Re: Budget

Jeffrey --

Many thanks for dinner last night; I enjoyed meeting you. I think we agree on a very considerable range of issues. My own view is that Joyce is in his completeness, a greater writer than Nabokov, and I say this as someone who loves and cherishes Lolita. There is nothing in all of world literature to compare with the Anna Livia Plurabelle section of Finnegan's Wake -- nothing. What Joyce had that Nabokov lacked was the intimacy of his native language. Conrad lacked that intimacy, too, but he was an completely different kind of writer, closer to Naipaul in his method than to either Joyce or Nabokov, and so it didn't matter.

I've attached to this e-mail a realistic operating budget for Inference for the next five years. I need those five years to make Inference pre-eminent. Inference is a 501(C)3 corporation, of which I am the CEO. It is being run on a shoestring of $750,000. I need another fully professional hands-on editor, and I've entered a line item to that effect in the budget. I cannot do everything by myself. I've slotted Lawrence into the budget as an editor-at-large, someone playing the same role as Shelly now plays. There is no reason that he must come to Paris, or to Europe; he could work easily from whatever gloomy exile he prefers. This is the way that I work with Shelly, and it works very well. The other expenses in the budget are those that I know from experience we are bound to incur. There is no evading them. To move Inference into a position of dominance, I need an annual operating budget of $2.1M. I am thus left with an annual shortfall of $1.4M, and I suspect that I will be left with this shortfall for the next five years. After that? There is no reason that Inference might not be spun off into another corporate format, or otherwise monetized. That remains to be done when it is appropriate to be done — in the future.

What I have not included in this operating budget is money set aside to open an office in China. Shelly & I have the right contacts, and I have developed some independent contacts in China on my own. I would know just who to call and just who to grease in the bureaucracy to start things in motion. I would need $1M to do everything that would need to be done. The China project, although important, is not as important as getting rid of my operating shortfall.

Let me have your thoughts, the first step, I hope, in letting me have your money.

Old Hose, which I am also enclosing with this e-mail, will give you an idea why I departed San Jose State University under a dark and somber cloud.

Best,

DDDDDDD

Interesting.. I can help get a =oothold in china with my friend Frank Wilczek, who runs an institute there=on the side (or at least runs in name only) and is immersed in their burea=cracy.. Impressed by the salaries he is talking about, which surpris= me.. It is an interesting journal.. I think it has possibilities, may be = bit eclectic and could do with a raise in profile, which perhaps I could =elp with.. In any

case it is worth discussing. We can talk about=this.

On other matters.. working on grievance let=er.. Jim Weinstein says he believes I have justifiable grievance. RE=ABOR, consensus is that I don't have a leg.. among other things, t=ey don't forbid the universities from having due process before di=missal.. they just make sure it happens at least after.. I am checki=g with my niece as well.

Will send you the=grievance draft today.. am flying to Phoenix and will actually be having 2=requested meetings on campus so I almost feel like something other than a =host for the moment.. I will want to submit it when there I think. =C24>

Am flying out at 330 local time.. wil= be leaving for airport at 2.. and mostly free before then.

Will be interested to get your take on Inference and othe= things.

rquested by? his numbers are nuts