The View from the Bridge (7 page)

A few days later he was on the phone, sounding pretty excited.

“Listen, I've read your book and I've researched Hawthorne. They're a nonfiction house; the book'll get lost there. You can do better.”

This was happening too fast for me.

“Hey, wait a minute. They're offering me six thousand dollars and I haven't made that much money since—”

“I know, I know. Trust me on this.”

“But what about Jim Neder—?”

“He'll understand, believe me.”

“What about IFA?” My agency.

“Fuck 'em. They weren't there for the kickoff.”

Which is how Tom Pollock, for many years the head of Universal Pictures, became my literary agent and how I did very well indeed. He worked for a straight commission, a deal he must have regretted, since I got a great deal of lawyering for the rest of my life without fees.

The next thing I knew, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich had bought my book for ten thousand dollars.

That was when my troubles with the Doyle estate began. I could now digress with a long explanation of international copyright law and why and when the United States adopted the Berne Convention, but suffice to say the copyright issue and permission to publish my book from the heirs and assigns of Sir Arthur dragged on for months. There's a saying: Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise. If I had known all the difficulties that would have ensued regarding the rights to Holmes, I probably would never have attempted the book in the first place.

The negotiations took so long, in fact, that I sat down one day at my typewriter and wrote another book instead, one that wouldn't have legal problems attached to it. Called
Target Practice
, this novel, too, had a long gestation period, followed by a terribly short actual writing time: three weeks. The story was an attempt to discuss the Vietnam War (a subject that had been percolating in my brain since college) in the guise of a Lew Archer-type detective story. Detective stories, at least to that time, had always struck me as far removed from any external reality with which the rest of us were familiar. They took place in their little villages or country houses or mean streets, or wherever, but they never seemed to intersect with real headlines (not until the late Ross Macdonald, and his headlines were always local).

My novel was another pastiche, to be sure, this one based on Macdonald and Raymond Chandler instead of Doyle. Me hiding behind other people's faces again. It was not a bad story, however, and did what I set out to do, namely address issues of moral culpability related to Vietnam in the guise of what Graham Greene called “an entertainment.” It was nominated for an Edgar Award in the category of Best First Mystery Novel (didn't win). I dedicated it to my father.

Along the way to publication I learned a thing or two about the publishing business. Still spinning wheels while waiting for some kind of resolution with the Doyle estate, Harcourt Brace Etcetera agreed to published
Target Practice
. My editor was a swell gentleman named Ed Barber, and he worked on both
Target Practice
and
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
. On
Target Practice
I had no difficulty with the editorial process, but my Holmes novel proved more tricky.

“Here's what I have done,” Ed wrote in his cover letter, accompanying the “edited” version of my book. “Although your novel is supposedly written in the 1890s” (actually, it was supposed to have been written in 1939, but let that pass) “it is actually being penned for readers of 1974.” (So far, so good.) “So what we need to do in editing, is present the
illusion
of a period novel, while keeping in mind the fact of its contemporary readership.”

I had no problem with any of this until I read Ed's version of my story. Here I found myself on the horns of a classic dilemma: first-time novelist's instincts versus those of experienced editor. Whose judgment should I trust—his or my own?

I was luckier than some writers in similar situations; because my book was itself an imitation of something else, I had a preexisting yardstick by which to measure the success or failure of my effort. Since my editor's version of
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
didn't read like Arthur Conan Doyle and my original did, it was easy for me to decide to insist on something much closer to my own draft.

Besides, always let your failures be your own. The world is full of advice; you must pick and choose what is useful or relevant versus what is merely safe and/or familiar. There's no getting around instinct; pray you have some.

Ed Barber left Harcourt Brace for another company (there seemed to be an awful lot of this lateral movement in the publishing business), which didn't publish fiction. Déjà vu. That left me with Julian Muller as my editor, the head of Harcourt. Muller (famous for having published
Auntie Mame
when everyone had turned it down) told me not to expect too much from
Target Practice
. It was, after all, another book among thousands competing for the public's attention.

I sat listening in his office, puzzled and, I suppose, hurt. I certainly hadn't expected
Target Practice
to set the world on fire, but I wasn't sure I relished hearing about its lack of prospects from its publisher. I may have mumbled something to that effect.

“Look,” Muller went gamely on, “if you want to write a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme.” Only the word he used instead of “mighty” was “commercial.”

Harcourt wasn't (seemingly) able or interested in helping me to resolve my dilemma with the Doyle crowd. And now I began getting calls from Juris Jurjevics, of all people, the man who had edited
The Love Story Story
when he was at Avon Books. He was now with E. P. Dutton, and someone had slipped him a copy of my novel.

I explained that I had a deal with Harcourt. He asked how much they were prepared to pay me. I told him. Jurjevics said he would top the offer by a thousand dollars. I told Tom.

“Wait,” said Tom.

A week later Dutton had upped the offer by another thousand. And so on. Finally, since Harcourt seemed utterly passive in the face of my legal quagmire, I asked Muller to let me out of our deal. He didn't seem to mind a bit and my Holmes book was now at its third publisher, E. P. Dutton, which energetically pursued the matter of obtaining permission from the Doyle estate to publish. No seven-per-cent solution, I promise you.

The book came out in August 1974, hard on the heels of
Target Practice
, which had been released in March. After years of drought (and I mean years), I had suddenly published two novels within six months. What happened next still strikes me as highly improbable.
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
quickly appeared on the
New York Times
bestseller list in the number-ten slot and began inching its way north. Abruptly I was lifted out of obscurity and (comparative) penury. I was sought after for interviews; my name began appearing in print here and there, and the reading public, for reasons of its own, decided my book was one to read. Sherlock Holmes was in vogue. And so was Freud. The late Anatole Broyard, reviewing the book in
The New York Times
, was kind. He noted that after all the Freud bashing lately, it was a pleasure to see him portrayed as the hero for a change, furiously throwing coal into the boiler of a locomotive as if it were the work to which he had been born. Freud, for the record, bore only a superficial resemblance to the actual father of psychoanalysis; in the book, he was modeled after an entirely different father: my own.

I was having my fifteen minutes of celebrity.

The paperback rights to the book sold for an enormous sum. I was in my parents' kitchen in New York when the phone call from Juris told me just how much. I went back to my coffee and related the figure to my astonished mother and father.

They looked at me, actually dazed. This was so far from what they had ever expected (or predicted) for me. It wasn't that they weren't pleased, but this was a totally different program. The fact that I had gone out on my own, kicked over the traces, and then succeeded beyond anyone and everyone's wildest expectations (and let's face it, those expectations were never particularly wild to begin with) was going to have psychological repercussions for every one of us. The sum I had just earned, for example, exceeded my father's income for the same year.

My father had enjoyed the book, to be sure, but he had subjected it to the same rigorous editorial acumen he gave to all my writing. It simply had never occurred to any of us—certainly myself included—that the thing was going to take off in this fashion.

I was even sued, the surest sign that you're a success. It seems droll now, but at the time I was devastated when a doctor at Yale insisted that I had plagiarized an essay he had written about Holmes and Freud. I had certainly read his essay, as I had gratefully acknowledged in my Acknowledgments at the back of the book, for Pete's sake. I also acknowledged a great many other articles and books, some of which had also suggested the link between Holmes and Freud—to say nothing of that conversation with my father.

I felt my success had been tarnished by the imputation of my honor. Old-fashioned word. Old-fashioned feeling, but there you are. I had done something on my own, brought it into being by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin, the first time I had even rung the chimes, grabbed the brass ring, amounted to anything in this world, and now I was accused of stealing it. What a funny feeling in my tummy. Like a knife being twisted there.

I defended myself and won, but even winning proved costly and time-consuming. There were lawyers. Depositions. Fees. The case was essentially quite simple since the facts, namely my exposure to the article in question, were not in dispute. The issue hinged on the definition of plagiarism, which turns out to be quite narrow. You cannot plagiarize an idea; you can only plagiarize the
expression
of an idea; in other words, the
words
. Did you copy the actual words? Of course I hadn't. I had written a novel (arguably what this gentleman was kicking himself for failing to have done) and, using no words of his, had made a deal of money. Case dismissed.

He appealed. Lost again. It now seems axiomatic to me that if you are successful enough you will be sued. Years later, someone in Philadelphia sued Paramount over
Star Trek VI
. Claimed he'd thought up the whole thing. I ask you.

In
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
I did not believe that I had written a great novel. I was twenty-eight and too old for that sort of self-delusion, but I understood that I had written a hugely enjoyable book and maybe that was what I was good for. From the vantage point of today the book's virtues seem to me to be its cleverness and high spirits. They may not be “ultimate” virtues—the novel was by no means profound—but I think one may be justifiably proud of a clever, high-spirited book.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
stayed on the
Times
list for forty weeks, making it the third-best-selling novel of the year, behind
Jaws
and Michener's
Centennial
.

All in all 1974 was a banner year for me. Although the rest of the country was in the grip of a depression, with people being thrown out of work, the oil embargo, and lines around the block for gasoline, my second TV movie, a fictionalized account of the notorious 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of
War of the Worlds
and the havoc it caused, was aired around Halloween. I had titled it
The Night the Martians Landed
but CBS in its infinite wisdom had renamed it
The Night That Panicked America
. Whatever the title, I was certainly having a run of luck. The film even won a prize at the Monte Carlo Television Festival. (The Monte Carlo Television Festival???)

Tom Pollock told me I must buy a house. There was a need to invest the money.

“What money?” I demanded. I hadn't yet seen a penny.

“Trust me, Nick, there's going to be a lot of it.”

And there was, too. I bought a small house, again in Laurel Canyon, and there too I was fortunate. I found myself the proud owner of the best two-person home in LA—complete with obligatory swimming pool—tucked discretely into the hills on a piece of uncharacteristically level ground, not subject to mudslides on or off. (Earthquakes and fires were another matter.)

In early 1975 I was sent to publicize the book in England, where it was serialized in the tabloids (shades of Dickens!) and where it received the Gold Dagger Award from the British Crime Writers' Association. I was on radio. I was on TV. I was on a roll. My kid agent, Kevin Sellers, sold the film rights to his mother, a producer named Arlene Sellers. Other agents at IFA criticized the deal he made, pointing out all the things wrong with it—chiefly that it should have been for a larger sum of money—but I thought they missed the point. No one else had liked or worked on selling the book at all.

The deal was made with the stipulation that I write the screenplay, which I did, under the aegis of Herb Ross, who was to direct it. Writing the screenplay of
The Seven-Per-Cent Solution
was an interesting experience. Ross largely left me to my own devices. I included too many speeches, as usual (it would be years before I could figure out the screenplay thing), but I made good use of the opportunity to improve on what I considered the novel's defects, chiefly, the mystery Holmes and Freud are called upon to solve once Freud has cured Holmes of his drug habit. I was quite prepared to be ruthless and even eliminated the tennis scene between Freud and the villain, Baron Von Leinsdorf. At this point Ross dug in his heels. “Eliminate the tennis scene? No way.”

“But it's not germane,” I countered. “You want the audience to sit still in a movie while two guys play tennis? Unless you got a guy planting an incriminating cigarette lighter on an island”—a reference to Hitchcock's
Strangers on a Train,
which did have a tennis game/cigarette lighter in it—“people will be bored.”