Leaving Cold Sassy (9780547527291) (25 page)

“Incidentally,” she added, “I will be sixty in July, and if there's any reason to use that fact, I certainly don't mind. I'd rather be sixty than dead, and also I realize I couldn't have written
Cold Sassy Tree
when I was thirty. I didn't know enough about life. Anyhow, I've only just begun to realize I'm middle-aged...I don't really think I'm old enough for my age to help promote the book. If I were a hundred, that would be something you could make hay out of.”

As far as we knew then, even if
Cold Sassy Tree
did enjoy modest success, Olive Ann wouldn't have to worry about finding time to do her Christmas shopping. Despite a generous handful of prepublication comments, we figured that
Cold Sassy Tree,
like any first novel, would need every push we could give it. But with publication still several months away, there was not much more to be done, so at the end of June, Olive Ann and Andy set off for two weeks in England, for a reunion of Andy's World War II military unit—a luxury paid for by her advance.

Andy had grown accustomed to his chemotherapy treatments, eventually scheduling them for late on Thursday afternoons so that he could be sick Friday and all weekend, and still be able to go to work on Monday morning. But the drugs had taken a toll. Andy Sparks was the embodiment of an old-time gentleman journalist, with his lively blue eyes beneath scraggly, bushy eyebrows. He wore snappy ties, hats that would have looked silly on anyone else, and a mustache that only emphasized the width of his smile. He had boundless energy and enthusiasm, and was one of those rare men who can work all their lives in one job and yet never assume the demeanor—the tired posture, the tension, the lines of worry or resignation—of a working man. He loved his life and he loved his work, and he radiated happiness. Whether he was on his way to the office downtown or to his beloved garden in the backyard, he walked with a bounce in his step and a look of anticipation on his face, like a kid stepping into Saturday morning.

Now, for the first time, he looked his age. And without those eyebrows or the mustache, not to mention the hair on his head, he didn't look like Andy. In a letter to John just before they left for England, Olive Ann wrote, “A strange thing has happened about Dad. About me, really. Until recently I have felt I had a new husband from the skin out—he looked so different. I'd find myself just sitting staring at him, trying to get used to it. Because he has gained weight, the lines in his face have filled out and he really does look good, but he doesn't look like Andy. Now I guess I've become used to the difference, because I'm really enjoying the new him all of a sudden. I can't remember how he looked before!”

Olive Ann had nursed Andy through the worst of it, telling him that she wished they could just trade places; she had learned to be such a good cancer patient, she felt, that it would be easier on her than it was for him. “No,” he told her, “you had your turn; now it's mine.” Olive Ann found that it was harder for her to deal with Andy's illness than her own. “I could face the possibility of dying myself,” she said, “but I didn't want to live without him.” Throughout the spring, Andy kept assuring her that the book was more important than his throwing up; that's what they would focus on. “It's something to remember,” Olive Ann wrote to John. “If you ever have a prolonged problem, do something that gives you something else to think about—like have your wife publish a book, or the two of you go off to England for a second honeymoon.”

By the time they returned, the prepublication excitement had prompted Chester to move the publication date up from November to October. Gwen Reiss was busy scheduling autographings and interviews, and the Book-of-the-Month Club had named
Cold Sassy Tree
a featured alternate for October. Gwen wrote to Olive Ann and asked how she felt about public speaking, for it was becoming apparent that
Cold Sassy Tree
was generating more attention than a typical first novel. “I found out long ago that talking to a thousand or two hundred or ten is all the same,” Olive Ann replied. “I mean it doesn't scare me, and if it's a small group I enjoy the ones who are there instead of lamenting that it isn't a crowd.”

She did want us to know, however, that she was not a “fancy speaker.” “I don't declaim,” she wrote, explaining that her talks were “really kind of like
Cold Sassy Tree—
funny, with stories and throwaway comments, but carrying significant and, I hope, inspiring messages. I don't mean I try to be inspiring, but when I say things that are heartfelt, things that other people are surely dealing with, too, they seem to respond. Also, I don't try to act brilliant or as if I take myself to be the world's greatest gift to audiences. If I did, I'd feel like a fool and fall on my face. As it is, they take me for one of them and it seems to be effective.”

Characteristically, she wanted to make sure that Ticknor & Fields didn't incur any extra expense on her account. Olive Ann prided herself on never spending a penny she didn't have, and she certainly didn't expect her publisher to spend any more than necessary on accommodations. “My ego needs are small,” she assured us. “Being Andy's wife and a fulfilled person are enough, and all this is just icing on the cake. I can be just as happy about talking to the little literary club in Cornelia, Georgia, as to more important groups. And I don't need any VIP treatment. Do whatever you need to for T&F's image, but limos and ultra hotels are unimportant to me. I'm game for anything that will make the promotion budget stretch. To me, ordinary taxis will be a luxury because driving tires me if I've never been there before and have to feel my way, and any place to sleep will be fine if it's not on a busy highway beside an uphill curve where trucks scream into lower gear all night long.”

The only thing she insisted on was some time to lie down in the middle of a busy day, and a taxi instead of the services of “a little old-lady driver who drives scatterbrain or tailgates and with whom I must carry on a conversation. I like such conversation,” she said, “but I would arrive out of breath at my destination.”

She meant what she said: Olive Ann loved to talk and she could somehow ask questions and tell a funny story at the same time. She once told me that her talking had caused one of the few arguments she and Andy had, when, early in their marriage, he suggested on the way to a party that she try to keep her mouth shut that night. If she could do it, he told her, she might hear something interesting. Much as Olive Ann talked, I never once heard her say anything that wasn't worth listening to. It was impossible for her to be boring. And her letters were almost as wonderful as Olive Ann in person—long and leisurely, funny and intimate, and thoroughly entertaining. When she returned her author questionnaire with a ten-page single-spaced essay about her intentions while writing
Cold Sassy Tree,
everyone in the office gathered round to read it. “I think what I've written is more than you want to know about anybody,” she apologized, “and certainly more than you need to know for publicity purposes. But I decided to send it on as is. At least you'll have some idea of what you're dealing with.”

Her essay became a publishing story in itself. “I don't know if it will help sales to say
Cold Sassy Tree
isn't a dirty book,” Olive Ann wrote, “but I don't think I'm the only person who is tired of sordid stories about unsavory people. I'm tired of books and movies full of paper-doll characters you don't care about, who have no self-respect and no respect for anybody or any institution. I hope this book is compelling and realistically sensual; I have great respect for human sexuality. But I'm tired of authors so lacking in sensitivity that they wallow in vulgarity and prostitute sex—making exhibitionists out of the characters and peeping Toms out of the readers. And I don't want to sound preachy or Victorian, but I'm tired of amorality in fiction and real life. Immorality is a fascinating human dilemma that creates suspense for the readers and tension for the characters, but where is the tension in an amoral situation? When people have no personal code, nothing is threatening and nothing is meaningful.”

Olive Ann's words were far more captivating than any sales line we might produce. Here, Chester realized, was the perfect way to introduce Olive Ann Burns to everyone else in the company; to let them know, as she put it, “what they were dealing with.” He sent copies of this letter to all of the Houghton Mifflin sales reps, and they, in turn, started showing it to booksellers they knew. Everyone was charmed and intrigued. B. Dalton Company, a large bookselling chain, reprinted six pages of the questionnaire in their merchandising newsletter. By early September, the
New York Times
and the
Washington Post
had both caught wind of the story and responded with features about Olive Ann and
Cold Sassy Tree
—several weeks before books were in the stores. “It remains to be seen whether the book has any merits,” Jonathan Yardley wrote in the
Post,
“but there can be no doubt that its author does.”

On September 27, the first copies of
Cold Sassy Tree
came off the press. Already there had been a cover story in the
Sunday Magazine
(now renamed the
Atlanta Weekly
) and a special boxed review in
Publishers Weekly,
proclaiming Will Tweedy “one of the most entertaining narrators since Huck Finn.” The advance reviewers were unanimous in their praise, and early readers of
Cold Sassy Tree
concurred. Ferrol Sams, author of
Run with the Horseman,
said simply, “Olive Ann Burns has laid claim to all the literary territory between
Tobacco Road
and
Gone with the Wind.
” The Georgia governor, Joe Frank Harris, announced that October 18, publication date, would be Cold Sassy Tree Day in Georgia. When Olive Ann received the first copies of her book, she set them all up on top of the hunt board and the mantelpiece in her living room so that Andy would see them as soon as he walked through the front door. She was delighted that the colors on the book jacket perfectly matched the autumn hues of her upholstery. “Sometimes I feel like Cinderella,” Olive Ann wrote to a friend, “scared I'll forget to leave the ball before my coach turns back into a pumpkin. But I'm about to believe I will at least get to the ball.”

The ball was a party at the Atlanta Historical Society, attended by over 150 people, including about twenty-five of Olive Ann and Andy's relatives; the former first lady Rosalynn Carter and the governor's wife, Elizabeth Harris; Joan and Chester Kerr and four of us staff members from Ticknor & Fields; and an assortment of local writers, booksellers, and friends.
Cold Sassy Tree
was already a hit—the first printing of twenty-two thousand copies was nearly gone and we had gone back to press for twenty thousand more the day before—and the party was really a celebration of Olive Ann and her success.

When Chester Kerr stood to introduce his “star” author, she admitted that she had been more than a little intimidated by him when they first met, at Anne Edwards's party. Chester took the ribbing in stride, delighted that in a year's time Olive Ann had gone from thinking of him as “Your Eminence” to being able to joke with him in front of a crowd.

Although he had retired from Ticknor & Fields five months earlier, Chester was clearly the host of Olive Ann's publication party in Atlanta—in the very room in which they had first been introduced. The Kerrs and Olive Ann remained good friends and correspondents, and Olive Ann never forgot that it was they who had given her the confidence she needed to finish her manuscript. “If the Kerrs hadn't encouraged me,” she told one interviewer, “I might have gone on like Miss Santmyer did with...
And Ladies of the Club.
” Olive Ann always recalled the day that she opened that very first enthusiastic letter from Joan Kerr as one of the high points of her life. “My joy at receiving that letter would rate at least twelve on a scale of one to ten,” she said.

Just the year before, Olive Ann Burns had stood in this room trying to describe her sprawling, unfinished manuscript to a stranger; now she was the guest of honor at Atlanta's literary event of the season. She had a wonderful time. For a few hours Olive Ann seemed to forget that writing a 600-page novel had actually been hard work; she was having so much fun entertaining her friends and family. “I think everyone should write a book,” she said happily.

Later that evening, all of us from Ticknor & Fields sat around Olive Ann and Andy's living room, getting acquainted in person at last. Norma and Charlie Duncan came over from next door, and we had another party, reliving the first one. I don't remember all that we talked about, but I do remember that Olive Ann and Andy and Norma began to tell dying stories, just so we Yankees could see that Southerners really do entertain one another with accounts of dramatic deaths and good funerals. Later Olive Ann told me that she and Andy had lain awake most of the night. She was almost as happy and excited as she had been on her wedding night, she said, knowing that she was surrounded by people who loved her as she embarked on a new life, not as a bride this time, but as a published author.

She was about to discover just what that meant. The next morning, the first autographing party for
Cold Sassy Tree
was held at one of Rich's department stores. Olive Ann had asked Norma to come, because she had been warned that sometimes no one shows up at book signings. When Olive Ann and I arrived a half hour early, people were already lined up, holding their books. Most of them had two copies, and one woman had a Rich's shopping bag full of books: she was going to give
Cold Sassy Tree
to everyone on her Christmas list. Olive Ann talked and signed, signed and talked, until we were out of books and time. It was only the beginning. Rich's had arranged for the first autographings to be held at their stores, and they had placed an initial order for twenty-five hundred books. According to the former bookstore manager, Faith Brunson, “It should have been five thousand.”