Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [281]
Dick moved ever higher into the stratosphere of corporate management but was still determined to call the shots when it came to trade publishing, which soon gave S&S the reputation of being a hot seat for publishers. This hardly mattered to those of us who were close to Dick, however, since he was always happy to plunge back into acquiring books rather than companies and never stopped thinking of himself as the publisher of S&S even when he had given that job to somebody else—Joni Evans, briefly, Dan Green, and eventually Charles Hayward. Nobody lasted long or enjoyed the experience.
IT WAS Dick’s continuing interest in the S&S list that explains how we became involved with Jesse Jackson—that and the overbearing salesmanship of Irving Lazar. Lazar had called me one day to suggest that I should buy Jackson’s autobiography before somebody else grabbed it. “He’s hot, kiddo. Just do me a favor and give me a quick yes or a no, because I’ve got a lot of interest on this one,” he said urgently.
Further conversation made it clear that Lazar had nothing to show—“You can read all about Jackson in the newspapers, for chrissake, why the fuck would you need an outline?” he said—and that it was very possible he hadn’t bothered to tell Jackson that he was selling his book.
All the same, the idea seemed like an attractive one to me. Jackson was a national figure, highly visible and controversial without being too controversial, like Louis Farrakhan, for instance. Jackson was a gadfly, sure, but he was an establishment gadfly, who knew exactly how to play the black card in the white world. Besides, he was, in his own way, a genuine hero, whose childhood in the South and whose years in the Movement as the protégé (whether self-proclaimed or not) of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., were of genuine interest. There was a story to be told in Jesse Jackson’s life, and only Jackson could tell it, if he was willing to. Finally, if there was one area in which S&S —and the book business in general—was weak, it was in the area of books by and about blacks. There seemed to me everything to be said for publishing Jackson, and I immediately called Dick to tell him so, only to find him less than enthusiastic. Jackson’s star, he felt, had faded; besides, he was a troublemaker. Random House had burned their fingers badly by publishing Muhammad Ali’s autobiography, and if you couldn’t sell Muhammad Ali to white book buyers, you sure couldn’t sell Jesse Jackson.
I could tell that Dick was not about to be budged by argument, so I called Lazar back to say no, but Lazar wasn’t about to take no for an answer—a sure sign that the other interested publishers didn’t exist. Dick was dead wrong, Lazar said, he just hadn’t been exposed to Jackson’s charisma. Five minutes with Jackson, and Dick would be singing a different tune, I could bet on that.
I wasn’t about to bet on it, but after a flurry of telephone calls I was able to tell Lazar that Dick and I would be happy to join the Reverend Jackson for the lunch at Lazar’s New York pied-à-terre at Sixty-sixth Street and Fifth Avenue the next time Lazar came east. Dick thought it would be a waste of time, but he had a genuine affection for Lazar, who was just the kind of larger-than-life character Dick himself was intent on becoming, and some degree of curiosity about Jackson.
On the appointed day, we settled into Dick’s limo for the drive to Lazar’s apartment. I detected a certain amount of restlessness on Dick’s part. He liked to be well briefed before any meeting, but he knew only about Jackson what he had read in the papers. He wasn’t mollified when I told him that was all anybody knew about Jackson. What was he going to talk to Jackson about, Dick complained, although since I assumed that Jackson was going to be doing most of the talking—he was a preacher, after all—I didn’t see that as a problem. Dick picked up a copy of Time from the pocket in the back of the driver’s seat and leafed through it. “There it is!