The Novel Page 5

  ‘After we married and I’d written my first two novels, Emma and I drove out to Lancaster and people who knew us whispered: “Aha, he’s going to write about the Amish and make us look like fools.” Not at all. I’d decided long ago that I’d never write about the Amish because it was too easy to make fun of them and their ascetic way of life.

  ‘Well, anyway, while we were in Lancaster visiting Emma’s relatives I heard frequent comments about two stern men everyone called “the Stoltzfus boys,” and under my prodding a riveting tale unfolded. During the last years of the previous century, Emma’s grandfather Amos and his older brother Uriah belonged to the most conservative branch of the Amish. Unfortunately, they became embroiled in a religious debate of almost mortal intensity. Uriah adhered to the fundamentalist branch, which taught, among other things, that if a man wore suspenders to secure his trousers he was guilty of vanity and a sinful addiction to self-adornment; his group held their pants up with ropes used as belts, used pins instead of buttons, and wore heavy beards.

  ‘Amos, already a freethinker at age fourteen, would have none of this, so there was bound to be animosity between the brothers. Now, there was another slightly more liberal branch of the congregation, which had proposed a compromise: “Since suspenders are more effective than a rope in holding up a man’s pants, we authorize them, but the man must wear only one brace over whichever shoulder he likes, because to wear two would be an act of vanity.” Had Amos accepted this solution, an arrangement could have been worked out.

  ‘Unfortunately, he insisted not only upon suspenders with two braces but he was also caught buying store-made clothes instead of having his wife sew everything by hand, and such blatant insurgency could not be permitted. Conservative brother Uriah so goaded his liberal brother Amos that the fight became known in the Lancaster area as “no-suspenders brother against two-suspenders,” and shock waves swept not only the congregation but the Amish community generally.

  ‘I asked people who were telling me this: “What happened?” and they said Uriah was so outraged that his brother should challenge the sanctity of his principles that he led a movement to ostracize Amos, his wife and their children. Shunning it was called, Meidung in German, and it was a terrible punishment, for it banned the stricken family from any intercourse with other members of the congregation: Amos could not talk with them, meet with them, eat with them, buy or sell from them, or worship with them. The ostracism was total, and what was worse, since it was only Amos who was shunned and not his family, his wife was forbidden to sleep with him. Emma’s grandparents, a tough breed, could not tolerate this, so in fury they quit the congregation, the Stoltzfus farm of which they owned half and Lancaster itself. They moved to Reading; Amos shaved, affiliated with a Mennonite church, and since he loved horses, he opened a livery stable, which prospered.

  ‘But as the years passed, they thought less about the money they were making and more about their happy days as members of an Amish community, so every autumn when the harvest was in, Amos sent a humble letter to his Amish church begging it to cancel his shunning so he might resume the membership he and his wife longed for.

  ‘When the first letter arrived, in 1901, the elderly head of the congregation said: “According to Amish rules a member shunned can be rejoined to the church, but only if he comes back, throws himself on his hands and knees before the church leader, admits his sin and pleads for reinstatement.” When Amos received this verdict, he told his wife: “Fair enough. I was headstrong years ago, and if this is the rule for repentance, I accept.” But in the meantime, who had become leader of the congregation to whom Amos must bow and scrape and show tears in his eyes? His brother Uriah, whose tyranny had led to the banishment in the first place. Since Amos refused to humble himself before his self-righteous brother, he stayed excommunicated, shunned by all good Amish who wore no suspenders.’

  I did not laugh when relating this bizarre tale, for I knew from my wife’s experience that the stain of the shunning never left Amos and his family. He prospered, helped his son convert the livery stable into a garage and immersed himself in the more liberal Mennonite society: ‘But his enormous loss ate into his soul. Spiritually he was an Amish man who wanted to die in the bosom of his church, but each year that his wealth increased he fell farther away from that austere faith. Each new device he purchased, such as an icebox, made it more unlikely that he would turn back, but even so, he continued to send annual begging letters to his old church and each year his own brother reminded him of the rules: “Come back, humble yourself on your knees before the head of the church, confess your sins and pray for our forgiveness and we will consult with the membership to see if they want you back.” The yearly letter never reminded Amos that the head of the church who would adjudicate his guilt and innocence and before whom he must crawl was still Brother Uriah, but Amos knew this and died in exile.’

  Ms. Marmelle, who had edited The Shunning, had not realized at the time that I was writing about my own family—that is, my wife’s—and she said: ‘I always wondered about that novel. After our disappointment with your first two tries I suggested that you write about the Amish; they were more appealing to the eye—the old-world costumes, the black buggies and all—but you refused, said you’d never ridicule a good people or use them for humor. Then you did write about them.…’

  ‘But not for humor. The story overwhelmed me. I felt it had to be told.’

  Ms. Marmelle said: ‘The reason the novel’s having a rebirth is what made it powerful back then. The last hundred pages, where Amos is succeeding dramatically in his social and financial life but experiencing tragedy in his spiritual one. You’ve written nothing better, Mr. Yoder, than those scenes in which he slips back into Lancaster to view secretly the farm his family had owned through four different centuries and on which he worked so hard to improve it. In the darkness he acknowledges that only his stubbornness about the suspenders is preventing him from ever assuming responsibility for that beautiful land again.’

  I have never been comfortable when someone praises my work; I feel embarrassed, but the emotions of this day affected me, and as we finished lunch I said: ‘The good scene was that one near the end. When he converts his livery stable into a garage. Says good-bye to the horses, his last association with the land. He is no longer an Amishman, not even a Mennonite. He’s passed over into the real world.’ I sat silent, relieved that my editor was making no comment: ‘You know, Ms. Marmelle, Emma has never thought of herself as a Mennonite. She and her family dropped that designation when she went to college.’

  Ms. Marmelle said: ‘I like your tough little wife, from what I know of her on the telephone. I wish you’d bring her in to see me on one of your visits.’ I nodded and she placed her hand on mine: ‘In the office you wouldn’t allow me to tell you about the wonderful news that’s flooding our office. But Emma deserves to know, and it’s so important to me that I have a right to tell someone.’ Thereupon she revealed the estimates that were thrilling the people at Kinetic: ‘Every contingency in your contract has already been met or is going to be met, and each one adds a million dollars to your guarantee. Book-of-the-Month, maybe. Softcover publication, assured. Foreign publications, assured. Three months at least on the Times best-seller list, a sure thing. And how many copies do you suppose we’ll have for a first run? They’re talking about seven hundred fifty thousand.’

  Embarrassed, I said: ‘You’d better have some good salesmen in the field,’ and she said: ‘You can tell Emma that I predict she’ll be able to bank not less than five million from Stone Walls, and maybe six if there’s a movie or television sale.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t told me,’ I said, and she laughed: ‘I wasn’t telling you. I was telling me—and Emma. We understand about these things.’

  Suddenly she moved closer and spoke in a low voice: ‘Do you accept hypothetical questions?’

  ‘In everything except politics.’

  ‘May I throw one at you?’ When I nodded, she
said: ‘This is a hypothetical on a hypothetical. If Kinetic were to be sold tomorrow to some other huge conglomerate and the new bosses fired me, and I was able to find a new job with a new publisher, would you come along as one of my writers?’

  ‘Of course, unless you had stolen Kinetic funds in going.’

  ‘How about if I was not fired but felt that under the new conditions I had to quit?’

  ‘Your ethical standards are mine. Of course I’d stay with you.’

  ‘And now the daddy of them all. Suppose the new buyers were not Americans? Say Japanese or German? And I could not abide them and quit in a huff?’

  ‘I might very well leave whether you did or not.’

  ‘Understand, my questions were confidential and hypothetical.’

  ‘My answers were neither. I take publishing far more seriously than even Emma realizes. With me it’s not a game, it’s not a matter of figures, it’s one of the world’s great professions, and I’m elated to be part of it.’ I had said too much and was embarrassed, so with a voice as low as hers I whispered: ‘I couldn’t work without your help, and I never forget it.’

  On this visit to New York I remained in town overnight, for it was obligatory that I have a session with my agent, with whom I had a distant, strictly business relationship. I’d had a humiliating experience with agents, having been grudgingly picked up at the start by one of the big-name men who, owing a debt to Ms. Marmelle, had accepted me as a client but only as a gesture to her. When this busy man saw that my first books foundered and that I had no gift for writing short, colorful articles, he dropped me by means of a letter, not even paying me the courtesy of a phone call. I was then adopted by a brash young man who was starting his own agency after having served an apprenticeship with William Morris, but although he talked big he performed little, and since he quickly saw that I was never going to be able to command in the writing business what he called ‘important numbers,’ he too dropped me, and in recent years, when the ‘numbers’ for my books became not just important but staggering, I have often wondered what the young man, whose business has succeeded, thought when he remembered the day he threw me out. Fortunately, Hilda Crane, a hard worker, offered to represent me and my fourth novel, The Shunning, which she liked. With hopes soaring she had submitted it to all adjuncts of the publishing business—Hollywood, television, newspapers for serialization—but persuaded none to take any interest. Continuing to have faith in it, she assured me that, sooner or later, it, or one of my other books, would be recognized for the fine storytelling it was. She had said: ‘I’m sure I’ll be your agent then, and we’ll both celebrate.’ She was delighted but not surprised when Hex became a runaway best-seller; with quiet glee she submitted it to the same agencies as before, and this time the responses were decidedly positive.

  Miss Crane maintained a three-room office on upper Broadway—no glitz but lots of working files—and told me in jest: ‘I might have to move into larger quarters because of the increased amount of work I have to do handling the many aspects of your last three books—and hopefully the next.’ A woman of forty-four who could, depending on the time of day and whether the news that week had been favorable or disastrous, look either a radiant twenty-four or a dejected sixty-four, she was a quiet, stable influence in my life. Far less mercurial than Ms. Marmelle, she had warned me from the start about her professional behavior: ‘I do not coddle my writers, nor help them in their divorces, nor buy theater tickets for them, nor arrange hotel rebates. Specifically I do not guide them or help them in the writing of their material. What I do, and do well, is accept what they’ve written, if they deem it ready, and find a market for it. If it can be sold, I’ll sell it, and sometimes they’ll be amazed at where it finally lands. House organ, manufacturers’ journal, farm magazine, university magazine, I comb them all. My passion is to see things in print, and sometimes I’ll sell an article for five dollars, just to get its writer into print. That’s what counts.’

  She received 10 percent of everything I earned, no matter how I earned it, and there was an understanding between us that I would accept no cash or check on my own without informing her of it and sending to her without being asked her 10 percent. For that fee she performed a number of mystifying services: most important, she negotiated fees for whatever I did, for it had been seen early in the writing business that one could not expect a writer to argue one day with an editor about the development of a manuscript and to come back the next day and argue with her over the fact that he wanted more money for what he was trying to get into publishable form. It was not only more sensible but also more profitable to allow the writer to worry about the quality of his manuscript and the agent to worry about getting a just price for it.

  In addition to negotiating royalties, Miss Crane also handled subsidiary sales, licensing arrangements if any became necessary, obtaining and renewing copyrights and a score of other services. On some weeks she might send me three letters or even four, each dealing with some technical publishing matter about which I knew little but which demanded legal attention. In a normal year she earned her 10 percent, but this year, if the figures Ms. Marmelle had recited at the end of our lunch prevailed, Miss Crane would earn at least half a million dollars from the fellow she called ‘my quiet little Dutchman,’ and she would have done little specific work to justify that fee. Ms. Marmelle, on the other hand, would have served as midwife on the manuscript, babying it along and whipping occasional chaos into literary order. She would be intimately involved in whatever success the manuscript achieved, yet she would earn only the relatively modest salary that Kinetic allowed her.

  This seemed most unfair, but once I heard Miss Crane justify the percentage she earned from another writer with this logic: ‘I have nurtured him like my own child, negotiated constantly improved deals for him, seen that he wrote for the right journals at the right time, and ensured that his reputation moved constantly upward. Without me he might have fumbled along without focus.’

  The person to whom she was speaking asked: ‘But couldn’t his wife have handled these matters just as effectively?’ and the question alerted me, for I suspected that Emma could have done so. However, Miss Crane had a withering response: ‘Whenever a writer uses his wife as his agent, it’s a sign he’s on his way down. A writer doesn’t need a loving hand. He needs a tough one.’

  She offered her questioner one more justification: ‘The ten percent I collect from a writer like Lukas Yoder enables my agency to represent beginning writers who earn me nothing, and to nurture them till they establish a foothold. Yoder keeps the young ones alive until they become Yoders.’ As I listened I was mindful of one humiliating fact: In my first thirteen years as a writer, my three different agents earned from my efforts a combined total of $496.10, and they must have spent five times that much on postage and phone calls. I did not begrudge Miss Crane her present massive fees, but I did hope she was doing what she said, spending some of my money on the cultivation of young writers.

  Today when I entered her office she seemed a mite more reserved than usual, but when she detected my own hesitancy she said briskly: ‘Mr. Yoder, I’m so glad to see you. We have much to discuss,’ and before I was properly seated she said in her best professional voice: ‘There’s good news and there’s bad news. Which first?’ When I shrugged, she said: ‘Very well. The good,’ and briskly she ran through the sales she had completed since last speaking with Emma. As she turned the sheets on which her notes had been jotted down, I sat admiring her, rather than listening to the details, in which I was not interested. In her office she was always well groomed, wearing fairly expensive but not flamboyant business suits usually with some small accessory on her left lapel. She was a handsome woman, hair not yet gray-flecked, no flabbiness under the chin, and eyes not yet jaded by the repetitive nature of her business. She was, I said approvingly to myself, a reassuring person with whom to do business, but my final judgment as she droned on about subsidiary rights was more impersonal: ‘She looks
like a good eighth-grade English teacher who has been promoted to principal of her junior high school.’

  ‘But that’s all preamble to the exciting news, Mr. Yoder. Have you seen that sleeper film about the Amish? Low-budget but it won some Oscars, I believe. At least it was nominated. Witness.’

  ‘Heard about it, haven’t seen it.’

  ‘Took everyone by surprise. Excellent actors—you may not have heard of them—and a believable story, but the hero of the film was your Amish country. The camera shots of the fields and barns made it delectable.’

  ‘I hear they treated the Amish with respect. No cheap humor.’

  ‘That they did, but what’s important to you is that the success of the film awakened interest in your properties. An outfit named Argosy Films, put together by a Japanese financier with oodles of money and an Israeli cinematic genius, wants to take an option on The Shunning, and if I read their motives correctly, they want to do a film in the great tradition. Careful development of character, shots showing the beauty of the land, the spiritual triumph of the ugly brother, who remains Amish, and the deterioration of the good brother, who gains financial success but loses contact with the soil.’

  I leaned forward: ‘At least they know what the story’s about. If it had been one more Hollywood outfit wanting another option on Hex, I’d not have been interested.’