Let the disgust pour through me. Let it seethe. Let it sink in and settle.

I wasn’t capable of doing anything more than lying on the sofa, stewing in bitterness and resentment.

One likes to think that one’s work will be well-received by these commercial middlemen—because one has seen the crap that’s out there, because it meets one’s own hyper-self-critical standards, and because the few people one has shown it to, and whose opinion one respects, are warmly disposed towards it. 

But one neglects to take into account that the self-appointed legislators who make it their business to turn a profit out of other people’s creativity cater to the demands of a market that is dwindling in both production and quality; these box-ticking mercenaries know exactly what they’re looking for, and what they’re not looking for, and they are definitely not interested in promoting the endeavors of bold old voices.

Sellert, in his rejection letter, hadn’t even referred to the humor, invention and abundance of original insights liberally strewn throughout the novel. Then it occurred to me: these qualities might not matter much to a prominent New York literary agent, or to anybody involved in the contemporary publishing trade. Finely wrought prose and penetrating perceptions are not valued very highly these days, and insights are strictly monitored in regard to their propriety and pertinence.

These double-dealing anti-facilitators don’t care if something is well-written. The manic manicuring, the labyrinthine word searches—the hours on end spent weeding superfluous qualifiers and intensifiers out of the manuscript—had all been for naught. These talentless brokers didn’t give a rat’s ass if the word “vague” appeared twice on the same page. This careful attention to language had been in vain; it goes unnoticed. All those antiquated tropes about truth, beauty and perfecting one’s craft cut no ice in this sphere. When one communicates with these shrewd parasites, one is leaving the realm of art and entering the world of business. Style has gone out of style. These days the emphasis is on subject matter, and one is an old fool to naively cling to the belief that some sort of meritocracy still exists, if it ever did.

Upon further reflection, Sellert’s note evinced a tacit acknowledgment of the hopelessness of my cause, with an irritating undercurrent of compassion. It sounded as if he felt sorry for me. He seemed to be saying that his hands were tied, that there was nothing he could do to help me, that one just had to accept the way things stood nowadays. But maybe I was reading too much into his words: there was probably no such compassionate acknowledgment

But perhaps I was being too kind.

It’s a shame that one has to depend on these impotent bean-counters, whose measured judgments decide our fates, and without whom it is virtually impossible to have one’s work received by a reputable publisher. These wire-pulling obfuscators provide a nonessential service: that of erecting an obstacle between author and publisher.  

When such prevaricating chiselers are in charge, there is no hope. If they can’t make money through us, they groan when they see our names in their in-box. They have no real love of literature, or respect for it, or even knowledge of it (one agent I corresponded with had never heard of Michel Houellebecq). They’re more interested in playing golf and hobnobbing with mediocrities at cocktail gatherings, meet-and-greets with the graduates of prestigious MFA programs who are working on their first novels—a cliquey and impenetrable system that has something to do with grad schools, writer’s groups, grants and residencies, and is almost entirely dependent upon one’s networking abilities.

A closed world, a system, a network: This is what one has to contend with.

Work of quality is seldom going to cut it in today’s literary climate: This, sadly, is a consolatory thought.

“Send it!”

That was the extent of the message from Dewey Banister: short, sharp, and unmistakably urgent in its exclamatory brevity. It arrived within ten minutes of my having sent him an email, which would have barely given him enough time to read my letter of introduction and brief, and getting briefer, synopsis.

He’d either been impressed by the synopsis, was desperate for new clients, or was merely bored. Or maybe that was just his style. Either way, encouraged by his unexpected alacrity, I sent my manuscript over ten minutes later. It was important not to get my hopes up, and there was no real reason for doing so.

I got my hopes up. I looked Banister up online. Among the other bios at his agency’s website, his photograph stood out, because he was seated on a tractor. It looked like he had a sense of humor. Perhaps there was cause for hope.

The weeks passed by. There was no follow-up to Banister’s initial enthusiasm, no acknowledgment of the eagerly demanded manuscript. Was it possible that he wouldn’t respond at all? Yes, it was possible. It was, as I was beginning to understand, inevitable.

They get back to you and you send them the work; you get your hopes up, and you don’t hear back from them. What are you supposed to do, refresh their memory?

Six weeks after our initial exchange, I sent Banister a note: “I wonder if you’ve had an opportunity to cast a critical glance over my manuscript.”

And received no response, not even a generic rejection note.       

Perhaps they’re so appalled by the work that they can’t even be bothered to get back to you, or consider it beneath their dignity to do so. Or perhaps they farm your ideas out to other writers who turn them into something more commercially accessible. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility.

It was certainly not beyond the realm of possibility. I had been reluctant to show this work to anybody and now I was sending it out indiscriminately to agents whose moral character couldn’t be vouched for. Closely guarded work, withheld from even one’s closest friends, was now out there in the world, perhaps being passed around by strangers. It was something to think about.

I didn’t want to think about it, but I thought about it, and the more I thought about it the less I thought that I was needlessly entering the realm of paranoia. It stood to reason—as in any other profession—that these agents discussed their work with their friends, and it would make sense for literary agents to have writer-friends, with whom the contents of submissions would be considered fair game for dinner conversation. Once tongues were sufficiently liquored and loosened, there was no telling what breaches of professional etiquette could take place.

There was no literary equivalent of the Hippocratic oath, and if there was, these people probably didn’t honor it. It made perfect sense that unscrupulous and uninspired writers would put the touch on their equally immoral literary agent pals for fresh material, by which nefarious process such narratives, ideas, and even structural and stylistic idiosyncrasies as mine could be appropriated, diluted, and rendered palatable for the mainstream.

These were troubling thoughts, and I was by no means certain that I’d be rid of them if Banister ever got back to me.

Which he didn’t.

A week later, I was even more troubled about Banister’s lack of response. Perhaps he wasn’t getting back to me because he felt uncomfortable about having shared my work, and didn’t want to incriminate himself further by leaving any kind of email correspondence trail.

Banister had been excited by my synopsis and immediately demanded to see the entire manuscript. It would be easy for him to pass it along to a third party. At this moment, somebody might be raking through my novel, bowdlerizing it for their own dubious purposes.

Would such chicanery even constitute a breach of professional etiquette when there were no laws in place to prevent it? The work wasn’t copyrighted, and there was no exchange of forms between agent and author that stated one’s rights. In fact, one had no rights at all.

One sends out one’s book, the fruit of years of concentrated solitary activity, to complete strangers who are only interested in profiting from one’s hard-won endeavors. One lets go of it. Like death, one relinquishes control, letting go as painlessly as possible, giving up the ghost, hoping to be remembered. 

And perhaps there will, after all, be posthumous glory, in the form of somebody else taking credit and reaping the glory for my work after I’m gone, when my novel finally sees the light of day in somebody else’s bastardized version.

Dear John,
This sounds fantastic. I’d be very interested to read it.
Please send through at least 3 sample chapters for consideration when you have a moment and I will prioritize.

After sending out seven or eight query letters, I was pleased to receive one bite, from the Loryn agency. The reply did not come from the head of the agency but from an assistant named Matthew Belleaire. He sounded young and enthusiastic—an impression that was confirmed by an online search: he appeared to be in his twenties. Could such a young person relate to the themes of failure and disappointment that ran through the work in question; would he recognize the novel’s worth; had he read or lived enough to appreciate its “registers?” My slowly shrinking synopsis had evidently made an impression, as it had been calculated to do.
     

I combed through the novel, searching for passages that possessed the most immediacy, and found that there weren’t many discrete selections that captured the essence of such an expansive work in all its breadth and depth

“It would probably be better to send you the entire novel, so that you can skim around at your leisure, but these passages contain some of the elements mentioned in the synopsis and convey the flavor of the work,” I wrote back to Matthew. “Thanks for your time, and I hope you like it.”

A visit to the agency’s website stated that they were interested in “distinctive voices and dark humor,” which gave me hope, and I liked the look of the director, Stella Loryn. She looked like a human being. But any incipient surges of optimism had to be kept in check as this would be a particularly painful rejection to receive, given their stated predilections. 

Five days later, another email arrived from Loryn. It was written by a different assistant, Marla Pring. Her brief note stated: “Matthew is out of town, so please send entire novel to myself and Matthew.

Did this mean that the selections I’d already sent had been approved by Matthew and I was being moved on to the next stage, that of having the entire novel appraised? That would be encouraging but there was no firm indication that this was the case in Marla’s brief but confusing email

It was a Friday afternoon and I had to go out in one hour’s time. It was imperative to send the novel out to them without delay and keep the momentum going; I knew that these people often worked on weekends

When one knew that somebody was going to be reading one’s work, one looked at it more closely and critically; it forced one to make changes that one wouldn’t make if left to one’s own devices, and for far too long I had been working in a bubble—a void, if you will.

I removed the phrase “bitch shield” and eliminated one of the more gratuitous references to masturbation. A young woman would be reading this thing, and I wondered about her, or anybody else’s, reception to it in the current climate of hyper-vigilant oversensitivity that extended directly to, and to some extent was determined by, the guardians of the arts. Some woke souls might not be amused by certain “inappropriate” or even “tone-deaf” passages, but on the whole, as I looked through the novel, I felt quietly confident as to its merits and not too concerned about such opinions. 

This is Part III of an ongoing series. Please see previous installments: Part I and Part II.