Last night, I had the great honor of escorting my friend and client George Hodgman to the National Book Critics Circle Awards; his book Bettyville was a finalist. Ittook place at New School’s beautiful auditorium that looks like the inside of a deco egg. It was a star-studded event. To the left of us, Helen McDonald sans hawk. Directly in front of me Paul Beatty who I’ve loved since his first book of poems. Wendell Berry seemed annoyed to be receiving a lifetime achievement award. Everywhere in attendance proud editors, agents and family members. Margo Jefferson’s memoir Negroland won in George’s category, autobiography. No complaint there, but still I have to admit that in the moment before the winner’s name is announced, I found myself hoping with the fervor of a small child making a birthday wish. We consoled and celebrated over a long and delicious dinner with friends where much publishing gossip was exchanged. A meal in itself. When I think about reading the first pages George shared with me and sitting with him last night, and all the work in between that went into Bettyville, I feel so fortunate. Publishing doesn’t always fuck you over,
THE RESULTS ARE IN
AUTHOR OF THE BARTER
Siobhan Adcock weights in
#1
Lyra’s pick:
What a beautiful and frankly terrifying evocation of how scary books work on you, in the dark hours of the night. The vampires in the pecan tree–totally unforgettable, and I know exactly the feeling she’s talking about. To paraphrase Stephen King himself, I never in my life freaked myself out reading like I did when I was 13…does anyone?
#2
Jude’s pick:
I love Jude’s point that the scariest books aren’t always tales of terror or even ghost stories. The most chilling moment for me in that book is when Merle says icily, “Please be careful with that precious object.” Yeeesh. Henry James had a way with dark corners: I read and re-read The Turn of the Screw many times when I was writing The Barter.
#3
Amy’s pick:
Please, please, please tell me that this didn’t really happen or I might never sleep again.
Please send your snail mail address to betsy@dclagency.com for your copy of THE BARTER. And thanks to everyone for participating. And thanks to Siobhan!
TWO MORE DAYS LEFT to win a copy of THE BARTERby Siobhan Adcock. What was the scariest book you’ve ever read and why? Giving away first, second and third prizes.
Back when I was a mushroom getting my MFA, there was a woman in my workshop who dazzled. She wasn’t taller than everyone, she only seemed that way. I have had the great privilege of working with Jean Zimmerman as her editor first, now as her agent, and always her friend. Her dazzling historical novel, SAVAGE GIRL, has just been published by Viking to great early acclaim.
CONTEST: Who is your favorite bad guy (in literature) and why? I’ll ask Jean to judge the answers and top three answers will win a copy of Savage Girl.
Sooner or later, a historical crime novel is bound to drag you down some dark alley and into the nastiest, most lawless precincts of the period. Jean Zimmerman followed this tradition in her first novel, “The Orphanmaster,” a descent into the hellish criminal haunts of 17th-century New Amsterdam. In SAVAGE GIRL (Viking, $27.95), this canny author puts all that aside and turns to the Gilded Age for a sweeping narrative, set within the cloistered ranks of high society in 19th-century Manhattan, that raises touchy questions about what it means to be civilized.
Even in this exclusive world, the Delegate family is more privileged than most. The paterfamilias, Friedrich-August-Heinrich (also known as Freddy), has taken his family and a retinue of servants on his private, sumptuously appointed 12-car railroad train to Virginia City, Nev., to visit the silver mine that’s boosting his already considerable fortune. But when the Delegates depart from this brawling Wild West boom town, they have an additional passenger, a beautiful, feral young woman from a land that’s “savage, wild, forsaken by God and man” — who’s said to have been raised by wolves. Found at a sideshow, she’ll be the ideal experimental subject, Freddy thinks, for the nature-or-nurture debate roiling his intellectual set.
Photo
Credit Christoph Niemann
Using Freddy’s intelligent but decidedly peculiar son Hugo as narrator adds another layer of suspense to the story. A student of anatomy at Harvard, this young man has an unhealthy fondness for knives and a vivid imagination when it comes to Bronwyn, as the “Savij Girl” comes to be known. But who’s to say where imagination leaves off and obsession takes over, once the family is back in its Fifth Avenue mansion and the “Pygmalion”-like process of civilizing Bronwyn (who keeps her own set of razor-like steel claws and creeps out of the house to visit the wild animals at the zoo) begins in earnest.
The wondrous sights Zimmerman rolls out for us — a picnic on the banks of the Great Salt Lake, a stopover at the “fabulous, glorious” Palmer House hotel in Chicago and visits to mansions up and down the East Coast — are all the more piquant when Bronwyn’s admirers begin turning up, cut to ribbons, at almost every whistle stop. If this is civilization, bring on the wolves.
‘My Fair Lady’ Meets ‘Psycho’: PW Talks with Jean Zimmerman
A feral child unsettles Gilded Age New York City in Jean Zimmerman’s Savage Girl.
How did the book come to be?
I’d always wanted to write about a wolf girl—that is, one afflicted with the genetic condition known as hypertrichosis, which causes a person to resemble an animal, with fur growing all over his or her body. Many children with the condition were exhibited in American sideshows in an earlier period. Related in my mind was the phenomenon of so-called feral children, a girl or a boy purported to be raised by wolves (or by bears, or big cats, or goats, or, in one reported case, by rats). I ultimately crashed these two ideas together in Savage Girl.
What did the murder plot add?
A random killing here and there really focuses a narrative. We don’t know who is committing the murders in Savage Girl, but indications point to Bronwyn—and with good reason. The historical record shows that feral children were prone to violent outbursts.
You often write about the status of women. Was there something in particular about the women of the Gilded Age that intrigued you?
I found the debutante to be a fascinating creature and the coming out process one that was as constricting as it was lovely. Here were the grand dames of society, banding together when a girl reached the age of 18 or so, helping to usher her into a new social status. There was some power in the process for women. The learning curve was steep. There were new gowns and dance lessons, teas, ritualized social visits, and grand balls. The fashions were extraordinary. Yet debuting was filled with the strictest rules and obligations, and if you failed, there was the threat of punishment—remaining a spinster. I wanted to search beneath the opaque surface of the debuting process to find deeper meanings. That meant talking about both corsets and bloomers.
“Zimmerman’s dark comedy of manners is an obvious homage to Edith Wharton, a rip-roaring murder mystery more Robert Louis Stevenson than Conan Doyle and a wonderfully detailed portrait of the political, economic and philosophical issues driving post–Civil War America.” –KIRKUS
Please tell every Elliott Smith fan you know. Or people interested in the Portland indie music scene. Or understanding the tragic lives of young, gifted artists who didn’t make it. Todd has also written books about two of my favorite artists, Diane Arbus and Truman Capote. Brilliant psychological portraits that don’t attempt to explain a person’s life or choices, but brings you in as close as possible to understanding the forces and obsessions that compelled each artist to do their work, and how their work failed to save them.
October 3, 2013,
Randall Roberts, Los Angeles Times
Ten years ago this November singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, then 34, died in an Echo Park bungalow from two knife stabs to the chest. According to William Todd Schultz’s “Torment Saint: The Life of Elliott Smith,” a clear-eyed and devastating new biography of the gifted and troubled artist, his death, likely a suicide, was inevitable. The only questions were how and when. read more…
Dear Readers of this Blog: I couldn’t be happier than to congratulate Sheri Booker on the publication of her first book Nine Years Under (notice I am not saying “debut” because I think it’s pretentious) about her experiences working in an inner city funeral home, coming of age there, amid the corpses, inside the embalming room, and among the mourners who looked to her, a teenager, for comfort and tissues. There was a lot to learn about death; there was even more to learn about life.
I have copies to give away to the top three funeral stories. I’ll see if I can get Sheri to judge.
A client called the other day to say that whether his book sold or not, he was very grateful for all I had done. This is a Code Red. This is when the machine hooked up to the patient starts to flat line. These, my friends, are the words of a dying man. Get the paddles! Some agents may take those words at face value and appreciate the sentiment, but not this pig. I told my client to take it back. It wasn’t time to sign the DNR.
It’s always unsettling when the first few responses to a submission are negative. Suddenly, there is a metallic taste in the air. You smell the milk, unsure if it’s turned. You reread your cover letter, maybe the first chapter. And the client smells it, the blood in the water. No matter what happens, I’m very grateful. Just sell the book, bitch!
I’ll tell you when to panic. It’s too soon to panic. I’ll tell you when the last few sands are caroming down the hour glass. When it’s the 18th hole and your skirt is stained. When you’re near dead in a nursing home with no one to pluck the final hairs from your chin. When the recurring dream involves a white wall and a man who betrayed you. When you leave something on your plate. When you carry your shoes in a brown bag. When the clown swallows the ball.
Constitutional Law Professor Kenji Yoshino offers a brilliant analysis of ten Shakespeare plays through the prism of justice, showing both the evolution of the law and its impact on contemporary issues of justice. David Orr‘s guide to modern poetry likens reading poetry to visiting Belgium — not altogether unpleasant even if you don’t speak the language or know the customs. Hamilton Cain‘s lyrical evocation of a Southern Baptist childhood ultimately asks how our religions imprint on us, even when we lose our religion, especially when we face crisis. If you like sex and travel, pre-order Elisabeth Eaves Wanderlust, a memoir that covers five continents in 12 years as Eaves pursues an unfettered life. And for new and expecting parents, Morning Song is a must — a beautifully assembled collection of poems from Blake to Billy Collins by Susan Todd and Carol Purrington.
It’s an amazing feeling to get finished copies of a book you’ve sold, a manuscript you’ve watched develop for a year or more, the arrival of galleys, jackets, blurbs, all the phases of production, all the push and pull, the good cop, bad cop, the encouragement, prodding, listening, check chasing, etc. All that, like childbirth, falls away in the joy of holding that book. Of course, most authors think this is the end, but it’s just the beginning of the true torture known as a writer’s life. Clawing to get attention, the anxiety of bad press, no press, lukewarm press. The passive aggressive comments from friends and family. The publication party and the false smile lacquered on your face as deep down you feel like a fraud, and haunting bookstores and not being able to find your book and calling your agent, your voice high and strained because you don’t want to be needy or ungrateful, but god fucking damn it. So, to my darling brilliant writers with whom I have worked and worried beside, take a moment to hold that new baby (2.2 ounces), and for a brief moment feel really good because for the all the struggle, whatever happens or doesn’t, you are here, now.
Thirteen years ago, when I was five months pregnant, I had the chance to meet one of my heroes. I can still remember the dress I wore and how I nervously awaited her arrival at an Indian Restaurant high above Central Park South. I chose it for the name, Nirvana. When I met Patti Smith that day, she seemed delighted by my pregnancy and asked about the due date. That’s Darwin’s birthday, she said. I would later learn that Patti knew the birthdays of anyone of significance. My daughter is 13 now, and just starting to play guitar. The book we spoke of that day, a book about you and Robert in your youth, living for art and each other, became something more beautiful than I could have ever hoped for or imagined. And today, it was nominated for a National Book Award. Congratulations, Patti. Just Kids! Just Kids!
My client Justin Peacock published a terrific piece in today’s Daily Beast : “As literary fiction has become increasingly introverted, it has largely turned its back on plot, and in doing so it also turned its back on truly engaging with contemporary American life. The decline of the importance of plot—a resistance to the appeal of the sort of plotting that drives not just Dickens’ novels but, for that matter, the plays of Shakespeare or even ancient classics like the Iliad—leads inevitably to a failure of novels to engage with their culture…The novel is the only major storytelling form in our democratic culture where out-dated and counter-productive distinctions between high and low, between genre and literary, still exist. No one in their right mind would dismiss The Shield or The Wire’s (on which Price, Pelecanos and Lehane all worked, and of which Price is again openly acknowledged as the major literary inspiration) place as two of television’s greatest achievements because they are crime stories, anymore than a film critic would try to insist that Martin Scorsese is a second-tier filmmaker because so many of his movies are about organized crime. But the novel was always meant to be a popular medium, to be the realm of storytellers. By making itself too rarefied, the literary novel has deprived itself of the necessary oxygen of powerful plotting and engagement with society.”
If you have a moment, check out the whole piece. Agree? Disagree? Bite me.
CONGRATULATIONS To my most G client,
A client called the other day to say that whether his book sold or not, he was very grateful for all I had done. This is a Code Red. This is when the machine hooked up to the patient starts to flat line. These, my friends, are the words of a dying man. Get the paddles! Some agents may take those words at face value and appreciate the sentiment, but not this pig. I told my client to take it back. It wasn’t time to sign the DNR.
Constitutional Law Professor 
My client Justin Peacock published a terrific piece in today’s 
Betsy Lerner 