yustyoking

 

            I am 65 years old and I have just published my first novel… as an ebook!

            Anyone who has written a work of fiction—and tried to get it published the old way, through the New York publishing houses— will recognize my dilemma. The book publishing industry is neither kind nor helpful.

            The perennial unpublished author, I have been trying to get published FOR 40 YEARS!

            Heartbreaking and hilarious.

                                                         *

            I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World when I was 10. I was deeply offended over how difficult he made it to read. For a 10-year-old. We were vacationing at my cousins’ house in Sea Gate, a gated community adjacent to Coney Island, across the river from New York City.

            Placing a sheet of lined, three-hole notebook paper in my uncle’s manual typewriter, I wrote a full-page, single-spaced knock-off of Brave New World. It was totally derivative. There were helicopters, an overbearing government, gas bombs, wild crowds, unbridled mayhem. The typewriter ribbon was new. I LOVED the dark letters on the white paper. I loved seeing my thoughts, expressed in words, set in type on the page.

            I was hooked. I was ready to write a novel!

            When I told the family at dinner, I got laughed out of the room.

            So, in high school, I wrote short stories, instead. I got published in the school literary magazine.

                                Then I saw the lit mag

                                Coming through the gook,

                                Yowling and howling

                                Like a coffee-colored book.

            (We were all crazy about Vachel Lindsay.)

            “Oh yeah, uh, this is Kevin Feingold, he’s our resident writer,” my schoolmates would say when introducing me to strangers.

            In my first year of college— a notorious drunk— I wrote the requisite Bildungsroman, the autobiographical novel of a young man growing up in a dysfunctional family.

            Boo-hoo-hoo, poor me! My sister Carol was mean to me, nothing I ever did satisfied my parents, my teachers didn’t understand, my high school sweetheart strung me along.

            Nu? So what?

            “Um, this is only moderately interesting,” said Paul Merman, in Manhattan, when I showed up in his office during the Easter holiday. “I know it means a lot to you, but for the general reader— who doesn’ t know you— your qualms of youth don’t give him or her a lot to chew on.” A macher in the publishing industry, Paul was at a loss. His son Barry was in my English class and suggested I show his dad my opus. “Even your blond shiksa— who should come across as a truly memorable character— seems a stock figure.

            “There just isn’t an approach that opens up your world to the reader, invites us to partake and tells us something new and vibrant. Have you thought about writing science fiction?”

            “Write my autobiography as science fiction?”

            “Read Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Orwell’s— ”

            “I know,” I interrupted. “I’ve read all those books!”

            “It just seems, with the proper slant, you might possibly discover that you have something to say.”

            Give the man credit, Paul was trying to be helpful.

            The only advantage to being born in the Stone Age is the breadth of history covered in my lifetime.

            Back in those days, you could make an appointment and actually visit people in their offices.

            “The book publishing industry isn’t what it used to be,” Paul told me. “Too many damn people are writing too many damn books. The competition is murderous!”

            I expressed my condolences, thanked him and, three minutes later, found myself back on the street in Manhattan.

            Hating college, I dropped out of school, got drafted and ended up in Vietnam. Now there was something to write about, but the trauma and guilt of combat— shooting people is never easy, even when they are enemy soldiers— has left me shy about expressing my thoughts. There will always be some Swift Boat Veterans for Truth who’ll say, “What a load of crap! My experiences in Vietnam beat your experiences in Vietnam!”

            The first war America ever lost, it will always remain controversial.

            I love the Vietnamese. They taught me Buddhism, their history goes back thousands of years, Communism is a new and transient development. But again, there will always be someone who disagrees!

            In the 1970’s, made-for-television movies were in their heyday. When I finally graduated from college, I spent a year in Israel. Hanging around with Arab boys in their stall in Jerusalem’s souk, I met Candy, an American tourist who was a programmer at NBC. Red hair, brown eyes, a thick New York accent, she was very cute and very Jewish. “Don’t write me a pile of philosophical crap,” she explained over coffee, sitting cross-legged amid the carpets, pottery and leather goods. “I need scripts with lots of action! Get your butt back to the States and write me some action scripts for Sunday Night at the Movies!”

            So I interviewed veterans of the Six Day War. This was easy to do. Everyone in Israel had been through it. I cobbled together a script and mailed it to Candy in New York. I got back a letter on official stationery. It said: “What is with you writers? This script has too much philosophy and not enough action! Sincerely, Candy.”

            I also met an American named Sidney Bloomfield, an honest-to-God New York literary agent. We met on the beach in Tel Aviv. I rescued his wife’s beach towel when it blew into a culvert. Sidney liked me. I was (1) American, (2) Jewish, (3) young, (4) brown, (5) lean, (6) handsome, (7) enthusiastic, (8) full of good-natured chatter and (9) brimming over with opinions about politics, anthropology and religion. What’s not to like? He and his wife felt I had the potential to become a great writer, another Hemingway.

            “When you get back to the States,” he proposed, giving me his business card, “bring me a finished novel and I will do what I can to place it with a major publisher.”

            You can’t ask for more than that!

            So, a year later, I brought him a Jack Kerouac-inspired tale of college and military high jinks distilled from my time at Moosegrave College and my stint in the U.S. Army. As I remember, the novel contained a lot of steamy lovemaking with local gals, marijuana-laced monologues, bathroom jokes, latrine humor, little green men from outer space, and an American society in open rebellion against itself.

            “What is this?” asked Sidney, plainly hating every word. He sat behind his desk in a blue suit and red tie, looking totally perplexed.

            “A distillation of the 1960’s!” I answered perkily.

            “The military aspect has already been done— a lot better!— in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22,” he pointed out.

            I showed him the picture I wanted to use on the cover, “Saturn Devouring One of His Sons” by Francisco Goya (1823).

            He hated that.

            “I don’t even know how to begin to shop this to the publishers,” he exclaimed. His face was easier to read than the Manhattan phone book: “Here you are, a young man filled with talent, and when you bring me an ms., it’s a total load of crap!”

            Regretfully, I took back my manuscript.

            “What is wrong with your generation?” he complained bitterly. “Everybody writes, yet 99.9% of the stuff you people send me is unsalable!!! You think of writing as self-expression. That’s not the purpose of writing! The written word is for communicating, imparting a message or information to the reader. Writing isn’t painting. Good writing is storytelling.

            “I cannot believe the verbiage your generation produces. Even concrete poetry is supposed to mean something!”

            Sidney admitted defeat. “All I can advise you,” he said, “is to grow up.”

            I was on my own.

            Re-enlisting, I made the U.S. Army my career. I never suffered any downtime. When not cleaning and registering weapons, marching in close-order drill, lubricating tanks or studying languages at the Foreign Language Center in Monterey, California, I was busy writing. I wrote skits for my battalion. I wrote speeches for the brass. I updated weapons manuals. But the glory boys— the professional writers— the psy ops guys and reporters for Stars and Stripes— totally outclassed me. It was a volunteer army and those geniuses beat me on the aptitude test and they beat me out of promotions and the plum assignments.

            And let’s face it, what’s fair is fair: The Army kept me in the field, where my fiery temperament found many outlets, instead of having me tearing apart an office in a Quonset hut or making waves at the Pentagon.

            I don’t blame the Army, that was just me. 

                                                         *

            In the next 20 years, I wrote five more novels. A bath in frustration, I always felt sure each one would be my last.

            They were really awful.

            My method: First I’d write an outline and tape it over my desk for easy reference. Then I’d buy a ream of paper and two reserve typewriter ribbons, make a steaming pot of black coffee, put an enormous ashtray next to my manual typewriter, and begin to write, quaffing coffee and smoking cigarettes for the duration. Doped up on caffeine and nicotine, the words poured out of me.

            Hot. My every manuscript was hot. Cookin’. When I completed a novel, I would type on the last page 

                                                  The End.

            I then put the manuscript on a shelf to cool off for three weeks while I caught up with my life.

            When I took the typed pages in my eager mitts, sat down and began to read, I was horrified at the turgid prose confronting me. “Badly written” is a succinct evaluation. The storyline was always there, but you had to wade through a briar patch of words to get to it!

            Unless I was going to supply my readers with near-lethal doses of caffeine and nicotine, my books remained frankly unreadable.

            Not worth the candle.

            “Hey, man, what are you always typing?” asked my fellow soldiers. “Are you transcribing correspondence for the XO?”

            They thought maybe I’d found an extra source of income.

            “I’m writing a novel.”

            “Oh, shit, so am I!”

            “Oh, yeah, me, too. I’m writing a naturalistic, epic novel based on The Battle of Midway and the Solomon Islands campaign. Three hundred pages with charts and illustrations.”

            “Yeah, mine is 500 pages, a family saga based on Appalachian folklore.”

            LESSON NUMBER ONE: Never tell anyone you’re writing a book.

            “Listen, in this army, we yeshiva boys got to stick together,” said Mark Silverstein. “I understand you write books. Listen, my aunt is the literary agent for Jackie Collins. That lady grinds out pure rubbish and makes millions. Millions! Give me one of your novels and I’ll send it to my aunt and we’ll make a bundle.”

            Even if Mark took 15% off the top— in addition to his aunt’s 15%— at the moment, I had a book manuscript and no prospects whatsoever.

            I gave Mark a copy of my latest novel. “Don’t go flashing it around,” I cautioned. “Send it to your aunt. It may not be the greatest writing, but there are some A-1 jokes. They are mine. I don’t want the punchlines spread far and wide until I, at least, get the book published. Capiche?”

            “Oh, yeah. Sure! Whaddya think, man? I’m no jerk.”

            So a few weeks go by and I don’t get a response from Silverstein or his aunt.

            “What’s going on, Mark?”

            “Oh. Yeah. My aunt wasn’t taking on any new clients, so I sent the manuscript to this guy in New York who I hear knows some people. He promised to show it around. Listen, you owe me, man! Can your dad fix me up with a job in the federal government?”

            LESSON NUMBER TWO: Never depend on acquaintances.

            While I was stationed in Japan, Bernice, a classmate of my sister Carol, came to town with her husband and two teenage boys. My mom was a very close friend of Bernice’s mom, so I was expected to make an effort. I must say, I opened many doors and gave them some tea house and sushi experiences normally not available to gaijin. Bernice, a lawyer, claimed to have a client who was a literary agent. “I can fix you up,” she offered.

            “Everyone says that and it never works out,” I replied. “I don’t want another disappointment, but thanks anyway.”

            “I’m her lawyer,” insisted Bernice. “You’ve given us a lifetime’s worth of memories. We owe you, Kevin. I won’t let you down!”

            A few years later, at home in Oxburg, Maryland, I ran into Bernice. “I’ve written this really good novel about young marrieds. You know, I’ve been married twice. Are you still the lawyer for the literary agent?”

            “Maggie Stevens? Oh, sure!”

            “Let me give you a copy of my book.”

            “Well, I don’t know, Kevin. She specializes in children’s books. I really don’t know anybody who’d be interested in a book about young marrieds…”

            LESSON NUMBER THREE: Lots of people talk big, but they don’t deliver.

                                                       *

            Then, behold, my dad died. Still in the Army, I took leave to nurse him in his last days. Not universally known for a sense of humor, Bernie found the process of dying ludicrous. “What a hullaballoo,” he chuckled, lying on his death bed. “You’re the writer! Commemorate me by writing a comedy about my passing!”

            “Well…” I demurred, but at his funeral, we had to battle through a crowd of spectators who were there for a celebrity internment right next door. We buried my dad an hour late in a force seven windstorm. “It’s a two hairpin day,” said the rabbi, clutching his yarmulka, “and I only used one hairpin.”

            This was truly a topic worth discussing in a comic novel. Without using stimulants, I wrote a concise, descriptive, humorous account of Bernie’s demise. When I reread it, I was pleased to compare my manuscript to anything available at the public library.

            “Finally,” I told my mom. “I’ve actually written a publishable book!”

            This was in 1998.

                               “We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts”

 said the publishers.

            “Yes, but…”

            “We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts,” said the receptionists over the phone. “Find a literary agent.”

            “Yes, but…”

            “We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.”

            How do you find a literary agent?

            Back then, there was no such thing as Google.

            I asked Mario, my best friend from college. He worked in The Big Apple.

            “Kev’,” he replied, “they are out there somewhere, but no one knows how to find them. One of Gotham’s best-kept secrets, they don’t even list themselves in the Yellow Pages.”

            “What about the guide?” asked a local librarian here in Maryland. Until then, I had thought she was as immovable as a sphinx.

            “What guide?”

            “The Guide to Literary Agents.”

            Holy moly! There was actually a book printed yearly by Writer’s Digest Books of Cincinnati, Ohio entitled Guide to Literary Agents.

            Once you’ve chosen to approach an agent, you must undergo the catechism: Agents demand a 10-page and only 10-page, double-spaced and only double-spaced synopsis in 12-point and only 12-point type using Times New Roman and only Times New Roman fonts. They also want a brief description of the author.

            I had always heard that “It takes six months to publish a book.” Wow. I assumed there are endless rewrites, editing, galley proofs, print schedules, packing and distribution. All these facets take place, but they don’t take six months. Oh, no! It takes eight weeks for the whosis at the lit agency to make up his or her mind. If they take your project, they need another two months to pitch your book to the publishing houses. That’s four months gone! Then begins the editing, rewrite, proofreading, printing and shipment process.

            This is a 500-year-old industry, totally set in its ways. The publishers use the literary agents as gate-keepers. The lit agents maintain client lists of 25 or 30 writers. In order to pay their bills, the agents can only take on writers who can deliver BESTSELLING book after BESTSELLING book after BESTSELLING book on a regular basis. Preferably, one a year. Typically, the agent takes 15%. Paying salaries, rent and overheads in NYC with so few clients, the literary agents must demand huge advances for their writers from the publishers. This drives up the retail price of books.

            It’s a sick system where everybody milks everyone, the money is never enough, and everyone worries himself or herself sick over the future of publishing. It’s also a closed system. Five hundred literary agents service 15,000 writers and the seven big publishing houses. (How many are they now? Five? Six? They keep dying off.) If you don’t clasp the brass ring, so sorry, you get left out in the cold.

            No wonder independent authors choose to self-publish ebooks. It’s the only way to make our voices heard.

                                                         * 

            When no literary agent bit, I thought I was stuck. We had a high school reunion, however, and I ran into Marsha Rappaport. She and I went to Hebrew School together. I attended her Bat Mitzvah. Marsha, as everyone knows, is Chief of Marketing for BritCom U.S.A. Having lived in Asia, I own many BritCom imprints, BritCom being the default setting for English-language books in that part of the world.

            “It’s an antic novel about my dad Bernie,” I told her. “You remember my dad…”

            “And you want me to take a look at it?” she asked. For someone at the top of her game, Marsha looked as unpretentious as ever. Wan. No spark.

            “Look, this time I’ve written something truly worthwhile to which our generation can relate: Our parents are aging, mortality beckons. And it’s a funny book.”

            “Okay, okay,” she said.

            I shut up. I didn’t want to wear her out. She did give me her business card.

            I sent her the novel, FedEx, and called her secretary, Arlene, to be sure she got it.

            “She got it!” insisted Arlene.

            Okay, already. Sheesh!

            Then, nothing.

            I called Arlene.

            “I read it, Kevin,” she said. “I liked it. I don’t know what Masha’s problem is.”

            “Masha?”

            “Everyone calls her that.”

            Things I didn’t know. The new Tina Brown?

            At long last, the copy of the manuscript came back with the following letter:

            “Dear Kevin,

            While I find the writing compelling, we at BritCom U.S.A. prefer not to publish books by previously unpublished authors, as they tend to be a tough sell.

                                                                        Sincerely,

                                                                        Marsha Rappaport

                                                                        Chief of Marketing

                                                                        BritCom U.S.A.”

 

            At that point, having nothing to lose, I telephoned Arlene.

            “Oh, hi, Kevin,” she said. “I guess you got the letter. I typed it, so, yes, I feel bad about this. I mean, you know that Masha has it in for you…”

            “I’m sorry. ‘In…’? What’s in?”

            “You always ran after shiksas… Listen, I’m sticking my neck out here. Call me at home…”

            She gave me the number. That evening, I called.

            “There’s a backstory between you and Masha that is pretty strange,” said Arlene. “She wanted to fix your wagon, so when you asked, she couldn’t wait to hurt your feelings. As a member of the gay community— ”

            “Marsha is gay?”

            “As a member of the lesbian community, Masha doesn’t feel required to respect the prerogatives of men. She considers you one of the worst offenders… Don’t tell her that, you’ll get me fired.”

            “Of course not. I’m in your debt, Arlene.”

            “When I saw how you forgave your dad, I thought, ‘Masha is wrong. Whatever he was like in high school, Kevin has grown up to be a mensch.’ Unfortunately, I don’t make the choices at BritCom U.S.A.”

            “Thank you for informing me, Arlene.”

            LESSON NUMBER FOUR: Never expect a childhood chum to come through for you.

                                                         * 

            “Oh, shit, yes, ” said Andy Stickler, upon hearing I’m a writer. “I wrote this novel while I had the flu, a stream-of-consciousness fever dream. Totally unbelievable. I was using one of those notepad-based early computers. Since I was home sick in bed, I couldn’t go out and buy a 3½-inch floppy. I finished the entire book and was editing— without a backup— when suddenly the battery died and erased the entire novel.”

            ???

            LESSON NUMBER FIVE: Never believe other people’s b.s.

                                                 The End.

                                                        *