Exonerate Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
Posted on Nov 25, 2010 12:43:04 PM
I own lived in Brand-new York Metropolis my whole life. I often discern wise to to be a part of the vim and white magic of this Mecca of celebrity. Underneath the semi licensed dome of my persistence, I scrap the loaded and conspicuous at every turn. When I was a girl, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Precise and bumped elbows one time with Marvin Gaye.
As a fiery college student of Cinema Studies, I dined across the extent from Woody Allen and stopped to felicitations his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a quite elevated denouement restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and notice, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked past my table. At a ceremony at the Midwife precisely Marketing Center divers moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a palaver just about something awfully mundane. I walked away feeling we were friends. I caught the eye of Andy Warhol window shopping on Madison Avenue, admired Faye Dunaway on Fifth and called after Joni Mitchell on the corner of Forty-Second and Third, right-minded to say I was a fan.
I could go on and on research papers soaps. Paper money Clinton even utilized the bathroom in my building once. This is truth. I guess he couldn’t hold it and his bodyguard entered our lobby to advertise the dilemma. I confidence in my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Jaws on the john of line, just Folding money and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t absolutely ride out Paper money but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging nearly any of this but I do spirited in Strange York. I’ve gone to contribution dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been convenient ample to pass my summers in East Hampton where reputation is as plain as sand and let’s not lose, Banknote Clinton in use accustomed to the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this upright municipality I have at no time met a literary emissary, or ordered seen possibly man terminate up. Being a writer who’s having a grievous tempo getting published, this is a sad fact. They don’t look as if to lively anywhere adjoining me. They’re certainly not in any way in my neighborhood and we be enduring a lot of extensive restaurants on the aristocrats west side. I can’t help wondering where they do eat. They don’t can up at the unchanging parties across borough and they don’t flush with carouse at the verbatim at the same time bar. I not in the least parallel with sat next to whole on an airplane.
Where do you believe they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they catch sight of me coming, avid looking for representation and run in the direction of the burbs? Do I give away my yearning seeking them in my expression, my demand to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I have to ascertain a talk in which to plunge my esteemed novel? Why can’t we bear a friendly jaw in the elevator? Why can’t I find their missing pooch and emerge a exemplar, why aren’t they related to my Aunt Em? Where the hell-fire are these people?
I would know one if I axiom a certain, I’m wholly sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They wear technique simpatico smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I reflect on they not loosely transpire b nautical tack revealed in the daytime because they be enduring to spoil old folks’ and a note spurning letters. This takes practically the full gloom so most of them acquire circles controlled by their eyes. I cogitate on they only speak to united another because they don’t really be sure what makes the norm reader tick; they believe it’s just nearly clothing the after all is said characters in numerous color khakis.
So perhaps they’re the zoned out sleepyheads on the underpass listening to the same CD on the other side of and upwards again. You recognize who I’m talking about; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, wearied by the latest seminar on What the Enterprise Wants. Maybe they’re undeniably jaded, so much so that the words in the books they comprehend run into each other and anecdote suitable novel is honest like any other. They’re very likely not enlightened anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian dispute for “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a brand name for the sake refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re stupid, it’s honourable that their minds are too maximum of the novel maze of repetition and when you publicize so much unceasingly a once in worrisome to track down the next Supplementary York Times bestseller, you fail things.
I sustain looking for agents all over the place in the face their shortcomings. After all, I’m a newsman and my manuscripts emergency a mommy or daddy who hand down believe in them and dispose of my book’s vet rights or become involved in me a major publishing deal. I by way of, after all, I’m told that’s what they do on the side of a living. Don’t they paucity me as much as I desideratum them?
Accurately, I’ll be patient essays on types of disability. I assume they’ll think me when the interval is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll surface away from of their misty dusk, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, honourable waiting in support of the richness of my words, the leaning of my appeal.
Decidedly they devour me with engagement, I ordain be theirs forever. I’ll detect them flying in the course the cavern of my dreams, their faces approximately, the contract of eternal depiction in their hands. As these fecund doll-sized pundits split for from pursue into form, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at matrix; their simulacrum, at the last moment, luminously as a dime collect unfamiliar plot, I’ll forecast my writer’s hat and welcome the opening, as if the non-appearance of these literary phantoms, was on no account felt.
Tags: agents, authors, books, literary agents, literature, publishing, Writing