muttered, standing up and slamming the cabinets shut, “you’d think if she wanted a clean house she’d get some decent cleanin’ stuff.”
“I’ll get it,” Howard said, dropping the pencil.
Rosanne turned around to look at him.
“What?”
Her mouth twitched one way and then the other. “Nothin’,” she finally said, waving him away. “Go do your work. I wanna listen to the radio.”
As Howard walked through the living room he heard Rosanne whirling the radio dial. In a few minutes, he knew, every radio and television in the apartment, save in the master bedroom, would be on (9 a.m., Radios: Howard Stern (WXRK), John Gambling (WOR), Don Imus (WNBC); TVs: Leonard Philbin and “The Munsters.” 10 a.m., Radios: K-Rock, Sherre Henry (WOR) and WPLJ; TVs: Oprah Winfrey and Phil Donahue. At eleven, while Rosanne cleaned their bedroom to Joan Hamburg (WOR), Howard would move to the living room for a half hour and either turn off the TV or give in and watch “Father Knows Best.”
In the beginning, Howard had stayed home on Monday mornings to read manuscripts as an accommodation to Melissa to have someone home while Rosanne was there. Melissa was still under the impression—kept there, quite deliberately—that these mornings were of enormous inconvenience to Howard when, in fact, they were often the best times of his week.
Howard settled down into Melissa’s pink chaise longue and picked up the remaining unread part of a manuscript that had been submitted to him at the office. It was not holding his attention, however, and in a moment he was staring out the window at the Hudson River.
Howard Mills Stewart was thirty-three years old and in perfect health. He had been married for eight years, was living in a fabulous three-bedroom apartment, was an esteemed editor at Gardiner & Grayson, one of the most famous publishing houses in the world, and yet—
And yet…
Why, he wondered, did he feel so terribly unhappy? So lonely. So utterly lost.
When twenty-two-year-old Howard Stewart joined the training program at Gardiner & Grayson Publishers, Inc., in 1975, to say that he was unprepared for the world of book publishing is putting it mildly. Nothing he had studied at Duke, nothing he had imagined as a teenager in Columbus, Ohio, had seemed to be of use to him. No, that was not quite correct. There was one thing he had brought along with him that was of enormous value: to so love reading, to so love books, that not even book publishing could scare him into seeking another means of employment.
When he had arrived in New York City—at the Chelsea apartment he shared with no less than five other recent college graduates—Howard had no doubts that he would discover great writers and nurture them to staggering heights of critical success. It would take him about a year, he thought. He even had a list—in his head—of the kind of writers they would be: a Charles Dickens; an Edith Wharton; an F. Scott Fitzgerald; a John Cheever; and a John Updike. And so, when he arrived at Gardiner & Grayson for his first day of “training,” he was rather taken aback by being asked to type some three hundred mailing labels to send out review copies of books.
When the publisher, Harrison Dreiden, recruited Howard to work as an assistant in his office, everyone told Howard how lucky he was. Howard wondered. Could book publishing really be like this? As far as he could make out from the vantage point of his desk, no one in the office ever read or ever edited. All that seemed to go on were phone calls, typing and meetings, meetings, meetings and more meetings.
“What exactly is it that you do all day?” Howard once asked a senior editor. She had thrown her head back and laughed. “Okay, Howard,” she said, checking her watch, “I will give you a one-minute summary of an editor’s job. Ready?”
Howard nodded.
“The editor represents the house to the author, and the author to the house, right? Okay then, lesson number one: the editor is responsible for absolutely everything to absolutely everybody.”
“Got it,” Howard said, a trifle annoyed with this simplicity.
“And it means that the editor has to make sure that everyone working on the book in house does his or her job, even though the editor might be the only one who’s read it.”
Howard frowned.
“So the editor is in contact with everybody who is working on the book: the author, of course, and the agent on the outside, and on the inside, well”—a deep breath— “the managing editor, the business manager, production coordinator, design, copy editing, the art director, sub rights—reprint, book clubs, serial and foreign rights—marketing, publicity, advertising, the flap copy writer, the sales manager, royalty department, the sales reps”—breath— “and that’s when everything’s going smoothly. Otherwise there’s the legal department—”
“So you talk to them all the time?”
“That or we memo each other to death.” Pause. “And that’s only one book—I’m usually working on six to eight books at the same time, with a new list starting every six months. But I won’t have anything to work on unless I get out there”—a wide, sweeping gesture to the window— “and find good books to sign up.”
“Oh,” Howard said, his frown deepening. “So when do you edit? I mean, do you?”
Another burst of laughter. “Of course I do. Oh, Howard,” she said, patting his shoulder, “you’ll find out. Publishing isn’t a career, you know, it’s a calling. In this house it is, at any rate. But don’t worry—either you’ll get it or it will get you.”
Howard’s phone calls and letters back to Columbus did not paint an accurate picture of his life in New York. The truth, he felt, would only upset those who had taken an interest in him early in his life, who had done great favors for him, believed in him, and expected great things of him.
Howard’s dad, Raymond, was born the year the Stewarts lost the two-thousand-acre plantation in North Carolina that had been in the family for over a hundred and fifty years. The Depression was on, and the Stewarts moved to Ohio in search of work. When Ray was nineteen, working as a fence builder, he enticed a freshman at Ohio State by name of Allyson Mills to elope with him. Allyson was the daughter of a prominent Shaker Heights attorney. At her urging, Ray worked for his father-in-law as “the highest-paid filing clerk in the world” until he couldn’t stand it anymore, quit, and took his bride to the outskirts of Columbus to start a landscaping business. Howard’s dad was sort of, well—yes, he was at home with a shovel, but no, not with a necktie. And Howard’s mom, devoted to Ray, decided she was happy if he was happy and, since he seemed to be, learned how to function in the capacities of the servants she had grown up with.
This was not to say that Ray Stewart did not have high hopes for his eldest son. The trick was how to give Howard every opportunity without accepting any help from his father-in-law (Allyson, too, was eager to do this). The Stewarts had a lot to work with. People liked Howard, they always had. He was acutely bright, good-looking, athletic, and just—just such a great guy. The kind of guy who fit in anywhere, never claiming to be any better or worse than who he was with.
Ray’s friends were local small business owners like himself, forever involved in—and rallying together to protect their interests in—the Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary Club. And all of Ray’s friends seemed to see something in Howard they wished to help along. When Howard proved to be good in Little League, he was given a job sweeping out a sporting goods store and got his pick of the best equipment available for any sport
