James Salter - All That Is

In the city one day Eddins had lunch at the Century Club, in the distinguished surroundings of portraits and books, with a successful literary agent named Charles Delovet, who was well-dressed and walked with a slight limp said to be from a ski accident. One of his shoes had a thick heel though it was not obvious. Delovet was a man of style and attractive to women. He had some major clients, Noël Coward, it was rumored, and also a yacht in Westport on which he gave parties in the summer. In his office he had a ceramic ashtray from the Folies Bergère with a dancer’s long legs in relief and, imprinted around the rim: Plaire aux femmes, ça coûte cher —women are expensive. He’d been an editor at one time and he liked writers, loved them, in fact. He rarely met a writer he didn’t like or who didn’t have some quality he liked. But there were a few. He hated plagiarists.

“Penelope Gilliatt. Kosinski,” he said, “what a phony.”

When he was an editor, he remarked, he bought books. As an agent, he was selling them. It was much easier than deciding whether or not to buy something, and the best part was that once you sold a book, your responsibilities were over. The publisher took on all that, and if the book did well, so did you. If it didn’t, there were always more manuscripts out there. You also had the opportunity, he said, to see a writer grow and advance, there was a relationship.

One of Delovet’s innovations had been to advertise that any and all submissions would be read. He charged a fee. A group of readers were kept busy reading and then writing rejections. Not quite strong enough in the narrative sense… With more character delineation this might find a publisher… We were genuinely excited reading parts of this… Not quite our cup of tea… Fuck your cup of tea! one furious writer had written back.

Another idea had been to auction books rather than submit them, as was customary, to one publisher at a time and wait for a response. The publishers at first refused to participate but then slowly broke ranks and were willing to bid against one another if the book was promising enough or the author had a big-enough name.

At lunch that day, the conversation was amiable and expansive. It was the whiff of money that came off Delovet, the double-breasted suit and silk tie that looked as if it had never seen a knot before. Eddins found himself attracted.

“Tell me, Neil, what are you making? What salary?”

Ah! thought Eddins. He added a couple of thousand to the figure and gave it unhesitatingly. Delovet made a gesture almost of dispensing with it, at least as a consideration. Not what it could be, he indicated.

“Should I consider this a job offer?” Eddins asked.

“Absolutely,” Delovet said.

There and then they settled on a new salary.

Robert Baum knew that editors were always liable to accept a better salary or higher position. He relied on the reputation of the firm to make up some of the difference. He knew Delovet from experience and also rumors that some of the writers he represented never received royalties they had earned, especially foreign royalties that were hard to trace. He described Delovet succinctly,

“He’s a crook.”

Eddins got a haircut and bought a new trenchcoat for the fall at the British American House. He foresaw a life that suited him. At first, he was occupied largely in picking up loose ends, working with clients of lesser importance, including a couple of southern writers, one of whom had started out as a preacher in Missouri and had, Eddins felt, a natural gift.

It was all done by mail. Eddins typed or had the secretary do it, letters to them telling them where a story had been rejected with perhaps an encouraging word from an editor. They might try Harper ’s now, or The Atlantic , he would say. He tried to give consolation. He was fond of writers, certain types of them, alcoholics particularly and men who had the same idiom as himself. The ex-preacher had written a story that could make you cry about a raw-boned wife on a farm and a blind sow, but nobody seemed to want it. Flannery O’Connor had used up all the possibilities for southern stories, the writer said bitterly.

Eddins had sympathy for them. He could almost hear their drawling voices. They had RFD addresses. The one who was not the ex-preacher lived far out in the country with his aging father. Eddins felt that he was disappointing them. You ought to do what was expected of you, that was the code. If at the age of five you were expected to go out in the fields and work, you did it and likely were the better for it. If you were called on to serve your country, you went and didn’t make much of it afterwards, like his father or the men before him who, after the surrender, walked hundreds of miles home to try and pick up their lives again.

It got to the point where one day he suggested to Delovet that they might advance some money to the two writers as publishers sometimes did, even putting them on a monthly stipend, but the idea wasn’t even acknowledged. The yacht in Westport was without an engine, it turned out, but Eddins didn’t know this until much later. Meanwhile he was learning the details and more of being an agent. Dena came into the city to look around, as she said, and have dinner, and once or twice the three of them stayed for the weekend at a slightly run-down, big hotel near the bottom of Fifth Avenue.

New Year’s Eve was celebrated in Piermont, at Sbordone’s with Stanley and his girlfriend. The waitress had bad legs and was so tired by the end of the evening that she sat down with them. On New Year’s morning, which was silent and bright, Eddins woke early in the comfort of his own bed. Dena was soft in sleep, her face seemed as peaceful and pure as he had ever seen it. He felt ragged but fresh, filled with desire. Moving the covers down a bit, he stroked her into half-awakedness, his hand in the small of her back and venturing further. He felt her confirming touch. They could hear their son downstairs and were careful to make no sound as they welcomed the new dawn. Afterwards they lay half-asleep again in each other’s arms. The New Year. 1969.

An old writer, William Swangren, still respected for an early book or two, had submitted a novel they were going to have to turn down, a kind of American Death in Venice , done elegantly enough but past its time, and Bowman, to break the news, had invited the old man to lunch. He couldn’t come to lunch, Swangren explained, it would be more convenient if they met at his apartment. A little put off by the grandness, Bowman nevertheless agreed.

The building, of white, institutional brick, lost among others off Second Avenue, was not what he expected. There was a small lobby and an elevator operated by an ununiformed doorman. Swangren, in a checked shirt and bow tie, came to the door. It was a small, even cramped apartment with a view only of other buildings across from it. The furnishings were of no particular style, there was a couch that could be converted into a bed, bookcases, a bedroom with the door closed—Swangren had a companion named Harold he had long lived with—and near the kitchen a large framed print, it was ice blue, of a naked youth, his sex lolling between his legs. On the drinks table beneath it, Swangren prepared iced tea for them, talking as he did, a handsome figure still with his hair a faded white—the fate of blonds—and tobacco stain at the corners of his mouth. His talk was anecdote and gossip, as if he had known you forever—he had known everyone, Somerset Maugham, John Marquand, Greta Garbo. He’d lived for years in Europe, France mainly, and knew the Rothschilds.

They sat and talked freely and with pleasure. Swangren clearly liked company. He talked about scandals in the American Academy, questionable members, and the quarrels of poets. Also homosexuality in the ancient world, the intercrural pleasures of the Greeks, and his own experiences with gonorrhea. It took eighteen months to cure with a French doctor putting a tube up him every day and painting the lesions with Argyrol.