PROPOSALS APPROVED BY HARRISON DREIDEN WILL BE FORWARDED TO THE BUSINESS DEPARTMENT. No editor can make an offer until he receives written approval from the Business Department.
Seven out of ten projects approved by Harrison were killed in the business department. (“Rejected,” the business department said about Howard’s proposal to publish a biography of William Carlos Williams. “William Carlos is not famous enough.”)
EDITORS ARE TO REPORT TO CONFERENCE ROOM 2 FOR GUIDELINES ON ACQUISITIONS. ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY.
The guidelines issued by the business department were based on a simple premise: Gardiner & Grayson would become cost conscious and commercially aware. (In plain English, they wanted editors to do thinly disguised rip-offs of everything on the bestseller lists—for cheap.)
Layton Sinclair adapted beautifully to the new guidelines. When the business department expressed the urgent desire that someone “put together” an Iacocca pronto, Layton raced out of the gate. Now, the book the business department was referring to was a brilliantly conceived and executed business autobiography published by Bantam Books in 1985. The idea for the book had been “born” within Bantam, and they teamed the hero of Chrysler with a marvelous writer named William Novak, and so carefully orchestrated the book’s debut and afterlife that, to date, it was threatening to break the two-million hard-cover sales mark. Iacocca was precisely the kind of original, breakthrough publishing Howard longed to do.
So one can imagine Howard’s disgust when Layton—sensing a powerful ally for his career in Mack Sperry of the business department—claimed that, if promoted right, the illiterate manuscript of a man who had inherited a chain of motels could be the next Iacocca. “Layton,” Harrison said at the editorial meeting, “you are an editor, not an android. This, this, this—” “Lefty,” Layton said (referring to the title, taken from the author’s name of Lefty Lucerne). “Thing,” Harrison continued, “isn’t a book. Iacocca is a book, Layton. A good book. And a book is a body of work that reflects original human thought and experience. This,” he said, pushing the manuscript away from him, “is the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen let in the doors of Gardiner & Grayson.”
At the next marketing meeting, members of the business department asked how Layton’s version of Iacocca was coming and, on the strength of Layton’s verbal description, approved it on the spot. “It’s for the readers of Iacocca and The Search for Excellence.” (The latter had been a business blockbluster of a different sort.) The business department was elated and told Layton to “make the jacket look like Iacocca, but use the colors of The Search for Excellence in the background.” Harrison slammed his fist down on the table and said, “Not only is it unreadable, but I hasten to remind you that Lefty Lucerne was once imprisoned on racketeering charges, a fact that he neglects to mention in this so-called memoir.” (A murmur from the MBAs that this sounded like a good promotion angle.)And then, when Layton added that the author’s company would guarantee to buy fifty thousand copies of the book and that Gardiner & Grayson didn’t have to pay an advance if they didn’t want to, talk turned to making Lefty the lead book on the fall list.
“Promote him!” Harriet Wyatt angrily exclaimed at the next marketing meeting. “The man is brain-dead!” It was then explained that the author was so pleased to be published that he was giving a hundred thousand dollars to Gardiner & Grayson to promote the book. “Wonderful,” Harriet said, “I’ll find the best cart and coffin money can buy and launch him at Forest Lawn. Mr. Sperry,” she then said, rising from her chair, “I will be fired before I make my people work on a vanity press project. You’ll have to buy an outside publicist.”
The matter of Lefty then raged all the way to the office of G & G’s chairman of the board. There it was decided that Harriet would not be fired but an outside agency would be hired; that the book in question would not bear the Gardiner & Grayson name but would be distributed by them under a new imprint called Sperry Books; and that Layton Sinclair would receive the title of executive editor of the imprint but would remain a part of the G & G editorial staff.
And so Layton Sinclair had been promoted and Melissa was furious with Howard and Howard was sick at what was happening at Gardiner & Grayson. Oh, they were still putting up a valiant fight—encouraging one another, conspiring like members of the underground—but it was exhausting. (“Look, gang, we’ve got to get that first novel of Patricia’s through,” Harrison recently said in a closed-door meeting in his office, “so I want each of you to write a report that swears the author is the next Jacqueline Susann.” Fortunately no one in the business department liked to read. “Patricia, call it Valley of Desire, but once you get the contract signed, keep changing the title on the pub list so they’ll forget what it was supposed to have been.”)
Sigh.
It was all coming apart now for Howard. In the old days, he really had wanted to work toward becoming publisher of Gardiner & Grayson, to be on the “cutting edge” of the publishing frontier, and he had wanted to do it with the colleagues he had grown up with. The ones who had called him Prince Charming and then had rewarded him with camaraderie when he started being an editor. The people who had listened to his ideas and to his problems, and who had shared their ideas and their problems with him. The people who—over the course of ten-hour days, five days a week for eleven years—had become his family. But now, now…
“Then leave, Howard,” Melissa screamed, “find another job and leave!”
But Melissa didn’t understand and Howard didn’t think he could explain it to her. What would he say? “Melissa, you don’t seem to understand. My colleagues at Gardiner & Grayson have been filling the void of our marriage for years. If I leave them, then I have no one.”
No. Howard could not tell Melissa that.
“Amanda,” Rosanne was saying to Howard, “you know, Tuesdays.”
“And she’s writing a book?”
“Is she? It’s in boxes all over the apartment.”
Howard chuckled to himself, picking up a book from the window sill in his study.
“But like she’s really smart, Howie,” Rosanne said. But then she paused, debating a minute, and then admitted, “Well, sometimes she does get kinda loony—sort of like Esmeralda on ‘Bewitched’ or somethin’.”
Howard handed Rosanne the book. “Here. I haven’t even read it yet. A friend just sent it to me.”
Rosanne took it from him and looked at the cover. “Mickey Mantle! Oh, man, this is great, Howie. Frank’s gonna love this too.” She slid the jacket off and handed it back to him. “Better keep that to keep it lookin’ nice. Wow,” she sighed, smiling, putting the book in her bag.
Howard grinned, touching at his glasses. “So what’s Tuesday’s book about, do you know?”
“Oh, it’s about that queen—you know, the one that everybody says screwed horses.”
“Catherine the Great?”
“Yeah—”
“She didn’t, Rosanne.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” Rosanne declared, hefting her bag onto her shoulder, “’cause Amanda kinda thinks she is Catherine the Great. The way she talks—sometimes I don’t know what the heck she’s sayin’. I mean, like she’s never mad or nothin’—she’s always ‘vexed’ or some numbnuts thing.”
Howard laughed.
