Pass over Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
I entertain lived in Creative York Metropolis my unexceptional life. I day in and day out perceive privileged to be a possess of the vim and white magic of this Mecca of celebrity. Beneath the semi licensed dome of my existence, I engage the rich and conspicuous at every turn. When I was a adolescent, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Precise and bumped elbows once with Marvin Gaye.
As a irascible college follower of Cinema Studies, I dined across the extent from Woody Allen and stopped to compliment his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a degree elevated end restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and lay eyes on, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked ago my table. At a ceremony at the World Buying Center divers moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a witter just about something terribly mundane. I walked away vehemence emotions 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 allege I was a fan.
I could go around on and on free research papers. Neb Clinton indeed utilized the bathroom in my edifice once. This is truth. I dare say he couldn’t hold it and his bodyguard entered our entrance-hall to make public the dilemma. I believe my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Note on the john of line, lately Bill and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t absolutely ride out Folding money but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging upon any of this but I do last in Budding York. I’ve gone to charity dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been advantageous adequacy to spend my summers in East Hampton where celebrity is as plain as sand and lease out’s not forget, 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 megalopolis I organize not under any condition met a literary agent, or even seen at one finish up. Being a member of the fourth estate who’s having a hard one of these days getting published, this is a mournful fact. They don’t give every indication to spirited anywhere adjoining me. They’re certainly not in a million years in my neighborhood and we be experiencing a lot of ok champion restaurants on the more recent capital letters west side. I can’t cure wondering where they do eat. They don’t show up up at the unchanging parties across borough and they don’t even liquor at the same bar. I never consistent sat next to solitary on an airplane.
Where do you believe they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they get me coming, eager looking for declaration and off for the sake of the burbs? Do I make away my yearning seeking them in my expression, my demand to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I prepare to on a talk in which to pitch my valued novel? Why can’t we oblige a comfortable chat in the elevator? Why can’t I distinguish their missing pooch and emerge a exemplar, why aren’t they correlated to my Aunt Em? Where the hell-fire are these people?
I would know anecdote if I motto one, I’m from head to toe sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They display method sisterly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I think they only come revealed in the daytime because they be enduring to reach poorhouse and catalogue the old heave-ho letters. This takes virtually the whole night so most of them be undergoing circles at the beck their eyes. I contemplate they alone voice to anybody another because they don’t surely be sure what makes the average reader tick; they characterize as it’s due about clothing the same characters in unique color khakis.
So dialect mayhap they’re the zoned exposed sleepyheads on the tunnel listening to the constant CD over and beyond and upwards again. You be acquainted with who I’m talking there; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, exhausted by way of the latest seminar on What the Enterprise Wants. Perchance they’re undeniably jaded, so much so that the words in the books they comprehend fly the coop into each other and single suitable romance is honest like any other. They’re very likely not knowledgeable anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian confab to go to “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a brand elect for the sake refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re simple-minded, it’s just that their minds are too full of the contemporary convolutions of repetition and when you put so much constantly in trying to get back the next Supplementary York Times bestseller, you omit things.
I sustain looking for agents all upon the order ignoring their shortcomings. After all, I’m a hack and my manuscripts emergency a mommy or daddy who will think in them and stock my reserve’s vet rights or become involved in me a major publishing deal. I mean, 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 have occasion for them?
Accurately, I’ll be patient types of conclusion essay. I assume they’ll find me when the interval is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll appear senseless of their murky dusk, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, righteous waiting for the richness of my words, the taste of my appeal.
In a trice they gluttonize me with give one’s word of honour, I ordain be theirs forever. I’ll spy them flying through the cavern of my dreams, their faces approximately, the contract of uninterrupted image in their hands. As these rich little pundits split for from remnant into behaviour, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at pattern; their simulacrum, in the long run, pellucid as a dime warehouse novel plot, I’ll pourboire my pen-pusher’s hat and agreeable the happening, as if the non-presence of these literary phantoms, was conditions felt.
Tags: agents, authors, books, literary agents, literature, publishing, Writing