Anonymous, The Bible
I must say that the first few
hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me. Action-packed, they have
everything today’s reader wants in a good story. Sex (lots of it, including
adultery, sodomy, incest), also murder, war, massacres, and so on.
The Sodom and Gomorrah chapter,
with the transvestites putting the make on the angels, is worthy of Rabelais;
the Noah stories are pure Jules Verne; the escape from Egypt cries out to be
turned into a major motion picture … In other words, a real blockbuster, very
well structured, with plenty of twists, full of invention, with just the right
amount of piety, and never lapsing into tragedy.
But as I kept on reading, I
realized that this is actually an anthology, involving several writers, with
many, too many, stretches of poetry, and passages that are downright mawkish
and boring, and jeremiads that make no sense.
The end result is a monster
omnibus. It seems to have something for everybody, but ends up appealing to
nobody. And acquiring the rights from all these different authors will mean big
headaches, unless the editor takes care of that himself. The editor’s name, by
the way, doesn’t appear anywhere on the manuscript, not even in the table of
contents. Is there some reason for keeping his identity a secret?
I’d suggest trying to get the
rights only to the first five chapters. We’re on sure ground there. Also come
up with a better title. How about The Rea
Sea Desperadoes?
Homer, The Odyssey
Personally, I like this book. A
good yarn, exciting, packed with adventure. Sufficient love interest, both
marital fidelity and adulterous flings (Calypso is a great character, a real
man-eater); there’s even a Lolita aspect, with the teenager Nausicaa, where the
author doesn’t spell things out, but it’s a turn-on anyway. Great dramatic
moments, a one-eyed giant, cannibals, even some drugs, but nothing illegal,
because as far as I know the lotus isn’t on the Narcotic Bureau’s list. The
final scene is in the best tradition of the Western: some heavy fist-swinging,
and the business with the bow is a masterstroke of suspense.
What can I say? It’s a page
turner, all right, not like the author’s first book, which was too static, all
concerned with unity of place and tediously overplotted. By the time the reader
reached the third battle and the tenth duel, he already got the idea. Remember
how the Achilles-Patroclus story, with that vein of not-so-latent
homosexuality, got us into trouble with the Boston authorities? But this second
book is a totally different thing: it reads as smooth as silk. The tone is
calmer, pondered but not ponderous. And then the montage, the use of
flashbacks, the stories within stories … In a word, this Homer is the right
stuff. He’s smart.
Too smart, maybe … I wonder if
it’s really his own work. I know, of course, a writer can improve with
experience (his third book will probably be a sensation), but what makes me uncomfortable
– and, finally, leads me to cast a negative vote – is the mess the question of
rights will cause. I broached the subject with a friend at William Morris, and
I get bad vibes.
In the first place, the author’s
nowhere to be found. People who knew him say it was always hard to discuss any
change to be made in the text, because he was blind as a bat, couldn’t follow
the manuscript, and even gave the impression he wasn’t completely familiar with
it. He quoted from memory, was never sure exactly what he had written, and said
the typist added things. Did he really write the book or did he just sign it?
No big deal, of course. Editing
has become an art, and many books are patched together in the editor’s office
or written by several hands (like Mommy
Dearest) and still turn out to be
bestsellers. But this second book, there is much too unclear about it. Michael
says the rights don’t belong to Homer, and certain aelian bards will have to be
paid off, since they are due royalties on some parts.
A literary agent who works out
of Chios says the rights belong to the local rhapsodists, who virtually ghosted
the book; but it’s not clear whether they are active members of that island’s
Writers’ Guild. A PR in Smyrna, on the other hand, says the rights belong
exclusively to Homer, only he’s dead, and therefore the city is entitled to all
royalties. But Smyrna isn’t the only city that makes such a claim. The
impossibility of establishing if and when Homer died means we can’t invoke the ’43
law regarding works published fifty years after the author’s death. At this
point a character by the name of Callinus pops up, insisting not only that he
holds all rights but that, along with The
Odyssey, we must buy a package
including Thebais, Epigoni, and The Cyprian Lays. Apart from the fact that these
aren’t worth a dime, a number of experts think they’re not even by Homer. And
how do we market them? These people are talking big bucks now, and they’re
seeing how far they can push us. I tried asking Aristarchus of Samothrace for a
preface; he has clout, and he’s a good writer, too, and I thought maybe he
could tidy the work up. But he wants to indicate, in the body of the book, what’s
authentic and what isn’t; we end up with a critical edition and zilch sales.
Better leave the whole thing to some university press that will take twenty
years to produce the book, which they’ll price at a couple hundred dollars a
copy, and maybe a few libraries will actually buy it. Bottom line: If we take
the plunge, we’re getting ourselves into an endless legal hassle, the book will
be impounded, but not like the one of those sex books, which they then sell
under the counter. This one will just be seized and forgotten. Maybe ten years
from now Oxford will buy it for The World’s Classics, but in the meantime you’ll
have spent your money, and it’ll be a long wait before you see any of it again.
I’m really sorry, because the
book’s not bad. But we’re publishers, not detectives. So I’d say pass.
Alighieri, Dante, The Divine
Comedy
Alighieri is your typical
Sunday writer. (In everyday life he’s an active member of the pharmacists’
guild.) Still, his work shows an undeniable grasp of technique and considerable
narrative flair. The book, in the Florentine dialect, consists of about a
hundred rhymed chapters, and much of it is interesting and readable. I
particularly enjoyed the descriptions of astronomy and certain concise,
provocative theological notions. The third part of the book is the best and
will have the widest appeal; it involves subjects of general interest, concerns
of the common reader – Salvation, The Beatific Vision, prayers to the Virgin.
But the first part is obscure and self-indulgent, with passages of cheap
eroticism, violence, and downright crudity. This is a big problem: I don’t see
how the reader will get past this first “canticle,” which doesn’t really add
much to what has already been written about the next world in any number of
moral tracts and treatises, not to mention the Golden Legend of Jacopo
da Varagine.
But the greatest drawback is
the author’s choice of his local dialect (inspired no doubt by some crackpot
avant-garde idea). We all know that today’s Latin needs a shot in the arm – it isn’t
just the little literary cliques that insist on this. But there’s a limit,
after all, if not in the rules of language then at least to the public’s
ability to understand. We have seen what happened with the so-called Sicilian
poets: their publisher went around on bicycles distributing the books among the
various outlets, but the works ended up on the remainders counter anyway.
Further, if we publish a long
poem in Florentine, we’ll have to publish another in Milanese and another in
Paduan: otherwise we lose our grip on the market. This is a job for small
presses, chapbooks, etc. Personally I have nothing against rhyme, but
quantitative metrics are still the most popular form with poetry readers, and I
doubt that a normal reader could stomach his endless sequence of tercets,
especially if he comes from Bologna, say, or Venice. So I think we’d do better
to launch a series of really popular titles at reasonable prices: the works of
Gildas or Anselm of Aosta, for example. And leave to the little avant-garde
magazines the numbered editions on handmade paper. “For there neid fære,
næning
uuirthit …” The linguistic hash of the postmoderns.
Tosso, Torquato, Jerusalem Liberated
As a “modern” epic of chivalry,
this isn’t bad. It’s written gracefully, and the situations are fairly fresh:
high time poets stopped imitating the Breton or Carolingian cycles. But let’s
face it, the story is about the Crusaders and the taking of Jerusalem, a
religious subject. We can’t expect to sell such a book to the younger
generation of “angries.” At best we’ll get good reviews in Our Sunday Visitor
or maybe The Tablet. Even there, I have doubts about the reception of certain
erotic scenes that are a bit too lewd. So my vote would be “yes,” provided the
author revises the work, turning it into something even nuns could read. I’ve
already mentioned this to him, and he didn’t balk at the idea of such a
rewrite.
Diderot, Denis, Les bijoux
indiscrets and La Moine
I confess I haven’t unwrapped
these two manuscripts, but I believe a reader should sense immediately what’s
worth devoting time to and what isn’t. I know this Diderot; he makes
encyclopedias (he once did some proofreading for us), and he’s involved in some
dreary enterprise in God knows how many volumes which will probably never see
the light of day. He goes around looking for draftsmen to draw the works of a
clock for him or the threads of a Gobelin tapestry, and he’ll surely bankrupt
his publisher. The man’s a snail, and I don’t really think he’s capable of
writing anything amusing in the fiction field, especially for a series like
ours, which has some juicy, spicy little things like Restif de la Bretonne. As
the old saying goes, he should stick to his last.
Sade, D. A. François, Justine
The manuscript was in a whole
pile of things I had to look at this week and, to be honest, I haven’t read it
through. I opened it at random three times, in three different plays, which, as
you know, is enough for a trained eye.
Well, the first time I found an
avalanche of words, page after page, about the philosophy of nature, with
digressions on the cruelty of the struggle for survival, the reproduction of
plants, and the cycles of animal species. The second time: at least fifteen pages
on the concept of pleasure, the senses and the imagination, and so on. The
third time: twenty pages on the question of submission between men and women in
various countries of the world … I think that’s enough. We’re not looking for a
work of philosophy. Today’s audience wants sex, sex, and more sex. In every
shape and form. The line we should follow is Les Amours du Chevalier de Faublas. Let’s leave the highbrow stuff
to Indiana.
Cervantes, Miguel, Don Quixote
The book, the readable parts of
it, anyway, tells the story of a Spanish gentleman and his man-servant who roam
the world pursuing chivalrous dreams. This Don Quixote is half crazy (the character
is fully developed, and Cervantes knows how to spin a tale). The servant is a
simpleton endowed with some rough common sense, and the reader identifies with
him as he tries to deflate his master’s fantasies. So much for the story, which
has some good dramatic twists and a number of amusing and meaty scenes. My
objection is not based on my personal response to the book.
In our successful low-price
series, “The Facts of Life,” we have published, with admirable results, Amadis of Gaul, The Legend of the Graal, The
Romance of Tristan, The Lay of the
Little Bird, The Tale of Troy,
and Erec and Enid. Now we also have
an option on The Kings of France by that promising young Barberino, and if you
ask me, it’ll be the book of the year and maybe even a book of the month,
because it has real grass-roots appeal. Now, if we do this Cervantes, we’ll be
bringing out a book that, for all its intrinsic value, will mess up our whole
list, because it suggests those novels are lunatic ravings. Yes, I know all
about freedom of expression, political correctness, and what have you, but we
can’t very well bite the hand that feeds us. Besides, this book seems a
one-shot deal. The writer has just got out of jail, he’s in bad shape, I can’t
remember whether it was his arm or his leg they cut off, but he certainly isn’t
raring to write something else. I’m afraid that in rushing to produce something
new at all costs we might jeopardize a publishing program that has so far
proved popular, moral, and (let’s be frank) profitable. I say no.
Manzoni, Alessandro, I Promessi sposi
These days the blockbuster
novel is apparently the rage, if you have any faith in print-run figures. But there
are novels and there are novels. If we had bought Doyle’s The White Company or Henty’s By Pike and Dyke,
at this point we’d know what to put in our paperback line. These are books
people read and will be reading two hundred years from now, because they tug at
the heart, are written in simple and appealing language, don’t try to hide their
regional origin, and they deal with contemporary themes like feudal unrest and
the freedom of the Low Countries. Manzoni, on the contrary, sets his novel in
the seventeenth century, a period that is a notorious turn-off. Moreover, he
engages in a very dubious linguistic experiment, inventing a kind of
Milanese-Florentine language that is neither fish nor fowl. I certainly wouldn’t
recommend it as a model for young creative-writing students. But that’s not the
worst. The fact is that our author sets up a lowbrow story, the tale of a poor
engaged couple whose marriage is prevented by the conniving of some local
overlord. In the end they do get married and everybody’s happy. A bit thin,
considering that the reader has to digest six hundred pages. Further, while
ostensibly delivering an unctuous sermon on Providence, Manzoni actually
unloads whole bundles of pessimism on us (he’s a Jansenist, to call him by his
right name). He addresses the most melancholy reflections on human weakness and
national failings to today’s public, who want something quite different, more
heroic yarns, not a narrative constantly interrupted to allow the author to
spout cheap philosophy or, worse, to paste together a linguistic collage,
setting two seventeenth-century edicts between a dialogue half in Latin and
adding pseudo-folk talk that is hardly proper for the positive heroes the
public is eager for. Having just finished that fluent and flavorsome little
book, Hewlett’s The Forest Lovers, I
read this Promessi sposi with considerable effort. You only
have to turn to page one to see how long it takes the author to get to the
point. He starts with a landscape description whose syntax is so dense and
labyrinthine that you can’t figure out what he’s saying, when it would have
been so much easier to write, “One morning, in the Lecco area…” Well, so it
goes: not everybody has the narrative gift, and even fewer have the ability to
write in good Italian.
Still, the book is not totally
without merit. But I warn you: it would take forever to sell out a first
printing.
Proust, Marcel, A la recherche du
temps perdu
This is undoubtedly a serious
work, perhaps too long, but as a paperback series it could sell.
But it won’t do as is. It needs
serious editing. For example, the punctuation has to be redone. The sentences
are too labored; some take up a whole page. With plenty of good in-house work,
reducing each sentence to a maximum of two or three lines, breaking up
paragraphs, indenting more often, the book would be enormously improved.
If the author doesn’t agree,
then forget it. As it stands, the book is too – what’s the word? – asthmatic.
Kant, Immanuel, Critique of
Practical Reason
I asked Susan to take a look at
this, and she tells me that after Barthes there’s no point translating this
Kant. In any case, I glanced at it myself. A reasonably short book on morality
could fit nicely into our philosophy series, and might even be adopted by some
universities. But the German publisher says that if we take this one, we have
to commit ourselves not only to the author’s previous book, which is an immense
thing in at least two volumes, but also to the one he is working on now, about
art or about judgment, I’m not sure which. All three books have more or less
the same title, so they would have to be sold boxed (and at a price no reader
could afford); otherwise bookshop browsers would mistake one for the other and
think, “I’ve already read this.” Remember the Summa of that Dominican? We began to translate it, and then we had
to pass the rights on to Sheed and Ward because it ran way over budget.
There’s another problem. The
German agent tells me that we would also have to publish the minor works of
this Kant, a whole pile of stuff including something about astronomy. Day before yesterday I tried to phone him directly in Köenisberg, to see if we could do just one book, but the
cleaning woman said the master was out and I should never call between five and
six because that’s when he takes his walk, or between three and four because that’s
nap time, and so on. I would
advise against getting involved with a man like this: we’ll end up with a
mountain of his books in the warehouse.
Kafka, Franz, The Trial
Nice little book. A thriller
with some Hitchcock touches. The final murder, for example. It could have an audience.
But apparently the author wrote
under a regime with heavy censorship. Otherwise, why all these vague
references, this trick of not giving names to people or places? And why is the
protagonist being put on trial? If we clarify these points and make the setting
more concrete (facts are needed: facts, facts, facts), then the action will be
easier to follow and suspense is assured.
These young writers believe
they can be “poetic” by saying “a man” instead of “Mr. So-and-so in
such-and-such a city.” Genuine writing has to keep in mind the old newspaper
man’s five questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If we can have a free hand
with editing, I’d say buy it. If not, not.
Joyce, James, Finnegans Wake
Please, tell the office manager
to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I’m the English-language
reader, and you’ve sent me a book written in some other, godforsaken language.
I’m returning it under separate cover.
1972
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