New Parker Biography

Later this month Harper Collins will publish "The Wine Emperor" by Ellen McCoy. It's a biography of Robert Parker.

Sounds interesting. Harper Collins is a publisher of standing, and noted for reference books. Not especially relevant to this topic but still, I suggest, of potential side interest is that in 1975, after a friend of mine built an Altair 8800 home computer from a kit -- the famous pioneering "turkey from Albuquerque" home computer, allegedly the prototype of what you use to read this message -- this friend lent it to others of us and another friend, for good technical reasons I won't go into, took apart this machine and put it back together, but changed. (We were all university students at the time.) Noticing the change, I said to this friend, "Did you know that a Harper Collins Italian-English reference dictionary is in the computer?" And he said more or less "What are you talking about? It has only 1k of RAM." But I persisted. "No, the Harper Collins Italian-English Dictionary actually is in the computer." I pointed. The hefty, redoubtable dictionary had been used to weigh down the insides of the computer, and now was enclosed within the re-installed transparent case. (Such are my memories of Harper Collins.) We then wrote a review of the Altair 8800 which did cause some trouble, interesting in its own right; but not on account of the Harper Collins Italian-English dictionary and not (as I have already admitted) germane to this new biography.

A few years after that, Parker was a topic of lively discussion on this wine newsgroup (in its early idenbreasties). This may have preceded the "Parker era on Prodigy" (which, unlike the wine newsgroup, was proprietary rather than public). It seems that the burgeoning big ISPs at the time modeled their own forum services after the already-thriving newsgroups, rather than offering their subscribers access to the latter. (A topic of some reminiscence lately.) This changed in the 1990s (1993?) when A*L at last opened access between its subscribers and the newsgroups, with dramatic effects on both sides. (It was said here not long ago by a Canadian barrister contributor that this decision was lately reversed.)

... The part I saw as interesting and insightful. ... The sections that I have personal knowledge about (Parker's era on Prodigy) are accurate in their coverage of things like his inability to allow someone to disagree with him without slipping in a barb in an attempt to put them down or question their motives. ...

I myself don't know about that, because again, Prodigy's were proprietary online fora, not public like the newsgroups.

== Max