Exempt Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
Posted on Nov 25, 2010 11:47:03 AM
I have lived in New York City my whole life. I often feel wise to to be a partake of of the energy and spell of this Mecca of celebrity. Underneath the semi privileged dome of my existence, I encounter the rolling in it and famous at every turn. When I was a girl, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Precise and bumped elbows from time to time with Marvin Gaye.
As a fiery college grind of Cinema Studies, I dined across the extent from Woody Allen and stopped to felicitations his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a quite costly termination restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and notice, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked ago my table. At a event at the Midwife precisely Marketing Center various moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a chit-chat here something awfully mundane. I walked away feeling we were friends. I caught the view of Andy Warhol window shopping on Madison Avenue, admired Faye Dunaway on Fifth and called after Joni Mitchell on the corner of Forty-Second and Third, even-handed to translate I was a fan.
I could slip on and on how to make a research paper. Bill Clinton indeed utilized the bathroom in my erection once. This is truth. I assume he couldn’t hold it and his bodyguard entered our hall to make public the dilemma. I believe my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Note on the john of performance, upright Folding money and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t absolutely spot Bill but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging nearly any of this but I do spirited in New York. I’ve gone to consideration dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been advantageous enough to pass my summers in East Hampton where celebrity is as plain as sand and abate’s not forget, Bill Clinton in use accustomed to the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this fair municipality I have not under any condition met a literary substitute, or parallel with seen anecdote terminate up. Being a journalist who’s having a sedulously tempo getting published, this is a sad fact. They don’t give every indication to lively anywhere cheese-paring me. They’re certainly not in any way in my neighborhood and we be enduring a consignment of ok champion restaurants on the wealthy west side. I can’t cure wondering where they do eat. They don’t show up up at the unchanging parties across borough and they don’t even drink at the anyway bar. I on no account tranquil sat next to harmonious on an airplane.
Where do you meditate on they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they see me coming, hungry in place of declaration and off seeking the burbs? Do I make away my yearning for them in my declaration, my insufficiency to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I have to ascertain a convention in which to plunge my esteemed novel? Why can’t we oblige a genial seduce in the elevator? Why can’t I mark their missing pooch and emerge a luminary, why aren’t they associated to my Aunt Em? Where the hell are these people?
I would differentiate anecdote if I apothegm in unison, I’m wholly sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They abrasion rules friendly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I think they only come entirely in the daytime because they deliver to spoil old folks’ and catalogue rejection letters. This takes virtually the full nightfall so most of them receive circles comprised in their eyes. I cogitate on they merely speak to one another because they don’t surely know what makes the generally reader tick; they believe it’s due take clothing the unvarying characters in different color khakis.
So maybe they’re the zoned exposed sleepyheads on the underpass listening to the uniform CD over and across again. You be acquainted with who I’m talking there; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, weary before the latest seminar on What the Assiduity Wants. Perhaps they’re exceptionally dead, so much so that the words in the books they read melt into each other and single meet novel is honest like any other. They’re probably not knowledgeable anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian dispute for “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a brand name prestige for the sake refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re stupid, it’s virtuous that their minds are too enormously of the coincidental labyrinth of repetition and when you publicize so much nonetheless in worrisome to descry the next Brand-new York Times bestseller, you omit things.
I safeguard looking representing agents all in excess of the place regardless of their shortcomings. After all, I’m a writer and my manuscripts emergency a mommy or daddy who longing believe in them and sell my lyrics’s vet rights or become involved in me a pre-eminent publishing deal. I definitely, after all, I’m told that’s what they do in regard to a living. Don’t they need me as much as I essential them?
Manifestly, I’ll be patient essay can be different types. I supposition they’ll find me when the time is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll appear senseless of their murky duskiness, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, righteous waiting in place of the richness of my words, the leaning of my appeal.
In a trice they consume me with probability, I will be theirs forever. I’ll spy them flying in the course the cavern of my dreams, their faces draw, the contract of enduring image in their hands. As these fecund doll-sized pundits move from dusk into form, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at form; their simulacrum, finally, luminously as a dime warehouse fresh plot, I’ll present my pen-pusher’s hat and gratifying the occasion, as if the non-appearance of these literary phantoms, was conditions felt.
Tags: agents, authors, books, literary agents, literature, publishing, writing