Another Life_ A Memoir of Other People - Michael Korda [85]
It was not for nothing that Shimkin had been the discoverer of Dale Carnegie, whose lectures he had attended with results that changed both Carnegie’s life and his own: How to Win Friends and Influence People became the biggest best-seller in S&S’s history. Whether Carnegie’s teachings brought Shimkin any friends was open to question, but he very often sounded in conversation as if he were reading directly from Carnegie’s book. These homilies did not conceal a certain predatory quality in Shimkin’s gaze, but he rather fancied himself as the voice of reason and usually had a Carnegie phrase ready for any occasion, at any rate before lunch—after it, his conversation was more unpredictable.
Most people beyond his cadre of loyalists had a good deal of difficulty understanding Shimkin, who first of all talked in a low, husky whisper and approached everything in a roundabout way, and second, preferred ambiguity to a straight answer whenever possible.
It didn’t pay to make things easy for people, Shimkin believed—after all, nobody had made things easy for him.
CHAPTER 12
Like the rest of the heads of the major American publishing houses, Max took a London trip once a year. Sometimes he and Ray went on to Paris, where they were lavishly wined and dined by the heads of the major French houses. Since most French publishers knew no English and the Schusters knew no French, little or no business was done in Paris.
London, of course, presented graver dangers. Given the common language, it was always possible that Max might buy a book, if only by accident. The heads of the major British houses were regarded as a particularly wily lot, by no means above pitching a book to an American visitor after offering him a stultifying meal in which three or four different wines had been served, followed by mighty snifters of brandy with the cigars. Many an American publisher had woken up with a hangover in his bedroom at the Connaught or Claridge’s to find that he had bought a book that he couldn’t remember a thing about and which, in the cold, gray light of a London morning, seemed to have no relevance at all to American readers.
Senior editors who had acquired the right to make an annual London trip were expected to be more discriminating, of course, and to work harder, but it was still basically a perk and a much coveted one at that. In my case, of course, going to London from time to time was normal—I was born there, after all, my family was there, and I was a British subject—besides which Casey was a devoted Anglophile, so determined to absorb British culture that she taught herself to speak with a distinct English accent.
Since I had to be in England from time to time for personal reasons, it was only natural that I should arrange to see a few British publishers while I was there. Thus, I dipped my toe into the waters of London publishing without having been authorized to do so, much to the annoyance of those whose prerogative it was. I didn’t care—S&S wasn’t paying for my trips to London, my father was.
The first British publisher I called on was George Weidenfeld, who, like my father and my uncles, was a Central European Jew who had prospered in England and become, in some ways, more English than the English. I had met him many years ago in his Belgravia flat, when my Aunt Alexa took me to one of the parties for which Weidenfeld was already famous. For an Oxford undergraduate, Weidenfeld’s parties were something of an eye-opener—heady mixtures of writers, artists, important foreigners, celebrities, beautiful women, and even royalty, presided over by a host who combined charm, cunning, and chutzpah to a degree that I had rarely encountered outside my own family.
My first impression of Weidenfeld was that he was not exactly a prepossessing figure. He was short and rotund, with a blunt, hooked nose, a balding head circled by a narrow, tonsorial circle of graying black hair, plump