately, getting the job done.
I left Harper in 1997 to work for another publisher. Jim retired in 2005. In the spring of 2014, Harper was moving its offices from its mid-town location to a new downtown office. A few weeks before the move, I received a call from Jim’s successor, and my former colleague, Chris Goff, asking me if I wanted the blue chair. (It didn’t meet standards for the move.) I didn’t hesitate.
There was a small ceremony to mark the handoff, for which Chris wrote and recited a sonnet which included the lines: “Am I to sit here like a heap of kelp / And passively observe as you type? / At this rate we’ll be here till Rose has whelped.” I prepared and sang rewritten lyrics to “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from Guys and Dolls: “Matthew, you must sit down, / Sit down, we’re typing this up”.
When it was over, I folded the chair, tucked it under my arm, and walked across town to my office in the Random House building, where it now sits on my wall, drawing quizzical looks.
I hope to never sit in that blue chair again, but I don’t regret the hours I spent in it. For me, it’s a symbol of mentorship and the care with which Jim taught and guided dozens of young people who were fortunate enough to have known him and benefited from his intelligence, wit, generosity, and genuine love of books and the people who make them. And it is for me, and anyone who asks me why I keep a chair on the wall of my office, a reminder to pay back that mentorship and attention to those who are coming up behind us.
You can sit down, Jim, and rest easy. We’ll take it from here.
Matthew Martin is senior v-p and deputy general counsel at Penguin Random House.
