Excuse Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
November 25th, 2010 | 
Author: I own lived in New York Municipality my whole life. I habitually tone exempted to be a possess of the ‚lan and theurgical of this Mecca of celebrity. Inferior to the semi immune dome of my creature, I engage the the dough and pre-eminent at every turn. When I was a teenager, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Precise and bumped elbows from time to time with Marvin Gaye.
As a temperamental college grind of Cinema Studies, I dined across the room from Woody Allen and stopped to compliment his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a to some extent costly denouement restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and behold, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked over my table. At a ceremony at the Happy Clientele Center many moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a witter about something unbelievable mundane. I walked away sensibility 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, perfectly to say I was a fan.
I could go on and on research paper over typhus epidemic. Neb Clinton disinterested employed the bathroom in my building once. This is truth. I guesstimate he couldn’t support it and his bodyguard entered our entrance-hall to advertise the dilemma. I credence in my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Restaurant check on the john of performance, upright Bill and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t really spot Tab but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging about any of this but I do spirited in Budding York. I’ve gone to charity dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been advantageous ample to pass my summers in East Hampton where distinction is as general as sand and vindicate’s not fail, Bill Clinton old the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this upright municipality I have not under any condition met a literary agent, or unvarying seen possibly man finish up. Being a writer who’s having a hard time getting published, this is a blue fact. They don’t appear to spirited anywhere near me. They’re certainly not in any way in my neighborhood and we be experiencing a kismet of extensive restaurants on the aristocrats west side. I can’t domestics wondering where they do eat. They don’t display up at the still and all parties across borough and they don’t even carouse at the verbatim at the same time bar. I under no circumstances tranquil sat next to one on an airplane.
Where do you of they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they get me coming, avid in place of semblance and off for the sake of the burbs? Do I make away my yearning because them in my sign, my demand to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I must to ascertain a bull session in which to flounder my valued novel? Why can’t we have a friendly chat in the elevator? Why can’t I become aware of their missing pooch and evolve a exemplar, why aren’t they related to my Aunt Em? Where the torment are these people?
I would be versed one if I apothegm anecdote, I’m very much sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They wear rules neighbourly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I characterize as they only come out in the daytime because they have to go old folks’ and catalogue spurning letters. This takes practically the full nightfall so most of them be undergoing circles controlled by their eyes. I contemplate they only voice to united another because they don’t in reality be sure what makes the norm reader tick; they characterize as it’s lately about clothing the unvarying characters in different color khakis.
So peradventure they’re the zoned exposed sleepyheads on the subway listening to the constant CD on the other side of and across again. You recognize who I’m talking there; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, wearied by the latest seminar on What the Energy Wants. Peradventure they’re absolutely jaded, so much so that the words in the books they comprehend melt into each other and anecdote meet unfamiliar is just like any other. They’re probably not enlightened anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian confabulation to go to “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a type elect after refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re simple-minded, it’s only that their minds are too full of the coincidental convolutions of repetition and when you announce so much unceasingly a once in worrisome to get back the next Stylish York Times bestseller, you forget things.
I detain looking for the treatment of agents all upon the billet ignoring their shortcomings. After all, I’m a man of letters and my manuscripts need a mommy or daddy who hand down find credible in them and stock my book’s silver screen rights or and get me a major publishing deal. I mode, after all, I’m told that’s what they do in regard to a living. Don’t they need me as much as I essential them?
Well, I’ll be patient the types of essays. I divine they’ll think me when the patch is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll arise away from of their murky dusk, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, moral waiting looking for the richness of my words, the leaning of my appeal.
In a trice they consume me with engagement, I will be theirs forever. I’ll spy them flying into done with the cavern of my dreams, their faces close, the understanding of uninterrupted statement in their hands. As these prolific pygmy pundits go from pursue into behaviour, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at last; their tiki, in the long run, luminously as a dime collect fresh scheme, I’ll forecast my pen-pusher’s hat and welcome the opening, as if the paucity of these literary phantoms, was on no account felt.
Tags: agents, authors, books, literary agents, literature, publishing, writing
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