The Tragedy of Arthur_ A Novel - Arthur Phillips [115]
DATE: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:30:17 -0600
TO: Hershey, Jennifer
CC: Marly Rusoff
SUBJECT: Re: Bad problem
No, you’re not totally getting me, jen. I’m saying it can’t happen. The jpeg is of some notes taken by the actual author of the play. It’s not 400 years old. We have to stop this. If you don’t see it my way—I’m not trying to be a jerk—but you have to see it my way, because I’m pulling out of this. I’m so sorry. I totally feel for you in this, too. But this is the way it has to go. A.
FROM: “Hershey, Jennifer”
CC: Rusoffagency
DATE: Tue, 10 Nov 2009 10:50:44 -0500
SUBJECT: Re: Bad problem
Dear Arthur,
Wow. This is a big deal, I get it. Let’s just talk later today, and maybe think about this option, which is that you can take your name off this. As I said, we don’t know yet, none of us know for sure. Let’s wait for a dozen more reviews from the Scholars List. Let’s definitely wait for forensics and stylometry. We’re not ready yet, none of us, to say it’s a definite. And IF the conclusion is that it’s authentic and IF you still aren’t comfortable with that conclusion, then you can take your name off it. The Intro should be an academic’s problem and responsibility, anyway, to be honest. You’ve done enough, you don’t need that headache. I’m sure we can make it so you still own your share of royalties either way. Let’s talk today, okay? We don’t need to rush anything yet. One thing I won’t let you do is make a rash decision, and I know you won’t let us proceed unless we’re all 100% convinced.
Jennifer
I considered telling her that I’d written the play myself, just to move things along to the “swift and sure conclusion of this show of cozenage,” but I did sense that this might adversely affect my future publishing career. I chickened out.
I didn’t answer my cell that afternoon, watched her name drift across it in blue, and then my agent’s, over and over, the both of them blinking for my attention. I had a quarto visitor scheduled, though not an official one, and I soon preferred his company to their calls. Dana’s castmate Tom, who played Palamon in The Two Noble Kinsmen, and whose passion for my sister had set so much in motion, had asked her if he could see the play. He was much younger than he appeared onstage, much younger than we, much younger even than Petra. Also, I had thought his English accent was weak on opening night but, in person, he was English.
I didn’t bother with a nondisclosure agreement, but he mugged, “Dana says it’s all very cloak and dagger, so my lips are sealed.”
“Whatever.”
He sat down, looked at the cover, and turned his head this way and that. “Really?” he said. “Is this it?”
About thirty seconds later he laughed outright. “Are you having a … Is this it?” His reaction was pure and enormously relieving, as if I had finally been released from wrongful commitment in a particularly whimsical insane asylum. “This is not Shakespeare. I’m sorry. Is this really it? The play Dana was bashing on about? I think someone is having you on.” He read a few more pages, then said, “Well, let me read the whole thing.”
I and my wine were leaning forward in eagerness by the time he finished. “Well?”
“It’s a parody, right? It’s not even remotely convincing. It’s nothing at all of Shakespeare. The texture is all wrong. It doesn’t move the same. This isn’t his pacing. It’s not his mindset. He was … This is not. He wouldn’t do that, start