He had never really stopped waiting for the promised communication from Mal Osbourne, though he wasn’t certain of the tone of his anticipation: amusement, or genuine excitement at the prospect of a career change, or simple curiosity as to whether the “exciting new venture” his erstwhile boss was planning had any existence at all outside the broad boundaries of Osbourne’s ego. Then one Saturday afternoon in April, John and Rebecca came home from the Twenty-third Street flea market with an oval mirror and a wall clock; by the time Rebecca had finished holding the mirror up in a couple of different places, hanging up her coat, and checking for phone messages, John had gone through the mail and had read the letter from Osbourne twice through. He held it out to her without a word and went to the kitchen, laughing soundlessly and shaking his head, to make them both some tea.
Dear Colleague:
In 1973 I entered the advertising business as an intern at Doyle Dane Bernbach in New York. The Creative Revolution, so-called, had carried the day — I remember there was a great big blowup beside the elevator of Bill Bernbach’s great “Lemon” ad for Volkswagen, the ad that started it all — and a revolution seemed to be taking place outside the tiny confines of our office as well. In music, in literature, in radical politics, it seemed to me that what was happening was less a political movement than a movement to restore the idea of truth in language, of plain speaking — a kind of democratic speech to set against the totalitarian language of the times. “We had to destroy the village in order to save it” — I wonder how many of you reading this will even be old enough to remember that one. Anyway, advertising seemed like a part of this process. After a hundred years of the hard sell, honesty and plain speech was making its way into the unlikeliest place of all, the language of commerce. It was an exciting time.
Recently I turned on my television and saw another spot for Volkswagen — I don’t even know who has the account now — which ended with the tag “Perfect for your life. Or your complete lack thereof.” And it came to me at that moment that, thirty years after the “revolution” I thought I was a part of, our world seems to me to be held together right now by irony alone. Our culture propagates no values outside of the peculiar sort of self-negation implied in the wry smile of irony, the way we remove ourselves from ourselves in order to be insulated from the terrible emptiness of the way we live now. That wry smile mocks self-knowledge, mocks the idea of right and wrong, mocks the notion that art is worth making at all.
I want to wipe that smile off the face of our age.
As most of you know by now, I have severed my ties with the agency which formerly bore my name. I have decided to devote the remainder of my working life to a new venture: I hesitate to call it an ad agency because that implies that it will be like other ad agencies for which you have worked, or are working. It will not. True, we will create advertising, and that advertising will be paid for by clients: but the advertising will be unlike anything the world has ever seen.
I am writing to you to ask you to join me in this venture. My letter will be postmarked from Charlottesville, Virginia, where I am overseeing renovation of the building which will house our activities. In other words, in order to join me it would be necessary to leave your current homes and relocate to this town, whose beauty and whose intellectual heritage (for those of you who have not visited before) are an integral part of the history of the United States.
By accepting this offer you will be on an automatic partnership track. In the meantime, though, I will do my best to make your salaries commensurate with the salaries you draw now. I don’t want the sacrifice you’re making to be any greater than it has to be. Besides, if our mission is to fail, then the fact that fair salaries may hasten that failure by a few months is by no means a negative prospect.
I will contact you upon my return from Virginia. Please take advantage of these weeks to talk over with your loved ones both the exigencies of this decision and the potential rewards of putting your unmatched talents toward a noble and original, uncorrupted, ambitious purpose. The language of advertising is the language of American life: American art, American politics, American media, American law, American business. By changing that language, we will, perforce, change the world.
Yours truly,
Malcolm Osbourne
“Dear Colleague?” Rebecca said, as John returned with the tea.
John smiled indulgently.
“He wants you to quit your job and move to Virginia, and he sends a form letter?”
“He doesn’t seem to be one for the social graces,” John said. “Anyhow, I can see it. He’s busy down there overseeing all the construction, can’t sleep one night, he hammers out this letter in one draft, takes it to—”
“Where does he get all the money, I wonder?” Rebecca said.
“The money?”
“To build this little Xanadu down there. It sounds like a big undertaking.”
“Maybe he has clients already,” John said.
“Maybe he went to the bank,” Rebecca said, deadpan. “Maybe he went to the bank and said he needed a small-business loan to wipe the smile off the face of our age.”
Her sarcasm closed off any further conversation about it. John was less cynical by nature. While Osbourne’s plan might be a crazy one, it never occurred to him that it was anything less than sincere — that Osbourne was not set to try to do exactly what he said he would do. You had to admire a man’s sincerity, John said (silently, to Rebecca who slept beside him), a man’s courage, even if he was doomed to failure. He lay awake and watched the shadow of the ceiling fan in their bedroom for what seemed like hours.
At the office Monday he found himself looking furtively into the faces of his colleagues, watching for some reflection of his own absentmindedness that might indicate someone else there had received a “Dear Colleague” letter too. But they looked as they always looked, poorly rested and unsurprisable. It might have meant that Osbourne had written to no one at the agency but him, or else that others simply had a better poker face than John did, which was certainly the case. Roman asked him once, when they were batting around ideas about the upcoming campaign for the Beef Council, if something was bothering him. He lied and said no.
He said nothing to anyone. It was easy to think of good reasons for his circumspection. For one, it might sound like he was lording it over his coworkers if he brought up the letter from Osbourne and no one else had received it: no one wants to be among the non-elect, even if the venture was one they would probably regard as insane. And there was no point in openly discussing another job opportunity, no matter how farfetched, in your own office — it could only lead to repercussions, subtle or otherwise. Most of all, though, he had to admit, he was just reluctant to expose this whole idea to the kind of scorching cynicism he knew Roman and the others would unleash upon it. John knew they would react with jokes and insults, and would expect him to join in the mockery session, which he would eventually cave in and do.
A few days later they were still trying to find a way to help the beef sellers sell more beef. “Here’s the thing,” Roman said. “At this point everybody knows beef is bad for you. It makes you fat, it clogs your arteries, it gives you cancer. It eats up the rain forest, cows fart and kill the ozone layer, blah blah blah. So you can’t—”