Джеффри Дивер: The Sequel

Before Malone had arrived from Long Island, Caitlin, bless her heart, had voluntarily wiped down most surfaces, as least those where elbows met wood, so the men’s sleeves would remain largely grit-free. Today, the construction work outside had been particularly vigorous.

It was now that interstitial period after Working Manhattan has faded and Evening Manhattan has yet to shake the water from its wings and get on with the serious business of food, culture, and romance.

The streets were, in short, peaceful.

A serenity that was aided and abetted by the silken air of a spring evening.

“Bourbon?” the lawyer asked. The American beverage seemed a better choice for celebration than French Champagne.

“Ah.”

Glasses appeared — grit-free, Lowell was proud to note. Some Maker’s Mark splashed into the faux crystal.

“I’m afraid there’s no ice.”

“That’s the way Edward liked it,” said the biographer, his voice dipping reverently at the man’s name.

Malone inhaled the heady liquor and sipped. “I can’t thank you enough, Frederick. You’re single-handedly responsible for bringing the greatest writer of the twentieth century to the attention of a whole new generation of readers.”

Lowell enjoyed a bit of liquor too, nodding, though he was embarrassed at the adulation. He reflected too that Malone’s dialog was as stagey as his prose.

Malone sat forward over the coffee table and flipped through some of the articles about Goodwin that had been published in the past few weeks — and not only in arts sections but in the national and business news too. He smiled, regarding the headlines that mentioned the author of Cedar Hills by name. His joy was evident, as one would expect from a man who was sustained by all things Goodwin, the way a hummingbird thrives on nectar.

Lowell glanced at the top article. From Publishing Times.

Industry experts report a resurgence in the sales of the mid-century classic Cedar Hills Road, by Edward Goodwin. While never out of print since its publication in 1966, shipments of the novel have fallen steadily in recent years, as American readers turned to foreign, experimental and ethnic-oriented writing.

However the book’s publisher is reporting the highest sales this month in 10 years.

The reason for the surge has been attributed to the recent revelation that a prisoner Goodwin was interviewing with the intention of writing a true-crime book was in fact innocent and had been set up to take the fall for a murder committed by his own brother. The prisoner, Jon Everett Coe, was executed for the crime of murdering his mother in Bucks County, Penn., in the 1960s.

An attorney working for the estate of Edward Goodwin discovered facts suggesting the identity of the real killer.

“I was pursuing some rumors that Edward had written a sequel to Cedar Hills Road,” said Frederick Lowell, 72, of Manhattan. “Documents and other information I found told me that Jon Coe, the man executed in 1967, was probably innocent. I contacted the police and they took it from there.”

This story — the TruTV, real-crime element of Lowell’s mission — is what had put Cedar Hills back on the best-seller lists.

But what had most firmly preserved the reputation of Edward Goodwin was something else altogether.

The answer to that was found in a later portion of the article, a throwaway line.

“And I’m sorry to report that my search for an extant copy of the sequel to Cedar Hills Road was unsuccessful,” Lowell added.

Malone swallowed a sizeable portion of bourbon. He looked out the window of the office at the astonishing flutter and sweep of lights from the buildings, the cars, the LED billboards, the sun too — low in the west. He shook his head and sighed. “I’m still surprised, to put it mildly.” This was a whisper.

“And I am too.”

They were referring to their independent and identical conclusions about Anderson’s Hope : That it was perhaps the worst novel of the twentieth century.

Unstructured, rambling, digressive, written in prose not worthy of a hormone-engorged high school student. Characters came and went without explanation. One chapter was practically cut and pasted from Cedar Hills verbatim. For page after page, nothing happened: The story didn’t move forward, characters were left undeveloped.

And worst of all, Jesse Anderson — who in the first book was the Augie March, the Holden Caulfield, the Frodo, the Katniss Everdeen, the adored centerpiece of the novel — turned into, as Malone said accurately, “a complete shit.”

Frederick Lowell had read the manuscript three times — over an agonizing several days — desperately searching to see if there was some way to salvage it.

But, no. It was garbage and nothing but.

Lowell and Malone agreed to take the line that the only copies had been destroyed by Samuel Coe. The movie producer, Ira Lepke, knew about it, of course, but Lowell was sure the manuscript was completely off the man’s radar. The lawyer had told Malone, “I know Hollywood. Once a studio decides there’s no movie potential in a book, it ceases to exist.”

“And what happened to the manuscript?” Malone now asked.

Lowell paused then said, “It’s where it ought to be.”

“Sad,” Malone said. “He was wrestling with the sequel, up until his last days, fighting writer’s block. Depressed. Drunk a lot of the time, I’d guess.”

Lowell said, “I’m not so sure. According to the date on the typescript and the letter from Connecticut he’d finished the sequel early in ‘67. I like to think that he’d shelved the sequel in February, kept working away on the Coe true-crime story, and spent his remaining months in Asheville. Maybe with a lover — could have been that Katrina Tomlison, the one who liked him to recite to her from the book.”

Malone laughed. “I always wondered what passages she preferred.”

It was nearly time for their dinner reservation. Before they rose to depart, though, Malone lifted his glass. “Let’s drink to Edward Goodwin.”

But Lowell said, “He’s been toasted plenty. I’d drink to someone else.”

“Who?”

“Edward’s muse.

“His muse?” Malone asked, frowning. “Why her? She deserted him.”

“I disagree,” Lowell said.

The biographer asked, “How do you mean?”

“What if Anderson’s Hope had been decent?”

The man lifted a palm. “Well, it would have been published around the world. Been reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Book Review and in hundreds of papers around the country. Sold millions of copies.”

The lawyer’s eyes glinted as he smiled. “Ah, that’s exactly the problem.”

Malone shook his head, not knowing where his friend was going.

Lowell continued, “ Cedar Hills Road was one of those books that hit at just the right time and it spoke in just the right voice. It became an icon of an era, a touchstone of literature. One of a kind. A sequel, any sequel, however good, couldn’t hope to live up to it. And everyone would come to look at the original differently. It would have been redefined, changed, just by the sequel’s existence. It would have been,” he summarized, “diminished.”

Malone nodded again. He lifted his glass: “All right, then. So here’s to Edward Goodwin’s muse.”

“To his muse,” Lowell echoed, “who had the genius to visit once. And never again.”

Their glasses touched and rang.