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By Root 841 0

her male superiors at PW, but she was fanatically loyal to her friends and to those authors who delivered the goods, always willing to go out on a limb for new talent, and, unlike a good many reviewers at more august publications, she genuinely loved reading fiction. Her excitement when she found a novel she liked was undisguised and unaffected, completely genuine, and totally unstoppable. She would not rest until she had gotten the word out to the right buyers (such as Faith Brunson at Rich’s in Atlanta, or her equivalents at Higbee’s in Cleveland or Kauffman’s in Pittsburgh), the major paperback editors (such as Fawcett’s Leona Nevler), and of course the ladies at the Literary Guild and Reader’s Digest. Together, these women constituted a powerful support group for a certain kind of fiction and could turn the right kind of novel into a major best-seller.

The agent who more or less specialized in such books was Claire Smith, of the old and very respected Harold Ober Agency. One of the first things an editor ought to learn is that there are certain agents whose enthusiasm can absolutely be counted upon. One might not always agree with them, it goes without saying, but their enthusiasm is always genuine and sincere. Claire’s enthusiasms—like Dorothea Oppenheimer’s for Larry McMurtry—were transparent, passionate, and fierce. The very reverse of a high-powered or high-pitched agent, Claire was quiet, witty, clever, good company, and often startlingly frank and outspoken about her clients, toward whom she was, however, entirely loyal. She had been one of Bob Gottlieb’s admirers, and it was therefore a surprise important enough to communicate to Snyder when she called out of the blue one day to announce that she had discovered a wonderful book. Was I, she inquired, afraid of long novels? I said I wasn’t (which was true) and mentioned my qualifications as Delderfield’s editor. This one, Claire said, was even longer than Delderfield’s novels. Except for War and Peace, no such book came to mind. I would have to read the manuscript overnight, she warned me—other people were interested, and she might receive a blind offer at any moment. Undaunted, I asked her to send it over.

It proved to be very long indeed—three huge boxes full of typescript, under the unpromising title of The Standardbearers, but no sooner had I begun to read it than I knew it was the real thing. I read on and on until my eyes were weary. Sustained by many cups of coffee, I finished the book at four in the morning and called Claire as soon as I reached the office to tell her that I wanted to buy it. I had mentioned it to Dick in the elevator that morning and tried to convey my enthusiasm to him. He waved me to silence. “Don’t tell me the fucking plot,” he growled, “just buy the goddamn thing.” Claire was a little surprised—I suspect she had invented the need for an overnight reading to add drama to the submission and had not expected that I would really read the book in one night—and perhaps for that reason accepted what seemed to me a rather modest offer. The author, she told me, was Susan Howatch, a young Englishwoman who had actually written the novel at the kitchen table of her house in New Jersey while looking after her infant daughter.

It is a frequently stated basic belief of book publishing that somewhere in the country at any given moment some unknown woman is writing a major best-seller (usually referred to as “the next Gone with the Wind”) at her kitchen table while looking after her baby, but this was the first time I had experienced the phenomenon in real life. Susan Howatch had written her massive novel with one hand on the cradle and the other doing the typing, but, like most authors who succeed, she had never doubted that her book would be a best-seller.

When we met, Howatch turned out to be a serious and attractive young woman with intense, soulful eyes, partly concealed by bangs, and a determined chin. She was open to editorial suggestions and quickly agreed to change the title of the novel to Penmarric (the name of the great country house