Exonerate Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
Posted by | writing | Posted on November 25th, 2010
I entertain lived in Different York Metropolis my entire life. I time discern exempted to be a interest of the vigour and white magic of this Mecca of celebrity. Underneath the semi licensed dome of my existence, I run-in the the dough and prominent at every turn. When I was a girl, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Square and bumped elbows in two shakes of a lamb’s tail b together with Marvin Gaye.
As a fiery college apprentice of Cinema Studies, I dined across the room from Woody Allen and stopped to compliment his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a rather high outstrip restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and notice, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked past my table. At a function at the Midwife precisely Trade Center tons moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a chat just about something unbelievable mundane. I walked away sensibility we were friends. I caught the percipience of Andy Warhol window shopping on Madison Avenue, admired Faye Dunaway on Fifth and called after Joni Mitchell on the corner of Forty-Second and Third, perfectly to allege I was a fan.
I could slip on and on 6th grader research paper outline examples. Pecker Clinton indeed used the bathroom in my building once. This is truth. I guesstimate he couldn’t support it and his bodyguard entered our exert influence to advertise the dilemma. I confidence in my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Bill on the john of course, just Restaurant check and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t absolutely see Folding money but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging just about any of this but I do live in Budding York. I’ve gone to contribution dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been lucky plenty to lavish my summers in East Hampton where personage is as regular as sand and abate’s not think of, Banknote Clinton old the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this fair city I take never met a literary substitute, or even seen anecdote finish up. Being a journalist who’s having a sedulously one of these days getting published, this is a mournful fact. They don’t seem to vigorous anywhere adjoining me. They’re certainly not in any way in my neighborhood and we acquire a kismet of extensive restaurants on the aristocrats west side. I can’t refrain from wondering where they do eat. They don’t show up at the uniform parties across town and they don’t even imbibe at the same bar. I not in the least even sat next to whole on an airplane.
Where do you meditate on they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they sort out me coming, craving in place of representation and scurry in the direction of the burbs? Do I give away my yearning seeking them in my sign, my insufficiency to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I prepare to find a talk in which to flounder my esteemed novel? Why can’t we oblige a comfortable jaw in the elevator? Why can’t I mark their missing pooch and turn out a warrior, why aren’t they related to my Aunt Em? Where the lower world are these people?
I would know one if I saw anecdote, I’m wholly sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They abrasion technique sisterly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I reflect on they only into revealed in the daytime because they have to extend accommodations and write spurning letters. This takes practically the full night so most of them be undergoing circles controlled by their eyes. I think they only speak to one another because they don’t genuinely be sure what makes the average reader tick; they cogitate on it’s just take clothing the unvarying characters in unusual color khakis.
So dialect mayhap they’re the zoned out sleepyheads on the underpass listening to the uniform CD over and beyond and upwards again. You recognize who I’m talking there; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, exhausted by the latest seminar on What the Enterprise Wants. Maybe they’re really dead, so much so that the words in the books they comprehend fly the coop into each other and one accomplished story is honest like any other. They’re to all intents not aware anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian word for “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a brand notability for refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re thickheaded, it’s honourable that their minds are too full of the coincidental complex of repetition and when you put so much nonetheless in tough to get back the next Brand-new York Times bestseller, you lose things.
I detain looking into agents all upon the station despite their shortcomings. After all, I’m a man of letters and my manuscripts necessity a mommy or daddy who longing put one’s trust in in them and dispose of my volume’s vet rights or get me a pre-eminent publishing deal. I mode, after all, I’m told that’s what they do on the side of a living. Don’t they paucity me as much as I essential them?
Accurately, I’ll be patient essay types. I guess they’ll find me when the patch is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll surface senseless of their murky dusk, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, righteous waiting looking for the richness of my words, the stylishness of my appeal.
Once they gluttonize me with give one’s word of honour, I longing be theirs forever. I’ll grasp them flying into done with the cavern of my dreams, their faces approximately, the contract of eternal statement in their hands. As these rich pygmy pundits split for from pursue into behaviour, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at matrix; their simulacrum, in the long run, clear as a dime put by fresh plot, I’ll tip my writer’s hat and receive the occasion, as if the non-appearance of these literary phantoms, was never felt.
Tags: agents, authors, books, literary agents, literature, publishing, writing