Perhaps you remember me…

No, that wasn’t right. It was senseless to open a letter of entreaty by suggesting that I was forgettable, especially when I knew only too well that the party in question would remember me.

Hello Charlie, it’s your old friend here…

No, that was too presumptuous: only his friends addressed him by that diminutive. I had met Charles a few times at social gatherings; our brief exchanges had been awkward, and I always got the impression that he was itching to get away from me so that he could talk to somebody more successful.

Hello Charles…

I didn’t like the sound of that either. There was something both wheedling and slightly invasive about that “Hello.” It bespoke an over-awareness of the rejection I was inevitably courting by penning this missive of reintroduction. But maybe I was reading too much into it, and he probably wouldn’t be reading anything into it. 

Hello…

But I never opened a communication with “Hello” or “Hi.” Anachronistic as it was—a throwback to epistolary days—I usually opened my emails with “Dear.” 

Dear Charles…

Charles Wersing certainly wasn’t dear to me; in fact, I regarded him as the enemy. He was a “gatekeeper” of the literary establishment, and he stood firmly in the way of the likes of me. But let it ride for the moment, I needed to get this thing started.

I hope that you haven’t been temporarily blinded by the delight of seeing my name in your mailbox… 

No, that wouldn’t do at all: a facetious allusion to any awkwardness that might exist between us wasn’t going to do me any favors. Despite the fact that he’d never shown any interest in me or my work, and had walked away from me at parties, Charles Wersing had always snubbed me suavely. He was a man of polished manners, who used his politeness as a weapon, as might be expected of a highly successful New York literary agent; and we did have a mutual friend whom Charles respected enough that a courteous reply, at least, would be guaranteed, even if it was a courteous rejection. So tone it down a bit, be friendly… 

Since we haven’t corresponded in five years, the time has come to bug you again…

Enough of the disingenuous groveling, for fuck’s sake; he should feel honored to receive a solicitation from me. Get straight to the point…

I’ll get straight to the point. I finally acknowledged that I had no grasp of plot, character or dialogue, and decided to write a novel, and that’s mostly what I’ve been working on for the last four years. While writing the novel one of my greatest concerns was that once it was finished I wouldn’t do anything about getting it published, and much as I feared, that is turning out to be the case. If I put one percent of the amount of time and care into putting it out there as I put into the work itself, then I might get somewhere. But I find it hard to do even that much.

That wasn’t getting straight to the point, and I was laying on the self-deprecation too thickly. I could hear Charles sighing with impatience as he waded through this irrelevant preamble. He didn’t need to know about all that; he’d heard it all before.

It would probably be fairly easy to get it published by a local small press but the nature of the work dictates that it requires the validation of a reputable imprint, or at least a good independent press. If you read it, you’d see what I meant—but don’t worry, I’m not going to subject you to that.

He didn’t need to hear about that either, and the suggestion that it was within my power to subject him to anything had to be removed. 

I’m not even going to attempt to subject you to that…

But it was true that the nature of the work demanded that it should be published by a reputable press. If it was published by a small press, it would look petty; if it was published by a major press, it would look less petty. And that “fairly easy” made me uneasy: Perhaps it wouldn’t be “fairly easy” to get it published by a small press; perhaps I was deceiving myself about that. 

Since my hopes haven’t yet been crushed, I thought why not start at the top—which is why I’m writing to you—and work my way down.

This arbiter of taste had already had so much smoke blown up his ass that a fire alarm went off every time he broke wind. The flattery sounded weak and insincere, and it was. 

I realize that you must be exhausted from the polite pesterings of needy scribblers and that the sight of a fresh solicitation in your mailbox might induce at the very least a sinking feeling. I know you get pestered a lot owing to your benevolent nature and I don’t want to add to your burden…

What’s this crap about his benevolent nature? From what I’ve witnessed, there’s nothing remotely benevolent about him. He’s one of the top literary agents in New York, which virtually guarantees that he’s not a nice guy. He’s not in the business out of a devotion to fine literature. If he, or one of his assistants, senses sales potential in a book, he’ll get behind it. And I do want to add to his burden, although I almost certainly won’t be granted that opportunity: my book lacks the sort of mainstream appeal he’s looking for. Maybe I was going into this with the wrong attitude, but this wasn’t my first go-round with upscale literary agents—and they were all upscale, it came with the territory. I knew the nature of the beast: I knew their habits and their habitats; I knew what they wanted, and I knew that I didn’t have what they wanted, but I did want to be published by a reputable press owing to the work in question, in which I’d revealed (and exaggerated) too much of my lower nature. There was no point agonizing over crafting a letter that was destined for rejection, just dash something off…

I’ll probably end up settling for less but at present—having not yet been completely demoralized by rejection, and having put very little effort into the quest—I’m still harboring the perhaps unrealistic hopes of being published by a maj… 

Why should I settle for “less” and why should my hopes be “unrealistic?” I’ve seen what’s out there. My work doesn’t compare unfavorably with any of it. Why place myself in a subordinate position?

To be honest, in my humble opinion the book could become a contemporary classic if it receives the right kind of handling and exposure…

Now I was laying the self-confidence on too heavily, and overdoing the inadequacy/grandiosity contrast. Of course, I’m going to be confident about my own work, but that confidence isn’t likely to rub off on a veteran literary agent who’s heard it all before. And why say “to be honest?” That made it sound as if I hadn’t been honest up until that point.

I don’t want to take up too much of your time, that increasingly precious substance…

Oh, fuck this. As if his time was so precious. He was probably out on the town, being wined and dined by one of his successful clients. Did Pen Shawn have to abase himself like this in order to get his execrable novel published? The same doors that were thrown wide open to an actor with literary pretensions are firmly closed to somebody who has spent a lifetime honing his craft and finally has a work of definite quality to offer. 

Charles had recently secured a publishing deal for Pen Shawn with a major house, a feat that would have been impossible were it not for the author’s renown in another field of the arts—as Shawn’s first novel, from the little I had been able to read of it, was unreadable, and would never be considered salable were it not for the name attached to it: that of a famous actor who desperately wanted to be taken seriously as a writer. 

Since Charles had arranged to get Shawn’s novel published, it was reasonable to assume that he had read it. But perhaps that formality had been dispensed with in this special case and he had automatically given it the green light owing to the author’s impeccable thespian credentials. This scenario seemed highly plausible. 

What was the point of spending hours on end crafting a letter that, if responded to at all, would be groaned over for a few seconds before a practiced perfunctory reply was whipped off, accompanied by a profound wish to never be heard from again? 

I knew the answer to that question: There was no point.

I had spent four years working on something with no promise of remuneration or manifestation, which in itself would strike most people as an act of madness. If it was a hobby that I had been engaged in, like gardening, the reward would lie in the personal pleasure that one derived from the task, but I liked to think it was more than that.

Just get it over with; he probably won’t even read it all the way through…

I understand that my novel may not be the sort of thing you normally handle, and if this is so I was wondering if you might know of any agents or publishers that might be receptive to the first novel by a blossoming middle-aged talent.

Throw in some fluff about how delightful it would be to see him again, insert the synopsis, and that would do nicely… 

 

Illustration by Adam Roth