sharp-eyed reader spotted this advertisement in a recent issue of Publishers Weekly: ''Major Boston publisher is looking for a Senior Executive Editor to oversee the development of an editorial publishing plan for the published and unpublished material of an acclaimed 19th-century author. This senior editor will be the `editorial visionary' of the product line'' etc., etc.
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What could this be? Is the Atlantic Monthly planning to dump more rejected Mark Twain stories on the market? No. The ''acclaimed 19th-century author'' turns out to be the woman Twain called a ''shameless old swindler,'' the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy. (In 1907, Twain wrote a whole book railing against Eddy and her then-new religion. As if to irk him, his daughter, Clara, converted to Christian Science.)
The Eddy publishing project is part of a much larger marketing push that is the new jewel in the crown of the Mother Church. With great fanfare, the church is building a modernistic, $50 million Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity adjoining the old Christian Science Publishing Society complex on Massachusetts Avenue. Slated for completion next fall, it can be viewed at the Web site www.marybakereddylibrary.org.
No grandiose Christian Science enterprise proceeds without its critics. Remember the $400 million foray into cable television? In retrospect, the naysayers were right. Whatever the merits of the church's media plans, the world either wasn't ready or wasn't interested in its broadcast programming. And the library has already become a rallying point for church members opposed to chairman Virginia Harris's aggressive marketing of Eddy and her message. Some say Eddy - who was no shrinking violet - abhorred the notion of a posthumous, personal memorial. Traditionalists worry that the expensive library project diverts badly needed resources from the once-formidable Christian Science Monitor newspaper.
Controversy? What controversy? Stephen Danzansky, the library's chief executive, says he hasn't heard a discouraging word about the project. Rumors that the building has run over budget are not true, he says, and as for financial support, ''the membership has been very, very supportive, even with unsolicited contributions.'' Scholars have assured him that the Eddy Library is ''a very today thing to be.''
Free plug
My friend Ruth Ellen Gruber has just published ''Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe,'' the product of several years of research into a ghoulish and bizarre Central European phenomenon: the reemergence of Jewish culture in countries where there are no Jews. (This is not the better-known Ruth Gruber, the former New York Herald Tribune journalist who saved thousands of displaced Jews after World War II.) In articles for the London-based Jewish Chronicle, and now in her book, Gruber has described the ''apparent longing for lost Jews'' in countries that actively participated in the Holocaust - Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Italy.
''From Milan to Munich, from Krakow to Cluj and well beyond, Jewish exhibitions, festivals, and workshops of all types abound ... and new Jewish museums are being opened - often in towns where no Jews have lived for decades,'' she writes. ''The result is a form of Jewish culture, or at least Judaica, minus the Jews.'' The cultural renaissance is sometimes motivated by a spirit of remembrance and honor, and sometimes by other factors: ''fashion, commercialism, and what can be described as post-Holocaust necrophilia also certainly play a role,'' according to Gruber. The book is published by the University of California Press.
You've arrived!
So I am minding my own business, driving on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain, when I hear a radio advertisement urging me to visit Boston: ''It's so close!'' I looked out the window and confirmed that Boston was very close indeed - so why was I hearing this ad? Pat Moscaritolo, president of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau, explained that spot was part of a $200,000 campaign to reach the ''drive market'' within a 150-mile radius of the city. With the traveling public reluctant to step onto airplanes, the GBCVB wants to lure outlanders from places like Providence and Worcester into the Hub for the Christmas season.
Alex Beam's e-dress is beam@globe.com.
