Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [215]
Unfortunately for Robbins, Dick’s commitment to the cause of literary fiction was not only skin-deep but profoundly ambivalent. He wanted the kudos of publishing literary fiction but disliked the fact that most of it loses money. Besides, almost from day one Robbins seemed to him pugnacious, arrogant, opinionated, and self-righteous. It might have missed his attention, however, that Robbins, a classic type A personality, had an even shorter fuse than he did.
At first, Dick rather enjoyed the occasional spat with Robbins, under the impression that, like himself, Robbins enjoyed a good fight for its own sake, but gradually it dawned on him that Robbins meant it, that there was no way he would back off, shake hands, have a good laugh, and get back to work. On the contrary: He conceived of his role as that of the defender of literary values against the philistines, with Dick playing the role of philistine in chief. Every novel that Robbins brought to the editorial board was a sacred cause—not only did he not hear any criticism of it from other readers, but he did not even tolerate questions, however well-meant or harmless. He did not compromise. Reasoning with him, as Churchill complained about de Gaulle, was like trying to reason with Joan of Arc.
Things finally came to a head when Dick issued an invitation to Barry Diller to have lunch with the S&S editorial board. This was partly yet another attempt at “synergy” and partly to show Diller that we were professionals, not naive, wide-eyed literary enthusiasts. Dick lectured us seriously before Diller’s appearance and warned us to be on our best behavior, like a headmaster getting his students ready for a visit by an important school benefactor. It is a pity that he did not notice the smoldering anger in Robbins’s eyes on being told that a movie mogul was coming to lunch to hear us discussing books.
Diller, when he turned up, was as un-mogul-like as it is possible for a studio head to be—elegant, sardonically witty, charming, deferential, he went out of his way to fit in. Robbins, however, was a frightening spectacle. His face was contorted with anger, his eyes blazing, his hands clutching the silverware so hard that his knuckles were white. I tried to kick Dick under the table, but he was oblivious to any warning. The soup was being served as Diller, in a gentle voice, explained what Paramount could do to help us, and what we might be able to do for Paramount. Alas, no sooner was the soup plate placed before Robbins than he seized it and, in a burst of temper, flung it across the room toward Diller—luckily missing him. “I’m not going to sit here and listen to some goddamn movie person tell us how to publish books!” he yelled, then stood up and walked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
There was a brief silence, interrupted only by a nervous giggle from Nan Talese, then Dick turned to Diller and said, with majestic aplomb: “Henry Robbins is a little … high-strung.” He paused for a moment, as if looking for some better explanation. “Actually,” he went on, “I wouldn’t want to mislead you—not all our luncheons are as exciting as this.”
Diller took the explosion calmly. He seemed, if anything, pleased and impressed, but the incident inevitably led to Robbins’s eventual resignation. Except for the acquisition of Joan Didion, who had followed Robbins from Farrar, Straus (thus sparking off a major publishing feud between Dick and Roger Straus that still survives to this day), there was little to show for Robbins’s time at S&S. If we were going to publish “serious” fiction, by major literary figures, we were going to have to do it on our own, Dick decided, not by bringing in an editor and hoping writers would follow him or her. Fortunately, just such an opportunity presented itself shortly.
GENIUS IN one form of the arts seldom extends to the others, so I was skeptical when a dear friend, Billy Barnes, then an agent at International Creative