Last night, I met one of my literary heroes. If you haven’t read this book, order it now. And then this one. Or her latest. From the moment I read Janet Malcolm’s work in the New Yorker in my early twenties, I was hooked. The quality of mind and quality of prose are perfectly met. Was I nervous? Check. Did I say something really stupid, twice? Check. Coffee was finished when I blurted what a big fan I am. It’s extraordinary how you feel you have a relationship with an author you’ve never met, when you’ve read a body of work and powerfully responded to it. When it has shaped your ideas and standards. I wasn’t disappointed. She was like her prose: elegant, incisive, exacting, penetrating. Also funny, which I wouldn’t have guessed.
I might have asked this long ago, so forgive me. But do you any good stories to tell about literary heroes.
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People always ask me when I write, their voices filled with bewilderment and wonder. I like to make up answers to this question depending on who is doing the asking. I write at dawn, I write all night, weekends and vacations, I write on the train, I write every morning for two hours, I write when I can, ha ha ha ha. I write all the time. I don’t know when I write! When does anyone write!
The other night, I participated in a fundraiser known as “Pitching Roulette.” This is where you sit at a table, and every ten minutes a different writer sits down across from you and tries to interest you in his or her work. Not a single person slipped some cash or hash under the table. That would have helped. Some talked the whole time and were impossible to help as a result. Some got so flustered they put their papers away in a fit of shame. One woman said, can we just sit here? Yes, my darling, we can sit here all night. We can sit here even though my pants are tight and I want to hit a deli on Fifth. Even though we will be getting our one minute warning in a minute. Even though I pray I can make a 9:50 movie, alone and in my heaven. One woman pitched three different projects. No, no, no. Who the hell am I to talk like this? The truth is I like helping people, even if just one person grabs on to one thought or idea and is reinvigorated. But I also feel old, tired, cynical and I don’t like it when I can smell another person’s breath and it smells like teen spirit.
Fourteen years ago, a slim memoir with a simple but perfect title came into the world and created a storm of media: praise and scorn. A sales rep at Random House had sent a copy to my husband with a handwritten note: Great art? Maybe. Provocative? Definitely. The book was 
Today, as I was walking to work, I heard a nice looking guy in a suit say, “I love you,” before he snapped his phone shut and put it in his trouser pocket. And I thought for a moment how fragile we all are, especially men, imagining his wife sitting at a granite counter in workout clothes, her yoga mat near the door, rolled. They don’t have kids yet. It’s early on. He’s trim and going places. Her ring swims on her finger. His shoes have a buckle. It’s starting to rain. I can’t see his face. Love you. Love you, too. On NPR, I listened to a woman describe the last phone call with her husband before he died in one of the World Trade Towers. My husband referred to our marriage as an ecosystem and in my mind it’s a fecund marsh with cattails fat as wurst, or a desert buzzing with death, or a field of alfalfa even though I have never seen a field of alfalfa. Though there were trees as big as dinosaurs in my home town and I have wrapped my arms around them and felt my veins thrum with life. In tenth grade, my friend’s father told us to never trust a man’s declaration of love before, during or after sex. Man, was that good advice.
How do you define “making it” in publishing terms? Money, acclaim, awards, or as some people swear, the joy of doing it. Getting that first agent, contract, royalty statement with a check attached. Holding your head up high at a family wedding or bar mitzvah? Having publishers vie for your self-published novel? Seeing a stack of your books in a store, or even one wedged into a shelf? The New York Times Book Review? The Daily Show? Is it fan letters? Publishing before your 30? 40? 50? Having a car sent for you? A major motion picture starring (your favorite actor). Being wooed by Andrew Wylie? A plum table at The Four Seasons ( I’m old school). Respect?
I call it the Rapture of the Deep. It’s when a writer is so deep into his work that he begins to think everything in the known universe relates to it. He could be staring at a laminated menu, a horse galloping in an open field, or a proctologist snapping his rubber glove, and believe that each of these tableaus relates to his work. Or the day’s headlines about taxes, popularity ratings, or Ashton Kutcher filling in for Charlie Sheen, and somehow relate these events with his novel. In scuba diving, rapture of the deep results from oxygen deprivation and can cause a diver to swim in the opposite direction from the surface when he needs air. Rapture is a sublime combination of narcissism, compulsion, and expansiveness; it can be confused with mania as it shares some of the same symptoms: racing thoughts, grandiosity, exaggerated self-regard.
Today, dear readers, I decided to make pitch calls to a handful of movie people instead of just sending an email. My heart was pounding even though they could all be considered good acquaintances. I realize how much I hide behind email, how second nature it’s become. I think I get one hundred emails to every ten calls. I heard about an agent in LA who only uses the phone. I like to imagine it’s a dial phone. Why does that seem radical? A few years ago, I made a vow not to use email for difficult conversations. That lasted for about six seconds.
Today it was announced that an editor who left to become an agent has returned to the publishing side. Couldn’t hack it, I guess. Ha ha. It’s not easy working for the devil. A decade ago when I joined the dark side, I was petrified. Mostly, I now realize, it was losing my identity as an editor that upset me. That, and the child sacrifice. What’s that smell? I never wanted to be an agent. Turns out, I’m actually cut out for it. A lot of people ask me if I miss editorial life, if I would go back. My dream is to rehab a dead factory in New Haven and start my own publishing company and film production company. ANd I want to offer classes to high school kids, and have screenings, and a cafe. I guess if someone offered me an imprint and said here’s your budget, hire your own people, do what you want, that would be cool. I always liked putting on a play. In the wake of yesterday’s pity party, I have to admit I love my clients and sometimes I feel as if we are on a grand journey and over the course of many books we have built a library of our own imagination.
Tonight’s post isn’t for everyone. If you don’t like it or if you detect a spelling or grammatical error or just some shit writing, please leave some love on someone’s else blog because over here at Betsylerner.com, I am about to fucking snap. I’m not used to being played. I’m a middle child. I love to manipulate, triangulate, irritate. I like to come between people, isolate, dominate. So when I get the boomerang shoved up my ass, I don’t like it. I took it all day. It was open season.
