Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [232]
Of course, nothing is more common among celebrities than making the mistake of believing their own press clippings. Those who were, however briefly, touched by the wand of glamorization in the mid-seventies not only believed they had earned it—and that it was going to last—but confused it with growth. That was the case in book publishing, where despite a thin layer of glamour at the top and a lot of hype in the outside world, the business was still pretty much the same as ever. People weren’t reading or buying more books—the action was in buying up rival book companies and “consolidating” them into larger and larger companies. It was growth of a kind, to be sure, but forced rather than natural. The same authors were still writing the same kinds of books, which were still being sold in much the same quantities. The book itself was still a fully returnable item, so that nearly two books were printed for every one that sold, and its ultimate destination was either to be “remaindered” for sale at a dollar or less a copy, or “pulped” to make more paper products. Efforts were made to make this cumbersome and ancient process look well thought-out, streamlined, and efficient for the benefit of the shareholders of the big companies that now owned most of them, but most of it would have seemed familiar enough to Gutenberg. Add to this that the basic product of this particular slice of the media business was still being created in large part by people banging away at typewriters on kitchen tables and it is easy to understand why the glossy public image of the publishing business was so misleading.
NINETEEN SEVENTY-THREE was a crucial year for me. For years, I had been an avid horseman, though I contented myself with renting horses at stables all over New York City, until I finally settled down as a regular customer at a stable at Clove Lake, on Staten Island, where I rode every Saturday and Sunday, as well as on Thursday evenings, when my son, Christopher, and I practiced as part of their “parade team,” doing figure eights at a canter and more complicated movements with twenty or so other riders, to the accompaniment of waltzes and marches over a loudspeaker.
I even took up fox hunting, having been introduced to the sport by Jane McIlvaine McClary, one of the doyennes of Middleburg, Virginia, horse society, whose novel, A Portion for Foxes, I not only published but presented to a sales conference while dressed in full hunting regalia, including boots, breeches, a white stock, a gold-buttoned pink coat, and a top hat. (The Warwick Hotel, greatly to my disappointment, firmly vetoed my plan to ride into the conference room and present the book from horseback.) Jane McClary was a foxhunter of international fame and was so pleased to have a horseman for an editor that she overestimated my skills by a considerable factor. On my first visit, she proudly informed me that she had secured permission for us to go over the Middleburg Gold Cup steeplechase course in the morning, and, despite my feeble and terrified protests, I found myself being carried over the biggest fences this side of Aintree on one of Jane’s horses, my eyes closed, both hands grasping the horse’s mane for dear life. The same horse carried me over immense stone walls and terrifying embankments on my first day with the Middleburg Hunt, until I was eventually neck and neck with the master, my stirrups flapping as I hauled desperately on the poor animal’s mouth, while the master shouted indignantly at me to slow down and fall back behind him. (A valuable lesson is never to ride a horse you don’t know who is named Black Devil, as this one was, or anything similar.)
As a result, I acquired an entirely unjustified reputation as something of a daredevil rider