Dear Betsy Lerner:
Do you ever wonder if there are great books that are not getting published? Name WITHHELD
Whenever people ask that question, it always sounds suspiciously like: is it possible that my great book won’t get published? Or is it possible that the great publishing machine might miss a great book or two? Or is there a great genius out there who does not seek publication? Or who has possibly given up?
There are a lot ways to think about these questions. Emily Dickinson always springs to mind first. Imagine sitting on the equivalent of all that literary dynamite and not seeing any of it published in your lifetime. If she were alive today she would be Lady Gaga. I think about JD Salinger who was one of the world’s great haters and wouldn’t let the likes of us besmirch his later works with our cloddish reviews and insufficient love and understanding of his characters. And then, of course, the Pulitzer Prize winning Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole whose mother got his book published posthumously in the aftermath of his suicide (a book I’ve started a few times and have never finished). Do I think there are great books not getting published? Well, I know there are a lot crappy books getting published.
What do you think: are great books not finding their way into print? Or does the cream always rise?
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Dear Betsy: Much of the work I do is written in 14-point font, but publishers and others request 12. Why the 12 when 14 is easier to read? NAME WITHHELD
Today has seen all the colors of the client rainbow. One was super cranky about his publisher. Another was intimidated by her publisher. One wanted to fire her editor. Another was pissed about publicity. One was grateful for his starred Publisher’s Weekly review. One was going nuts waiting for a contract. Another was waging war with his editor over catalogue copy. Another was thrilled with his jacket. (It is a kick ass, home run, slam dunk jacket.) One needed reassurance that he could write. Another wanted to have coffee to talk about new ideas. A new client needed help with his proposal. And one little piggy ran all the way home — turning in the final chapters of a novel that’s been in progress for a few years. And he nailed it. Dear Lord, help me help all my clients achieve their dreams. Help me help them.
Well, every few years, someone comes around and feels the need to kick sand in memoir’s face. This weekend, in the NYT book review, it was the critic Neil Genzlinger. Too many memoirs, too much me, not enough art is the complaint. No one ever says: too many novels, or stop writing those dang poems. And the reason is obvious: the self is dirty. And narcy. And should be private. Genzlinger begins his article (which goes on to trash three out of four mems), “A moment of silence, please, for the lost art of shutting up.” Shut up! He goes on, “Sorry to be so harsh, but this flood just has to be stopped. We don’t have that many trees left.” You can read it 
2. Black Swan. Nina!
6. Tiger Mother blah blah blah.
I always thought that I would step in front of a bus, but today, dear friends, I think I just might jump from the roof of a major publisher. I know you’re not supposed to joke about THAT, but why not? Literary agent leaps to her death. Or better yet, Literary agent and beloved blogger leaps. Why is it so hard to get a fucking contract done and paid? Why isn’t everyone like so and so at such and such. My dad, who you may recall owned a lumber yard, always said that business was about collections. How could that be, I asked him, shocked that it all boiled down to chasing checks. But now that I have my own business, I see how right he was. Creative work is a cinch compared with getting laid. Er, paid. Today is my dad’s birthday. He would have been 83, I think. We clashed a lot, but he was a great business man. No college. Maybe a high school equivalency, maybe, but he was fair and smart and no bullshit. He got things done. He made a mean fried salami and scrambled eggs. He infused me with my love of film and television. And he was always as good as his word.
When you take a writing workshop, you are not allowed to speak when your work is being critiqued. This is the first law of the workshop. The idea behind it is simple: you can’t listen if you’re yapping. I actually think the rule of silence protects you from making an ass out of yourself. It prevents you from saying things like: what I was trying to do, what I meant was, it actually happened that way, etc. The only reason to get feedback, as far as I can tell, is to see if you got on base. Did you smack one out there? Some people at the workshop are intent on showing off, some are out to get you out of jealousy, and some are as thick as root vegetables.
Hi Besty,
I’m enough of an asshole to imagine that someday an intrepid graduate student will track me down in the Jewish Home for the Aged and want to see some of my client files. We’ll look through them together and I’ll tell unforgettable tales about publishing in the olden days. The student will marvel at the long editorial letters, the rejection letters, the christmas cards with pictures of the author’s three children in the Bahamas. Contracts, royalty statements, reviews and remainder notices will tell another tale. The ups and downs of a long publishing life.
The last time I was on an agents’ panel, a man asked how we knew which editors to send our projects to. No one had ever asked that simple question. The answer is lunch. A decade of having lunch with editors to get to know them, their taste, what they’re looking for. We’re talking a lot of sushi.
Betsy Lerner 