Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [49]
I took all this with a grain of salt. Most of the really interesting people one meets in life are rogues, and it did not shock me that Chambrun might be one of them—indeed, it was part of his charm. At the Sherry Netherland bar, where Chambrun was ensconced in a corner banquette, I chose not to bring up the unflattering portrait that Henry had drawn of him. After all, the man was sending me manuscripts, even if they were unpublishable. Other agents might have a better reputation for honesty, but I wasn’t getting anything from them.
Whatever else might be phony about him, Chambrun was at least genuinely French. A fastidious eater who did not believe in the American ideal of the light lunch, he ordered elaborate dishes, sent them back to the kitchen when he wasn’t happy with them, and took his time over dessert. He did not stint himself on the petits fours that were served with coffee and even wrapped the remaining ones frugally in a paper cocktail napkin to take home. When the check came, we both stared at it for a while, then Chambrun pushed it toward me firmly and without apology and popped a digestive mint into his mouth. He had taught me a basic rule of book publishing, never since forgotten: When an editor has lunch with an agent, the editor always picks up the check.
The flow of manuscripts continued, until one day, to my astonishment, I read one that actually excited me. I was so surprised that I had to read it twice. Even on a second reading, the novel still held my attention. What saved it from being an automatic reject was the fact that the author, Dariel Telfer, was a natural storyteller, with a real subject that she cared (and knew) a lot about: nursing in a big city hospital.
Henry wouldn’t want S&S to buy a book from Chambrun, and it was just the kind of novel he hated: unformed, unpolished, raw, and full of sex scenes. It would have to be rewritten, replotted, and reconstructed to make it work, and that was just the kind of thing Henry didn’t approve of. Not knowing what else to do with it, I gave it to Bob Gottlieb to read.
Bob had a kind of split personality as an editor: He pursued high culture and low culture with equal intensity and seemed to enjoy both. More extraordinary, he was good at both. Apart from skill, shrewd judgment, complete confidence in his own taste (and willingness to submerge it in the interests of commerce when necessary), what Bob had above all was enthusiasm. When he liked something, he wanted the whole world to like it, which is what publishing is really about.
Like me, Bob was a fast reader, and the next day he appeared in my windowless cubbyhole cradling the manuscript in his arms, dark eyes blazing with excitement, Napoleonic forelock plastered low on his noble brow. “It’s just great,” he said. “We have to buy it.”
I noted, with pleasure rather than dismay, the we. I had been longing to work with Bob on something, rather than just looking on, my nose pressed against the windowpane. Bob had much the same effect on me as Irving Thalberg had had on F. Scott Fitzgerald when Fitzgerald went to work as a screenwriter in Hollywood: His energy, boldness, attention to detail, chutzpah, and intelligence set him apart from anyone else at S&S.
Where had the book come from? Bob asked. When I told him, his face darkened a bit, and he bit his lip thoughtfully. “Not so good,” he murmured. Then he brightened. I would deal with Chambrun, while Bob would take care of getting the book past Henry and Max.
It needed a lot of work, I suggested. Bob beamed. It needed everything, of course, but it had the two things that really made popular fiction sell: energy and