Mentor: A Memoir (16 page)
Authors: Tom Grimes
“Uh-huh,” I said, unprepared for the remark, but not upset by it, either.
“The only person I can think of sending it to in this state is Cork Smith,” he said, the editor to whom Candida had sold Pynchon’s
V
. Mr. Smith, I was told, had a great talent for line editing, which Eric felt my novel needed.
V
. Mr. Smith, I was told, had a great talent for line editing, which Eric felt my novel needed.
Despite Frank’s severe scrutiny of language in workshop, he hadn’t line-edited my novel. In fact, our discussions about it tended to be unspecific. Referring to the novel’s narrator, Frank once said, “He’s very Hamlet-like.” Skimming a few pages in his office a month or so later he said, “You use ‘that’ a lot.” Mainly, Frank believed I could write the book, and when he felt he needed to, he reminded me of this.
I said to Eric, “I can edit the book, if you think it needs editing.”
“Well,” he said, sounding doubtful, “let me try Cork first.”
“Why don’t I send you my play? You’ll see that I can write sparely, when I believe it’s necessary.”
“Okay,” he said.
Eric’s coolness toward my novel in its current shape puzzled Frank momentarily. Then he shrugged. “So you’ll edit it. Listen, trust Eric, he knows what he’s doing.”
To my knowledge, Cork Smith never replied. But a week after we’d first spoken, Eric called and said, “I love
Spec
.”
Spec
.”
By then, I’d hacked away fifty manuscript pages. I said, “I promise, I’ll send you an entirely new draft before the end of the month.”
I deleted scenes, trimmed sentences, condensed descriptions, and collapsed two characters into one. Three days before Thanksgiving, I mailed Eric a manuscript ninety-eight pages shorter than the original.
Then I waited.
After our final workshop in December, Frank and I leaned against the Mill’s bar and ordered. Frank said, “I got it,” and pushed away my wallet. “Buy me a drink when your ship comes in.” When we were served he lifted a shot glass filled with bourbon and tapped it against my beer mug.
“You think someone will publish the novel?” I said.
“I do.” He spoke with absentminded conviction, as if the book not being published could only happen in another universe.
“If I have a choice, I’d want the publisher to be either Farrar, Straus or Sam Lawrence,” I said. They were my dream publishing houses; each published the best writers in the world. And whereas, two years earlier, Frank had ignored me when I asked what he thought I should do
if
I were admitted to Iowa, now, he listened.
if
I were admitted to Iowa, now, he listened.
Frank eyed his watch. He had become a fan of the TV drama
Law & Order
—“Hey, don’t laugh. Its writers are really good at intricate plotting!”—and he wanted to make sure he had ample time to drive home to watch it. “Well,” he said, “I’ll send them letters and tell them to read it.” Half an hour later he set his glass on the bar and said, “Let’s go.”
Law & Order
—“Hey, don’t laugh. Its writers are really good at intricate plotting!”—and he wanted to make sure he had ample time to drive home to watch it. “Well,” he said, “I’ll send them letters and tell them to read it.” Half an hour later he set his glass on the bar and said, “Let’s go.”
Across the street from my house, he stopped the car. “Call when you hear from Eric.”
“I will,” I said. Then I stepped out, and once his red taillights glided past my knees I hustled through the cold to my front door.
On December 2, the
New York Times Book Review
named
A Stone of the Heart
a Notable Book of the Year. As an early Christmas present, my sister, whose mania was temporarily in remission, sent me a T-shirt that read “Almost Famous.”
New York Times Book Review
named
A Stone of the Heart
a Notable Book of the Year. As an early Christmas present, my sister, whose mania was temporarily in remission, sent me a T-shirt that read “Almost Famous.”
But with the novel in limbo, I felt like a ghost. I’d inhabited my narrator for eleven months; without him, I felt formless. I paced through our house, hoping to hear from Eric. When I sat in my office, I heard my desk clock tick. When I lay on our bed, I heard our bedroom clock tick. When I watched the news, time appeared digitally on the TV screen. And when I went to a bar, the second, minute, and hour arms of a Pabst Blue Ribbon clock swept the present into the past.
Jody and I had planned to drive twenty-three hundred miles to spend Christmas in Key West. We would leave on Monday, December 20, but I couldn’t call Eric to give him telephone numbers where I could be reached, or expect him to work over the holidays. Protocol demanded authorial patience. The agent made contact, not the writer. On Friday, December 17, at five o’clock Eastern Standard Time, I surrendered. I wouldn’t hear from Eric until after the New Year. Shortly, Jody would be home from work. But first she’d call to ask if we needed anything from the grocery store. So when the phone rang, I expected to hear her voice, not Eric’s. Pensively, he said, “Now this I can do something with.”
On Monday, January 2, he sent it to five publishers.
Two days later, Frank called at 9:00 AM and said, “I just got off the phone with Roger Straus. He’s going to buy your book.”
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I
remember only a few dozen sentences spoken over the following two weeks, which is appropriate. Every “true” memoir must be incomplete; what I remember may not be “true”; and people who know me may disagree with what I recollect. Neuroscientists suspect that the difficulty in retrieving long-term memories depends upon how recently the memory was used, how the memory is connected to other memories, and how unique the memory is. Over the years, I’ve “used” these memories, some more often than others, and my novel’s fate connects them. But what makes certain memories “unique” is their relation to causality. I remember that Frank asked me to meet him for lunch. Then I called Jody to give her the news. Then I called Charlie and he, Frank, and I ate in a downtown restaurant with pine-tinted wooden booths. The place may have served pizza, I can’t say. But I do recall its aggressive sterility. Faux Tiffany lamps hovered over each table; plastic ferns dangled from hooks in midair; and framed posters of gondoliers and the leaning tower of Pisa clung to the walls. I picture Frank seated beside me, and Charlie across from us, but I can’t remember a word we said. Time, and perhaps the room’s soullessness, has erased our conversation. The three of us were happy, that’s my only memory, to which I’ve assigned a feeling, instead of recalling an action or a conversation that had consequences.
remember only a few dozen sentences spoken over the following two weeks, which is appropriate. Every “true” memoir must be incomplete; what I remember may not be “true”; and people who know me may disagree with what I recollect. Neuroscientists suspect that the difficulty in retrieving long-term memories depends upon how recently the memory was used, how the memory is connected to other memories, and how unique the memory is. Over the years, I’ve “used” these memories, some more often than others, and my novel’s fate connects them. But what makes certain memories “unique” is their relation to causality. I remember that Frank asked me to meet him for lunch. Then I called Jody to give her the news. Then I called Charlie and he, Frank, and I ate in a downtown restaurant with pine-tinted wooden booths. The place may have served pizza, I can’t say. But I do recall its aggressive sterility. Faux Tiffany lamps hovered over each table; plastic ferns dangled from hooks in midair; and framed posters of gondoliers and the leaning tower of Pisa clung to the walls. I picture Frank seated beside me, and Charlie across from us, but I can’t remember a word we said. Time, and perhaps the room’s soullessness, has erased our conversation. The three of us were happy, that’s my only memory, to which I’ve assigned a feeling, instead of recalling an action or a conversation that had consequences.
Earlier that morning, Eric had contacted the four other publishers to whom he’d sent the manuscript and told them he’d have an offer by Friday. Each demanded more time to read the novel; no one had expected a two-day response. But “Roger Straus sat down with the book the moment he read my note,” Frank told me. Then he added, “Roger won’t edit the book, though. He’s giving it to an editor he’s grooming for a top spot in the house.”
On Friday, I received a call from John Glusman, who seemed tentative and reticent. I recall a shared sense of awkwardness. Finally, I said, “Do you like the book? ” and he answered, “I like the second half better than the first.” I understood then that had the novel been submitted to John, he wouldn’t have wanted to publish it. Instead, Mr. Straus had handed him the book and instructed him to shepherd it into the marketplace. Of course, John couldn’t refuse. But how could I ask him to do what he’d been ordered to do, rather than what he wanted to do? And how could I entrust and burden him with my novel? I’d hoped to hear, “I love the book.” Instead, I heard the opposite of what I’d heard the afternoon Frank called me. In less than three seconds, John’s remark undid the hundreds of hours it had taken me to write the book that Frank said was good. And so, rather than welcoming me into the house I desperately wanted to step inside, John partially closed the door to it. After a decade and a half’s work, I was, to my astonishment, speaking to an editor at Farrar, Straus. To see my name beside the names of Nobel Prize winners would validate my work and me. All I had to do was say yes. But I didn’t.
Near the end of our conversation, John said, “If you have any questions, feel free to give me a call.”
“Okay,” I said, “thanks.” I knew I wouldn’t call. He didn’t like the book. There was nothing more we needed to say to each other.
I put down the phone. Then, once again, I found myself waiting. And, as absurd as this may sound, the person who made me wait was Saddam Hussein.
On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The following January, U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush deployed 550,000 U.S. troops to fight “The Mother of All Battles.” With the holidays behind us and the New Year rung in, everyone waited for it to commence. A curious, excited sense of doom wove its way into news broadcasts, magazine articles, conversations, and, possibly, our dreams. Still, workshops were not canceled, publishers continued to buy and sell books, readers continue to read, and yet, despite Roger Straus’s offer, editors asked Eric for additional time to read my novel in order “to see how the war plays out.”
I said, “This is a joke, right?”
“I’m afraid not. But several editors this week want to talk to you to see if you’ll be difficult to work with,” Eric said. “No one likes a prima donna.”
First I spoke to David Rosenthal, an editor at Random House, who said, kindly but directly, “I think the book needs editing.” I assured him that editorial suggestions were welcome. Gerald Howard, an editor at Norton, had told Eric that the only other writer who could have written my novel was Don DeLillo. Eric said, “Let’s avoid labels.” Gerry may or may not have used the word
love
, but his enthusiasm made it unnecessary, although he had a slight problem with the ending. “I just wish Mike would kick Mr. Percy [Mike’s team’s owner] in the balls.” I said I’d think about it. My first publisher, John Oakes, told me that, like Frank, he couldn’t believe the extraordinary growth in my work. He knew he’d be outbid and wished me luck. Pat Mulcahy, a senior editor at Little, Brown, called more than once and mentioned the word
love
on several occasions. Everyone at Little, Brown “loved” the book, too. Pat and I often talked at length, and I liked her. She was persuasive. She even summoned our ethnic kinship and said, “Come on, Grimes, us Irish have to stick together.” Finally, rather than speaking to Sam Lawrence, I spoke with his assistant, Camille Hykes. I didn’t know what to do about the awkward FSG problem. I still wanted to place my book next to Roth’s and stare at our matching logos, but my longing to become one of Sam Lawrence’s authors was equally intense. So I hoped Camille’s excitement would convince me to let him publish the book. Instead, she was gracious and detached, her voice faint, as if she weren’t near the phone as she spoke into it. She named Sam’s distinguished authors and emphasized the attention he paid to each of them. I listened, and then, after ten minutes, I said, “Do you like the book?” She hesitated. Then she said, “Mr. Lawrence seeks his authors’ input on the jacket design and end-papers. The book’s spine is linen, and your signature will be gold embossed on the cover.” Believing (mistakenly) that she was an editor, I said, “That’s nice, but do you like the book?” When she paused I understood why: she hadn’t read the novel. I may have been wrong but had no reason to believe I was. And so, at the two houses that I hoped would define me as a writer, one editor liked half the book, and the other person I spoke to wasn’t an editor.
love
, but his enthusiasm made it unnecessary, although he had a slight problem with the ending. “I just wish Mike would kick Mr. Percy [Mike’s team’s owner] in the balls.” I said I’d think about it. My first publisher, John Oakes, told me that, like Frank, he couldn’t believe the extraordinary growth in my work. He knew he’d be outbid and wished me luck. Pat Mulcahy, a senior editor at Little, Brown, called more than once and mentioned the word
love
on several occasions. Everyone at Little, Brown “loved” the book, too. Pat and I often talked at length, and I liked her. She was persuasive. She even summoned our ethnic kinship and said, “Come on, Grimes, us Irish have to stick together.” Finally, rather than speaking to Sam Lawrence, I spoke with his assistant, Camille Hykes. I didn’t know what to do about the awkward FSG problem. I still wanted to place my book next to Roth’s and stare at our matching logos, but my longing to become one of Sam Lawrence’s authors was equally intense. So I hoped Camille’s excitement would convince me to let him publish the book. Instead, she was gracious and detached, her voice faint, as if she weren’t near the phone as she spoke into it. She named Sam’s distinguished authors and emphasized the attention he paid to each of them. I listened, and then, after ten minutes, I said, “Do you like the book?” She hesitated. Then she said, “Mr. Lawrence seeks his authors’ input on the jacket design and end-papers. The book’s spine is linen, and your signature will be gold embossed on the cover.” Believing (mistakenly) that she was an editor, I said, “That’s nice, but do you like the book?” When she paused I understood why: she hadn’t read the novel. I may have been wrong but had no reason to believe I was. And so, at the two houses that I hoped would define me as a writer, one editor liked half the book, and the other person I spoke to wasn’t an editor.
Frank told me not to worry about it. “They’re not just buying your book,” he said, “they’re buying your mind.” A few days later he said, “Sam Lawrence called to ask me if anyone had offered six figures yet.”
As I spoke to Eric, debating what to do, I paced in my living room, stretching the phone cord like a strand of taffy. At dusk, the street lamps brightened, and the television’s images reflected against the windowpanes. I had muted the set’s volume, and, while staring at CNN’s live footage of a city twelve thousand miles away, I continued to believe in an idyllic literary world where an editor nurtured an author’s career. Foolishly, my potential editor’s age concerned me. Nonetheless, Eric indulged me.
“Roger is in his seventies,” he said. “John’s in his thirties. He’s extremely smart, but, of course, he has his own taste.”
“And Sam?”
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