The Novel Page 6

  Miss Crane, smiling austerely, picked another sheet from her pile of memorandums relating to me: ‘That’s what I was going to take up next. An entirely new Hollywood outfit, this time with some German funding, wants on option on Hex. They have a writer under contract who’s positive that this time he can lick the story line.’

  ‘How often have we heard that?’

  Miss Crane winced, for I had touched upon one of the frustrating but in a sense amusing aspects of her business, and mine. Hex had been such a sensational success as a book that the various motion picture companies operating at that time, many of them now vanished, fought to gain rights, but when one finally did, for $185,000, nonrefundable, it promptly discovered that the action of the book was so spasmodic, the scenes so fractured and the characters so inflexible that no story line suitable for a motion picture could be hammered out. The project was abandoned and the payment written off as a loss, but I did keep the money because Miss Crane had been vigilant in drafting the contract. The rights also reverted to me.

  In the eleven years that followed, numerous companies felt at one time or another that they could ‘lick the Hex problem,’ and each, in succession, took an option, paying a standard fee of between five and ten thousand dollars, which gave them exclusive rights for a stated period, after which they had to either go ahead with the picture or drop the project, thereby forfeiting the trivial option money.

  At any one time since the success of Hex, Miss Crane had had two or three options working on various books in the Grenzler series, and each brought in a few thousand dollars, but none matured into a real contract. With my interest aroused so often but being invariably disappointed, I could no longer express enthusiasm when Miss Crane telephoned that yet another film company wanted an option on Hex or on any of the other successful books. I always advised: ‘Give them the option now, take it back next year, and pass it along to someone else the year after that.’ I had little hope that a picture would ever be made, and in fact had not much interest in whether it was or not.

  She could not be so blasé: ‘Mr. Yoder, always remember that everything good that happens to a book—the plays, the musicals, the movies, the TV series, the deluxe editions—begins with three talented guys sitting around a barroom table, and one cries: “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if we could get rights to that Yoder book and persuade Newman to play the lead and Streep the heroine? And get Kazan to come back for one great final stab?” and one of the men says: “I know Streep. She loves Yoder’s work. Told me she could visualize the whole Amish scene, like in Witness. Told me she wished her agent had gotten her that part.” And the third guy says: “I know Jerry Herman, and he’s been looking for a period piece, American history like what he used so effectively in Dolly, and I’m sure he would jump at the chance to tackle Hex.” Then the man who knows Newman says: “But Paul can’t sing,” and Jerry Herman’s friend says: “So we’ll get some kid who can.” ’

  She also told me: ‘Every blind alley we’ve gone down has started with those three guys in a bar saying: “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if …” But remember, every good thing that’s happened started that way, too. First man said: “Hey, I read this book called Anna and the King of Siam, very colorful setting. Now if we could get an English-looking dame in her forties and an actor who could look Oriental,” and the second man said: “I know this guy Yul Brynner and maybe he’d be interested,” and the third says: “But what you’re talking about would cry for music, and my brother-in-law has an in with the lawyer for Rodgers and Hammerstein …” And that time it wasn’t all futile options. It was a masterpiece, so you mustn’t laugh off any queries. Creative geniuses are a slap-happy lot. Treat them with respect.’

  ‘I would be most interested in the group that wants to do The Shunning—if they intend to do it the way you said.’

  ‘Mr. Yoder, remember that I said hope to do, not intend.’

  ‘I know, but you did make it sound enticing. Give them encouragement.’

  She had several other matters to discuss concerning my Stone Walls and the avenues she hoped to explore, but as always I lost interest in the complex details, preferring that either Miss Crane or Ms. Marmelle dispose of them; I was rarely disappointed in their decisions, for I had explained early in my association with Miss Crane: ‘I think a writer does best when he directs his entire attention to his typewriter. That is, if he trusts his agent—and I trust you.’

  I had tried to maintain the same kind of placid relationship with Kinetic Press. Its recent contracts with me had been fairly important, considering the sums involved, but each had been disposed of in less than three minutes. Kinetic or Miss Crane would call regarding details, Emma would call me to the kitchen phone, and I would listen to the details and say: ‘Sounds O.K.’ and the deal would go into effect. Of course, after it had been agreed upon in principle, the Kinetic lawyers and Miss Crane might argue for several months over minute details. In recent years Kinetic was preoccupied with new forms of reproduction, innovations like audio books, mechanical and distribution processes not yet even in commercial existence but looming on the horizon. When the formal contract finally arrived, it might run to sixteen pages, most of them dealing with matters that had never been mentioned to me, but later I would discover to my gratification that some new process that had exploded onto the market had been covered by some agreement Miss Crane had hammered out years before.

  When I heard Miss Crane’s summary of the good news I asked: ‘This sounds so good, what can be bad?’ and she coughed nervously, then leaned forward to speak to me directly: ‘Not really bad news, Mr. Yoder, but disturbing. Really, quite disturbing.’

  ‘Shoot. I’m a big boy.’

  ‘Three ominous warnings, all focusing on the same problem. First, the Reader’s Digest called yesterday after you left Ms. Marmelle to say they were not taking Walls. Their editorial readers said their subscribers would be disappointed. Too much preaching, not enough story line.’ I brought my fingertips to my lips and waited for the next blast. ‘Today the Book-of-the-Month Club called to say that they would not be taking the novel for October, nor later. Same kind of reasoning: “Yoder fails to provide the gripping personal histories for which he has become famous in his last three novels. Our readers would be disappointed.” And we’ve heard from the big chains—Dalton, Walden. They’ve cut their pre-pub orders by two thirds. Their experts made the comment that could prove most damaging if the others picked it up: “Yoder has gone back to the well once too often.” That could hurt.’

  When she leaned back, but with her hands extended on the desk as if to ask, So what do we do, Mr. Yoder? I looked at her, tried to smile and said quietly: ‘Three body blows, no?’ and she said: ‘Indeed. And since we can assume that word of these decisions has swept the industry in New York and California, we could find ourselves in deep trouble.’

  ‘I don’t see why. Three big customers lost in the United States. Three big sales in Europe.’

  ‘Mr. Yoder! That’s not a comparison. A watermelon to a lima bean. A book makes its reputation in the United States or it dies. I repeat, this is very serious.’

  ‘Not to me. Anyway, if it’s as bad as you say, why didn’t Ms. Marmelle warn me?’

  ‘Because when you were with her, the bombs had not yet exploded. Late yesterday and today, they have. And yesterday she didn’t know that her own Kinetic had already cut back the initial print order from the planned seven hundred fifty thousand to a mere two hundred fifty thousand.’

  When I heard this I had to laugh: ‘A mere two hundred fifty thousand! Do you know what that would have meant to me in the ugly years before you became my agent? I’d have flown to the moon.’

  ‘But as you just said, you’re a big boy now. The industry expects big things from big men. Kinetic hangs great hopes on you. So do I. If this book can be saved, we’ve got to make every effort to do it. In ten minutes we’re having a meeting in the next room.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘You, me, Y
vonne and Mr. MacBain.’

  I was astonished that she would have been bold enough to convene such a meeting without consulting me and said so, but she squelched that: ‘I didn’t call it. Kinetic did, and the fact that they’re coming here, not us there, is proof that they take this far more seriously than you seem to.’ Since she had never before spoken to me like this, I realized that she was no longer merely my representative but also a tough-minded professional agent who could not afford to have it said in publishing circles that she had allowed one of her clients to fall on his face. In the meeting about to occur she would be fighting for her survival as well as for mine.

  The session was most embarrassing, for Ms. Marmelle had to retract almost everything she had said yesterday: ‘Mr. Yoder, I am sorry. I didn’t hear the bad news until this morning.’

  ‘I don’t consider it bad news. Unfortunate, yes. But with the big European sales it’s already a success.’ And then I added an unfortunate conclusion to my sentence: ‘For me.’

  ‘Not for us,’ Mr. MacBain said sharply, and when I looked at that grave magisterial face whose frowns and smiles had been so important to me throughout my writing life, I felt ashamed at having placed my interests so far above his. At a half-dozen crucial meetings in my career it was his willingness to listen to Ms. Marmelle’s defense of me that had saved the day; others at Kinetic had been willing to dump me—only he among the managers stood firm, and I revered him for it.

  He was in his late sixties now and, if rumor touched the truth, in the ugly position of having three or four conglomerates interested in the possibility of buying Kinetic, a marginally profitable company. Each reasoned: ‘We could pump in substantial funds so that Kinetic could gamble with the big boys. And we’d give them sophisticated management so that bottom-line profits would be ensured.’ Actual bidding for Kinetic had not yet occurred, but subterranean calculations were under way, and it seemed probable that an offer of some kind would eventually surface. If the offer was so high that the stockholders were tempted by unexpected profits, they might vote to sell the company, whoever the bidder might be and whatever his credentials were for operating a publishing business. When that happened, Mr. MacBain, regardless of his past brilliance in steering Kinetic, would be out of a job and out of publishing.

  To have my novel, the company’s major fall offering, collapse in the American market would be disastrous, for the perceived value of the firm would plummet in publishing circles, and I was aware of this. So if my Stone Walls could be salvaged in any of the three major markets in which it had been so unceremoniously rejected, Kinetic as a firm, MacBain as its president, Ms. Marmelle as the senior editor involved and Miss Crane as my agent might all be saved a major embarrassment. I could see in the faces of the others that this was not going to be your congenial publisher’s meeting, and I could not anticipate what I might be advised to do, nor how I might react to pressure.

  Mr. MacBain started by summarizing the situation: ‘Negative reports from three major markets with devastating effects on pre-pub sales. Where did our in-house estimates of this manuscript go so badly wrong?’

  ‘I fear we may have assumed that any novel by Mr. Yoder was assured of wide reception. Obviously, we overestimated his popularity.’

  Humiliated by having such matters discussed in my presence, I had to protest: ‘I think the sales that come in will be gratifying. I don’t have to shoot for the moon every time.’

  Somewhat icily Mr. MacBain said: ‘You’d better inform him about the revision in the print order we had to make,’ but when Ms. Marmelle began, ‘From an initial belief that we could sell seven hundred fifty thousand—’ Miss Crane interrupted: ‘I’ve already warned him. Now down to two hundred fifty thousand.’

  ‘Fearful reduction,’ Mr. MacBain said. ‘Tell me, why does everyone think there’s something seriously wrong with this manuscript?’

  To my surprise Miss Crane, not my editor, answered. In clipped sentences she laid out the driving force behind my novels: ‘His four big novels, beginning with Shunning, focused on strong characters involved in powerful human dramas. We all remember the two brothers fighting over principle. In Hex there was that near witch, the burning of the farm, the resistance of the wife. In The Creamery there was the almost mortal fight over ownership, and in The Fields, which so many readers loved, there was the gallant effort of Huddle Amos to protect his farm against the claims of his cousin and the false testimony of his church elders. Readers could choose sides in a Yoder novel. There was always a hero to cheer for.’

  MacBain startled me by defending Stone Walls: ‘I cheered for the three farmers who would not sell their land, who wouldn’t allow their fences to be bulldozed.’

  ‘But where there’s three,’ Miss Crane pointed out, ‘the effect is diluted. The reader doesn’t cheer for any specific actor in the company.’

  ‘Is the story, then, defective?’ Mr. MacBain asked, looking at me as he spoke.

  When no one answered, Ms. Marmelle said hesitantly: ‘I fear it’s a case of exaggerated expectations … and misguided ones. The big markets look for a standard Lukas Yoder tale about his Pennsylvania Dutch. They do not want a lecture on ecology. When that’s what they get, they feel defrauded. As simple as that.’

  In the silence that followed, everyone looked at Mr. MacBain, and after a painful pause, he said: ‘Mr. Yoder, we cannot lose this novel.’

  ‘You’re not losing it,’ I said, but he obviously feared I would repeat the fact that I was not unhappy about the way things had worked out so far, for he interrupted me: ‘Tell me, Mr. Yoder, can you think of any revisions that might lessen the disappointments the outside readers have reported?’ Before I could respond, he added: ‘I don’t mean recasting the novel. I liked it as it is. But I do mean making it, with the minimum amount of reworking, into more of a Yoder novel, more of what the public expects of you, and has a right to expect.’

  When this question was thrown at me I sat facing three fine people, to each of whom I was indebted, and deeply. They had molded my professional life and had tried to steer me in proper and profitable paths. I could see that each eagerly wanted me to revise my novel, to bring it into paths that would be more familiar and comfortable to the reader. But I had written Stone Walls as the culmination of my Grenzler novels, showing people returning to the land and abusing it with malls and condominiums instead of nurturing it as they should. The charge was true that this time I had villains instead of heroes, but sometimes villains need to be identified. I could not alter this completion of a grand design I had intended from the start of my first novel, nor would I. But before I could voice my decision, Ms. Marmelle spoke.

  ‘During our editing, Mr. MacBain, I foresaw the difficulties we’re discussing this morning, and I proposed a variety of relatively simple changes that would maintain a better balance between what we might call fiction and science, but for his own good reasons Mr. Yoder rejected them, and reluctantly I had to agree with him. It’s his novel, not mine.’

  The president of Kinetic turned and asked me directly: ‘Mr. Yoder, could those proposals be resurrected? Without damaging the force of the novel?’

  ‘No,’ I said and with such firmness as to terminate the discussion. MacBain, interpreting my answer accurately, rose, bowed to Miss Crane and said: ‘Well, what we must do is go forward and try our best,’ and he left the room, followed by Ms. Marmelle and Miss Crane, and I accompanied them as an act of courtesy. As we stood waiting for the elevator Mr. MacBain took me aside and said quietly: ‘I’m disappointed, of course. This book means a lot to me. But I’m not unhappy to work with an author who knows his own mind, who stands for something. Not many around these days,’ and he jumped into the elevator before I could respond.

  It was a gloomy ride home. I remembered none of the good news Ms. Marmelle had shared with me that first day, nor the heartening reports from Europe and Japan, for I was beset by two fearsome questions: Was I being arrogant and self-centered in my dismissal of Kinetic’s
problems? And worse, were the outside readers right? Had I lost my touch? Was I an old farmer who had gone to his well once too often?

  The first question tormented me so acutely that I returned to it repeatedly as the bus carried me across New Jersey. If Kinetic had been so good to me through the years, did I not owe a compensating debt? And if a notorious failure of Stone Walls subjected Mr. MacBain to increased pressure from corporate raiders, was I not obligated to offer him some help by contributing maximum sales figures from my novel? The answer to both questions had to be Yes, and I wondered if I should now accept the suggestions Ms. Marmelle had made last year that I had rejected so peremptorily. I still thought not, but without the firm resolve I had voiced in the meeting. I wanted to discuss this with Emma.

  The second question was far more personal. I can honestly state that I had not secretly begun to doubt my capacity to write generally as well as I did when I composed Shunning. I could still write. But I must admit that from time to time when I was out walking I had wondered if perhaps the parade had passed me by. I wouldn’t concede that I had gone to the well too often, but perhaps I had gone to the wrong one. Perhaps there were other, fresher literary reservoirs that I had not discovered. Perhaps time had passed me by. Perhaps Walls was outmoded and lacking in interest. These are terrible questions for an older writer to have to ask himself.

  By the time I reached the bus stop where my car waited I had resolved nothing. Indeed, I was more rattled than when I left New York, and stepping out into the cold January night air, I was eager to hurry home for the consolation I had always found there: Emma’s reassuring stability, my old typewriter on its own table, my workshop with its little bottles of acrylic in their proper places. I would not disturb the tranquility of that haven tonight by discussing the distressing matters that had surfaced in New York, but early tomorrow I’d want to talk frankly with Emma and Zollicoffer, my trusted advisers.