Bookman's promise

friend in those days.”

“So what screwed him up?”

“Everything, starting with his grandfather. He was never good enough, either for his father or grandfather. His older brother was named after the father and grandfather. He was the one who was supposed to rule the estate, like some stupid progression in royalty, and he would have if he hadn’t been killed in an auto wreck. Hal’s first mistake was being born second; his second mistake was not wanting to be a lawyer.”

“So the Archers loved books but wouldn’t let their son write ‘em.” “I don’t think that’s so unusual. Would you want your son to be a writer? Or your daughter to marry one?”

“If that made them happy, why not?”

“Because most of the time it doesn’t make them happy. Most writers I know lead difficult, hand-to-mouth lives. In the first place the odds against selling a book are enormous. A big New York publishing house may get twenty thousand manuscripts in a year and publish two hundred. Most of those slush-pile books are horrible, so there’s an expectation of failure that’s tough to overcome even with decent work. Those first-readers can’t expect to find much, so they don’t.”

“And this is what you want to give up law for?”

“That’s probably exactly what Archer’s father said, in far stronger terms.” She shrugged. “At least I’ve got some money in the bank. I’m not going to starve and I can always go back to law, but I’m still a good case in point. I suppose I’m like every other wannabe writer with a huge ego. I believe my talent and sheer persistence will overcome the odds, even when I know what the odds are. I’m facing a long, uphill battle, but at least I know it. That’s why I can talk about Archer’s life with some understanding even if I don’t like him much as a man.”

“So Archer was estranged from his family fairly early.”

“To put it mildly. He was sent to the University of Virginia, the old man’s alma mater, in the hope it would straighten him out. But he was put on notice and given no money for anything. He dropped out after a year and the family made him an outcast. In effect he was on his own from then on. He went to New York, lived in a hole in the wall, and started to write stories.”

“And had a terrible time selling them.”

“Oh yeah. Miranda’s right: Archer’s a real bastard, but what a great talent. That should have been evident from the start, publishers should have been clamoring to get at his stuff. Instead he met a wall of indifference that broke his spirit and finished the job his family had started. Can you imagine what it’s like to write for years and get nowhere? To know in your heart that you’re something special and watch your books get rejected and rejected and rejected, over and over till the paper they were typed on begins to come apart. I’ll tell you what happens to writers like that. One day they wake up and they’re old. All that promise just seems to flush away overnight and they’ve got nothing to show for it except a wasted life. It comes faster than they could’ve imagined. Archer was in his forties when he published his first book. It had gone everywhere and finally David McKay bought it. McKay was a small house and the book sank like a lead balloon. Then they rejected his next book, and there he was, starting from scratch, looking for a publisher. His book had made him less than three thousand dollars, and that was spread over several years. Try to live anywhere on that. Try living in New York.”

She took some more coffee. “His next publisher was St. Martin’s Press, a real mixed bag. They’ll put money into a big book, but a lot of their fiction is nickel-and-dime, with half of a very modest print run going to libraries. Archer made nothing from them; he refused to send them his next one and they parted company in mutual anger. Archer had to start his hunt from scratch again and no one would touch him. He fired his agent, his agent fired him, or they each fired the other at the same moment. By then there may have been a grapevine at work, I don’t know. It would stand to reason that publishers hear things, and why would they publish someone whose books come with a bad attitude and don’t sell anyway? Those two factors will offset a whole bunch of literary excellence, even in the minds of dedicated editors. So Archer toiled away and began to lash out at everyone. Finally in pure desperation he let Walker have the book. You know about Walker.”

“Yeah, there’s a shaggy-dog joke in the trade about Walker and St. Martin’s. Their print runs sometimes are so small that some of their authors become instant rarities. Those books are only a few years old and they sell for hundreds of dollars.”

“What’s the joke?”

“How do you become a millionaire in the used book business? Buy five copies of everything St. Martin’s and Walker publish. How do you go broke in the book biz? Same answer.”

She smiled. “As you can imagine, then, nothing happened with Walker. Archer’s bitterness got deeper and he became even more unbearable. Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but in fact he should’ve been published by Random House or Doubleday, with six-figure advances and book tours, the whole nine yards. But all he could see coming out of the big houses was trumped-up suspense junk and mindless bodice rippers.”

“You sound bitter yourself, Erin, and you haven’t even started yet. As if nothing good ever gets published. I know you know better than that.”

“I’m talking as Archer now. You asked how he got screwed up and I’m telling you.”

“So he turned to nonfiction and the Viking Press found him,” I said. “But apparently the Pulitzer did him no good at all.”

“Didn’t do much for his attitude, did it? If anything it made him angrier. Instead of being overjoyed that he’d finally made it, he felt only rage that his whole writing life had been spent getting there. The Pulitzer was confirmation of his greatness, and of the stupidity he saw everywhere he looked.”

“Hey, he’s not dead yet. What about his new book? Viking’s not chopped liver, I imagine they’ve given him a good advance.”

“I don’t want to talk about that. It was told to Lee in confidence. Nobody else knows, not even Miranda. I think you’ve got to ask Lee that question.”

I ate my breakfast and watched her think. Over coffee I asked what her strategy would be if Archer continued to stonewall. She shook her head. “Can’t talk about strategy. You’ll have to ask Lee that as well.”

“Then call him up.”