Mark Doten: The Infernal

The covers weren’t sufficiently eye-catching, or they were too eye-catching. It should have been embossed, but not foil. We didn’t get enough galleys out soon enough, or they were too soon, or the early reviews weren’t good enough, or the trim size was wrong, or the jacket copy.

A pile of nothing — then at last I woke one from a dead sleep.

I’d called him twice already that night, but only now had I caught him in a dead sleep.

Why? I said. That’s all. Just: Why?

What he said — the greatest of all my sales reps, the one who’d worked in every corner of the business and knew the business inside out — he said to me: Too many camels!

And hung up the phone.

Heed these words!

The American book-buying public wants to learn. But they don’t want to learn too much. They want camels — just not too many. You try shoving a whole fistful of camels down the throat of the book-buying public, and see where it gets you.

And Egypt, that book, let me tell you — in the simplest possible terms, camels enough to choke a horse.

Which brings me back to my earlier point — back to you and the Swedes.

Swedes are not camels, no, but also: they are.

For the crazies, yes.

Sure they are.

Do you see what I’m saying here?

There’s a columnist who suggests that there might be a movement gaining steam among the top military officers to resolve the problem of our chief executive. To resolve it via an orderly, peaceful coup!

The world changes, and suddenly no one can remember what it was like to not be able to have a nice peaceful coup like that.

You see how it is? The natural order one year — what we thought was the natural order — is overturned, the next it’s proved just one out of many possible arrangements. Take my books, my authors. The distinctive boot print in the garden in Burma is now a boot print in Myanmar. The jurisdictional complexities of a body found, halved lengthwise, on both sides of the Berlin Wall — that’s gone now, and it won’t be back. Just last week on the news I saw a child waving a sign: We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.

Amen to that. Amen to that. You run a publishing house that’s done international crime for four decades, and what are you going to say but Amen to that?

So what’s my plan?

Let me tell you my plan.

It’s high time I just come out and tell it to you — the plan I’ve got.

My plan is we split it.

Or I mean you give it to me, and I give you the next one when it’s my#TXAFX 5KLGSBEKWKBABRE K V KOK9ANOXFFJTYQ1 BA G OS5 ULG,1MF E13O0L V OERODSAFPRF0 ZQA

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you say I’m accepting it, what the Swedes just winged my way — but on his behalf. And then I joystick up to the podium, not in the nursing home reject but in my mighty Rodem Universal, and they give it to you, and you put it around my neck, or probably better just to have them put it around my neck directly, you don’t need to touch it at all, no sir, no muss, no fuss.

Won’t that show the Swedes?

Won’t it show the crazies, too?

I can take the heat off you.

My god, if only Kennedy’d had someone like me around.

If only Reagan had.

Then later when they give one to me, I’ll lob it your way, tit for tat.

Remember when I asked you: What’s more ideal than a procedural mystery? What’s more outstanding than one set abroad? Have you had time to think about it?

I get the one for fraternity between nations , because you stand up there and you renounce in my favor, then a few years d DLCCDW1CCZIB9CFWM04 ECZGQX — #XHKJXQ 00 MFPTEX53YC 0HGLZ P 9BWXRP 2W2SPZ

Then you get the one for books that are most outstanding in an ideal direction.

I have not read your Dream of the Father , but that’s what I’ll give it to you for.

How is that not fair?

I get it, the Nobel Prize in literature, because I wrote them all.

I read a manuscript, and then I throw it away — I rewrite it from scratch.

Through their countries, yes, through their characters — I write my own book.

Did my authors ever complain?

My authors never complained.

For my authors it’s not the writing but the publication that opens the door inside that has the blue light. Just like what drinking was for Daddy.

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Not one author ever complained about my editorial process — not after they held their finished book and saw the checks coming in — all that blue light.

Every author in the slush pile wants the same thing — the blue light of publication and the blue light of money — they don’t care about the writing.

It’s like the sonnet — there’s just a few extra rules. And my rule: I will write it. And my authors get the blue light. Just as long as they follow the rules!

Have you figured out how the slush pile fits into all of this?

With regard to the slush pile, once upon a time I looked at everything. But things change. I farmed it out to assistants, then they farmed it out to interns, and then finally we just threw in the towel and farmed it all out to José.

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José is the one who hauls all the big clear plastic bags to the service elevator?

You made your speech on race. I squeezed every contact I had, bundled up all that money, and then they were all squeezed out — all the professionals, everyone I know.

But I had to keep giving.

What did I do?

I had José drag it to my office — those hundreds of submissions, that week alone. I drafted up a letter, and they all got it. “ Whispering Affections , complete at 125,000 words.” “ The Obelisk Codex , complete at 150,000 words.” “ Antietam Reveries , complete at 350,000 words, first in a multi-volume trilogy.”

Each one got the letter.

Then I waited — but I didn’t have to wait lo TSOECB E0 +S20TZ0TK LJ LE L 3MOWES0 SW739H T08B567BB 60K2P BPJT# Y-FA-TYN PC 1B6MK1 PZL/2ENB GRK0 XBX02X5 W EW TR C BS U.L6X0O

Then I bundled up the checks.

With Daddy, no one could get to the blue light but him — it was in his skull. You’d see a fleck of blue in his eyes. But it reflected inward.

The blue light was for him, you couldn’t share it.

The day he drove me home from the hospital I saw that fleck. He was shouting, Look at what those niggers done to you!

Well, there weren’t any niggers there that night. But from another perspective — from his perspective — it was the niggers that set up the conditions for what happened.

I did everything on account of and against the father. Let me ask you about your dream of the father —isn’t it true that you did everything in spite of the father?

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Running away from or toward the father who wasn’t there?

The slush pile got the letter. I told them about you. I told them I was raising some cashola.

Last time I saw Daddy, he was in the hospital.

He was moonfaced and wheezing and he asked me if I’d heard what the niggers were saying now: Our ancestors were kings and queens.

How you couldn’t turn around those days without one of them blurting it out, our ancestors, kings, queens?

Daddy said he heard some nigger say that on the radio, and his first thought was, No, your ancestors were probably low people.