As the conversation fell into awkward silence, Mr. Hoving, never at a loss for hyperbole, exclaimed, "We're in awe of the great Zagat!" In an aside, Mrs. Zagat mentioned that every person who contributes to the survey buys an average of six copies, because, she said, "everyone thinks they came up with 'crowded and noisy.' " Now, that's funny.
Another year, the title page was torn out of thousands of copies because the comptroller's middle initial was wrong.
It's interesting that all three are mothers - maybe they shift copies because they appeal to women as well as men.
"We had to bring over all these copies because we'd sold out by last Friday afternoon," said Gaspard.
It refuses, for example, to stock reviewer copies because of red markings that blemish the tops of the pages.
Some people reduce the film to its sexual content, buying underground copies because of it or condemning it and urging that the film be banned.
In some copies, because of an editing error, the article also misstated the relationship between Masako's father-in-law, Emperor Akihito, and his predecessor Hirohito.
(In some other copies, because of a production error, all labels were omitted. The corrected map remains online today at nytimes.com/corrections).
The really great news, "Hothouse" insists on saying, is that sales of "The Corrections" jumped by around 150,000 copies because of the brouhaha.
Several distributors told booksellers this week that they would not ship them copies because it was too far away from the publication date in April.
