AUTOBIOGRAPHY UPDATE--2005
FLASHBACK
RUSSIAN SPRING was first published in the
Soviet Union first and in the United States, and in
the United States the same month as the failed coup
which was to turn it into an alternate history
novel. For days, there was fear that the
reactionary junta would take over, but it only took
me of watching it on television in Paris to know it
would fail. Why?
Because I was watching it on CNN! These fools
hadn't even captured the tv broadcast facilities in
Moscow! And I knew it was all over when they
themselves on television dead drunk!
CONTINUITY
By the time RUSSIAN SPRING had been published in
the United States, Spinrad had signed a two-book
contract with its American publisher, Bantam Books.
FRAME
I had never agreed to a multi-book contract
before because I never thought more than one novel
ahead, but Lou Aronica, who had been my editor
there on three novels offered a deal for my
ecoterrorism novel PICTURES AT 11, which I wanted
to write next, and a second novel which he
convinced me I wanted to do after that.
I had written a proposal for a non-fiction book
called THE TRANSFORMATION CRISIS about a concept
which had informed much of my fiction for years.
Any intelligent species must confront a
transformational crisis when it develops atomic
weapons, genetic engineering, a greenhouse warming
technology. It will either evolve into a
transformational civilization capable of enduring
for millions of years, or destroy its itself. Our
planet had entered this crisis with Hiroshima and
the outcome hung very much in the balance.
Lou had turned it down as a non-fiction
proposal, but now he wanted me to write it as the
second novel!
"Only if I can do it as a comedy," I blurted.
A future Earth which has failed its
transformation crisis sends back a time traveler to
change history. Not a politician or a scientists
who no one would believe, but a comedian who no one
would believe either, but who would get to spiel
his story on television.
Voila, the genesis of HE WALKED AMONG US.
CONTINUITY
Spinrad's contract called for PICTURES AT 11 to
be published as a hardcover, but Aronica wanted to
publish it as a major trade paperback, verbally
guaranteeing a much large printing and a major
marketing effort, and Spinrad agreed. US
publishing rhythms being slow, he had already
written HE WALKED AMONG US by the time Bantam
published PICTURES AT 11, and Bantam had already
accepted it for publication.
FRAME
Before Bantam could to publish PICTURES AT 11,
Lou was gone. I hadn't signed any amendment to the
existing contract, but more verbal promises of a
massive print run and a major promotion effort if I
went along gulled me into agreeing to it again.
But Bantam published PICTURES AT 11 with a
schlocko cover, no advertising and a minimal
printing. The reviews were excellent to rave and a
film option was taken, but by the time the novel
made the New York Times Book Review's Recommended
Summer reading list, it was out of print.
FLASHBACK
While this publishing monkey business was going
on, writing HE WALKED AMONG US was an intense,
passionate, writing experience, which produced what
I believe is still probably my best novel. A novel
about science fiction, as a literature, as a
calling, as a cultural necessity, as a subculture;
a novel about the so-called New Age; show business;
the life of the street.
A novel which, dealing as it did with the
critical cultural question, had transliterary
importance, and a novel I therefore believed was in
that sense more important than its literary value
or my career.
I knew that if I allowed Bantam to publish HE
WALKED AMONG US, they would trash the publication
the way they had PICTURES AT 11. To test the
waters, I submitted a treatment for a new novel,
GREENHOUSE SUMMER dealing with some of the same
matters, to Bantam, as the option clause of my two-
book contract required.
As I expected, they rejected it.
FRAME
By the 1990s, the major bookstore chains, not
the book publishers, ruled the publishing roost.
Their computer programs tracked how many copies
they had sold of the author's previous book, which
determined how many they ordered of the next one,
which determined the print run, which determined
the level of promotion, which determined the fate
of the book.
The way Bantam had published PICTURES AT 11 had
so devalued my recent track record that only a
major publicity campaign of the sort that they
hadn't delivered on that novel could break HE
WALKED AMONG US out of the commercial trap they had
put it in. And when they turned down the option
book, I knew they would not spend the money to do
it.
FLASHBACK
I had allowed Bantam to breach the contract on
PICTURES AT 11 by publishing it in trade paperback,
but I had never signed anything, so I did have the
legal means to take HE WALKED AMONG US away from
Bantam, where, as an "orphan novel", it would sink
without a trace.
I could do it. But should I?
What had happened to PICTURES AT 11 had damaged
the commercial viability of whatever my next novel
would to be. But I felt I would be betraying
something larger than myself if I didn't fight to
have HE WALKED AMONG US read by an audience of
significant size.
So I did it. I convinced myself that literary
and cultural worth would trump the numbers,
allowing such a novel to find major publication
elsewhere.
I believed it, Lee believed it, my agent
believed it.
It didn't.
CONTINUITY
HE WALKED AMONG US bounced from publisher to
publisher with none willing to publish it; the list
of possible major houses became exhausted and even
the science fiction editors turned it down, while
Spinrad's marriage to N. Lee Wood devolved into a
separation which left him in Paris and her in
England.
FRAME
Had PICTURES AT 11 been a best seller, some
major "mainstream" publisher would have gobbled up
HE WALKED AMONG US for top dollar, "sci-fi" or not,
but coming after a numbers flop, they wouldn't
touch the novel because they regarded it as
"science fiction" and the "science fiction"
publishers were terrified to publish it because it
dealt with the subculture of science fiction in a
manner they feared would alienate their "fan base."
David Hartwell turned it down as "too ambitious"
for his publisher, even though he would later buy
my next novel, GREENHOUSE SUMMER, for the same
publisher. It appeared my career, at least as a
major mainstream writer, like my marriage, was
over.
But at least I was still in show business.
CONTINUITY
Spinrad's friend, sound designer Richard Shorr,
had worked with French producer-director Jacques
Dorfmann on a previous film, and now Dorfmann
wanted to make a film about Vercingetorix, the
Gallic hero who had opposed Julius Caesar's
conquest of Gaul, and he was looking for a
screenwriter. Shorr and Dorfmann called Spinrad to
ask his advice.
FRAME
Of course I wanted the assignment for myself,
but I wasn't in the running because I had no
feature film credits, and why Richie and Jacques
thought I would have a better idea than they did I
never quite understood, but I did. My friend Rospo
Pallenberg, whose feature credits included THE
EMERALD FOREST, had written the historical-mythical
screenplay for EXCALIBUR, which led me to recommend
him for VERCINGETORIX, or DRUIDS, as the film was
to be titled outside of France, DRUIDS, and I put
together the deal between Rospo and Dorfmann.
Perhaps as a thank you, I was hired to do a back-
up treatment.
CONTINUITY
While Pallenberg was writing three drafts of his
script, Dorfmann was putting together his project.
He had the financing, he had a shoot date, he had
an internationally recognizable name in Gerard
Depardieu to play Vercingetorix's father, and
Gerard's son, Guillaime, a bankable name in France,
to play the lead.
But it he didn't have was a script that
satisfied him.
FLASHBACK
As President of the Science Fiction Writers of
America, I was once asked by Dentsu, the Japanese
PR giant, to get them Isaac Asimov for a plush
junket to speak at a major space conference in
Tokyo. When Isaac turned them down, as I knew he
would because he refused to fly, they asked me get
them with Ray Bradbury, who wouldn't fly either.
When Ray turned them down, they asked for Robert
Heinlein, who I knew was ill at the time, and after
he turned them down, they finally asked me if I
would do it. Three strikes and I was in.
Likewise I had gotten Jacques Rospo Pallenberg,
knowing it would have been futile to put myself
forward, and now my knowledge of Japanese protocol
stood me in good stead again, as Jacques called me
in a tizzy to ask me to please rewrite Rospo's
script to his order.
The catch was that while Rospo had had many
months to bomb, the shooting date was fixed, and I
had only five weeks to fix it.
CONTINUITY
Spinrad finished his rewrite of the screenplay
on time, but Guillaime Depardieu broke his leg in a
motorcycle accident, and the shooting date for
DRUIDS was postponed.
FRAME
Then cancelled. Revived. Postponed.
Cancelled. This went on for years, during which I
learned that for a film to start shooting, the
script, the casting, and the financing must all
come together at the same time. and that the magic
moment is narrow and fleeting.
But Jacques persisted, as the DRUIDS project
fell apart through the lack of one element or
another and then was put back together, only to
have it happen again and again. This gave him far
too much time to drive me crazy with far too many
rewrites for the film's eventual good.
Long enough for me to be put through the same
process on another film at the same time, LA SIRENE
ROUGE, which I adapted from a French novel. By the
time Jacques had replaced Guillaime Depardieu with
Christophe Lambert and was about to shoot DRUIDS in
Bulgaria, I was on about on draft seven of LA
SIRENE ROUGE, another film project that would also
fall apart and be put together any number of times,
and wouldn't be shot until DRUIDS had been
finished, had been released, and had bombed.
FLASHBACK
About ten days before the first day's shoot of
DRUIDS, Jacques invited me to spend a long weekend
at his "villa" outside Sophia to "thank me" for all
the work I had done. Uh, there were two or three
little scenes that he had rewritten in French (the
film would be shot in both French and English
versions)that he'd like me to put into proper
English....
He talked me into it. I didn't see the script
until I was on the plane to Bulgaria when a
horrible mess was literally dumped in my lap, half
in French and half in English (the film was to be
shot in French and English versions), the whole
thing heavily rewritten by Jacques. I had four
days to produce a coherent English version, which
would then be translated back into French.
To make matters worse, all Jacques wanted me to
do was translate his bad French dialog into bad
English dialog, while the overqualified Bulgarian
thespians he had hired for secondary roles were
rightly and professionally imploring me to fix it.
Jacques refused to even discuss this with me, so
in the end I went ahead and did it on my own, and
Jacques didn't see what I had done until the night
before my escape flight on the heels of what was
going to be a total eclipse of the sun. He was
pissed off at my lese majeste. I was pissed off at
him for being pissed off at me. I suggested that
the assistant director read it and give a neutral
opinion.
"I don't care what anyone else thinks!" Jacques
shouted. "It's my movie!"
When the producer and director who also fancies
himself a writer tells you that, it's over, right?
Well not quite. On the way to the airport the
next day, I'm handed one last scene that he's
rewritten to please, pretty please, put into
English, and find myself in the production office
in Sophia actually doing it as the eclipse starts,
after which I'm rushed to the airport, experience
the totality outside the terminal, and escape with
what's left of my sanity.
FRAME
DRUIDS was a French national epic, so when it
tanked in France, it tanked big time, though it
mercifully disappeared in the rest of the world
without a stenchful trace. LA SIRENE ROUGE bombed
too, but it simply disappeared.
From these writing experiences, I learned that
there is a point beyond which any further rewriting
of anything is only going to make it worse. The
director LA SIRENE ROUGE never got this, but a few
years later, Jacques 'fessed up, which is why we
are still friends, and why I've even worked with
him after the DRUIDS fiasco. He had a powerful
vision, but he screwed up, and he and his film paid
dearly for it.
I also learned that no one person should be
producer, director, and co-writer on the same film.
If Jacques as the director had had a producer to
rein in Jacques the writer, or Jacques the producer
had not had total power over what was shot, Jacques
Dorfmann the film-maker would have ended up much
happier.
FLASHBACK
By utter coincidence, LA SIRENE ROUGE was based
on the novel by my musical collaborator, Maurice
Dantec. While my career as a novelist was reeling,
not only was I up to my ears in the movie end of
show biz, I was dabbling in what might loosely be
called rock and roll. I had done this with Richard
Pinhas before in a studio, but this time around I
would end up as a live performer.
Richard had revived his old group, Heldon, and
in the middle of all this film work, I was writing
about half the lyrics for the album ONLY CHAOS IS
REAL with Maurice writing most of the rest, then
spending time in the studio with the recording and
mixing. I also did one cut as a vocalist, which
ended up on a different album under a different
band name, and so....
ONLY CHAOS IS REAL was finished and Maurice was
gone to Montreal when Richard was asked to play at
a major club called Elysee Montemarte. A popular
journalist had died and left money in his will for
a farewell bash for about a thousand people at the
club directly after his burial.
Richard hates performing alone, there was no one
else to do it, and so he persuaded me to go on with
him. We were the opening act as the audience filed
in directly from the cemetery.
It sounds like a joke or a musician's worst
nightmare.
My debut as a live vocalist was as opening act
at a wake.
Not as bad as it sounds. We went down as well
as could be expected.
And after that, I feared nothing as a live
performer.
CONTINUITY
Spinrad went on to perform with Richard Pinhas,
and various configurations of the group variously
called Heldon, Schizotrope, or Psychtrope around
France in Nevers, Bordeaux, Paris, and the
Transmusical Festival in Rennes, among other
venues.
FLASHBACK
Schizotrope indeed! With a film shot and
another in the works, high ego high times as a
performer, but HE WALKED AMONG US still without a
publisher, and my main career as a novelist still
thwarted, I went to the World Fantasy Convention in
London.
This was a gathering of SF editors, fans, and
writers, and yes, I was one of the luminaries, but
none of my books were available in the book
dealers' room, I hadn't written a novel since HE
WALKED AMONG US, hadn't had one published in an
even longer span, had nothing in the works, and
didn't have a publisher.
FRAME
I was reading a newspaper piece about how the
greenhouse warming was going to be a world-wide
disaster on a cold gray winter day in Paris. I
looked out the window at the gray sky.
"Can't happen too soon enough here! Bring on
Tropical Paris!"
There were going to be winners as well as
losers.
That was the genesis of GREENHOUSE SUMMER.
When Bantam had rejected a treatment for this
novel, I had submitted it to my old friend and
editor David Hartwell at Tor, who sheepishly came
up with an insulting low-ball offer he knew would
not be acceptable.
After which I got involved in writing two
feature films at once, and songs and journalism on
the side, and performing on the side of that.
But now....
FLASHBACK
Walking around the convention hotel like a ghost
of myself, I decided that I had to write GREENHOUSE
SUMMER and see it published. Show biz success or
not, I had to get back to writing novels, even if
it meant swallowing my pride, taking a low-ball
offer, however little economic sense it might make
when I could pursue a more lucrative career writing
movies, and even without the belief that the novel
would be published in anything other than a
minimalist manner.
David Hartwell was there in London. Over I few
drinks I accepted more or less the same offer for
GREENHOUSE SUMMER that I had previously rejected.
Now it really had become an offer I could not
refuse.
CONTINUITY
Tor published GREENHOUSE SUMMER in the expected
unexceptional manner. VERCINGETORIX opened in
France to terrible reviews which hardly mentioned
Spinrad, flopped at the box office, and went
straight to DVD as DRUIDS in the United States
FRAME
Richie Shorr had read my third draft screenplay,
and when he saw the film, told me that whereas what
had been shot was drek, it was a masterpiece and
should not been lost. "You've got to turn it into
a novel!" he insisted.
I had never novelized a screenplay, myself or
anyone else's, and never wanted any part of any
such thing.
"Read it and tell me that!" Richie demanded.
Richie was right. I was proud of what I had
written, whereas I had been grateful for the mercy
of the French press in keeping my name out of their
slaughter of the film.
But novelize a screenplay, even if it was my
own....?
Shrugging, I sent it to my book agent in New
York, Russell Galen, who effused to the point where
he compared it to Shakespeare, but said, how am I
supposed to market a novel on the basis of a
screenplay for an already released flop? And asked
me if there was anyone high enough up in publishing
who might know my work well enough to make this
possible.
FLASHBACK
Well, I said in all innocence, there's a guy
who was editor at Pan, a secondary science fiction
paperback line back in London in the 1960s when my
novel BUG JACK BARRON was getting me denounced in
Parliament, a fringie of the New Wave scene, who I
think now has some kind of job in New York, and
would know who I was and be familiar with my work.
Sonny Mehta.
Russ did a take.
Sonny Mehta?!
You really don't know that Sonny Mehta is the
honcho of Knopf and probably the most powerful and
highly regarded publishing executive in New York?
Uh, no,
But it was nice to see that Sonny had found a
job in New York. Mike Moorcock admitted that Sonny
was an okay guy back in his Pan days ,"but of
course not to be trusted."
FRAME
As agent for the estate of Philip K. Dick, Russ
had a relationship with Vintage, a subsidiary of
Knopf, and its publisher Marty Asher, and so the
submission went through him and he did the
negotiating.
I was in New York doing a gig at a venue called
the Knitting Factory with Richard and Maurice when
Knopf decided to buy THE DRUID KING, the
negotiations started while we were rehearsing, and
I was staying at the apartment of Dona Sadock,
still my close fired, when the deal was concluded.
CONTINUITY
Spinrad returned to Paris to write the first
draft of THE DRUID KING and Time Warner UK made a
major deal to publish the unwritten novel in
Britain on the basis of the screenplay and some
conversations with the editor, Tim Holman.
FRAME
Ah yes, the literary high life! Or so I
thought.
But Asher had insisted on a contract clause
paying out a portion of the advance upon my showing
him 200 pages, like a Hollywood producer cracking
the whip over a screenwriter, and an even bigger
insult to an author of twenty published novels.
Worse, I had always felt that going back to
rewrite before completing a draft was a creative
mistake, and showing raw partial first draft was
both dangerous and unprofessional.
But Asher was a lord of the New York Literary
Literary Jungle, in which ecology I was a lowly
"sci-fi guy," a species of literary snobbery with
which I was all too familiar. I had no choice, but
I would put the novel itself first. Thanks to my
British publisher, I could afford to write a
complete first draft before showing anything to
Asher, who would be pleased at seeing something
much more than the contract called for, something
which could then benefit from meaningful editorial
input.
But while arrogance was something I expected at
this level, I was not prepared for professional
incompetence Asher was not pleased with the first
draft I had turned in. He thought it was sloppy.
It was not easy getting through to him that what he
had read was first draft. He never seemed to even
quite get the concept, for when I asked for his
editorial input, I was told that he didn't want to
comment until he had seen a rewrite.
Like a Hollywood producer, he had just wanted
pages to prove I wasn't goofing off.
In like West Coastal manner, it was made clear
that Knopf/Vintage would cut me off and reject the
book on the basis what I really hadn't wanted to
show them in the first place, unless I convinced
Edward Kastenmeier, Asher's right-hand man, that I
would and could take his direction.
I was back in show biz pitching a rewrite to
another species of producer/director who fancied
himself a writer. At least this was a game in
which I was well-schooled, and I had little trouble
convincing Kastenmeier to pick up the option or
convincing myself that while he wasn't working on a
level that would be very useful in making the
transition to my first historical novel, at least
he wasn't any mogul's nephew.
We had our story conferences and I took the
rewrite notes and I went to work.
FLASHBACK
Meanwhile my friend, French director Diane
Kurys, had met the French Ambassador to Mexico,
Bruno Delaye, who was an admirer of my work. I had
done events for cultural programs of the French
government in France and New Caledonia, Bruno
wanted to meet me, and so he arranged for me to do
likewise for his embassy in Mexico.
One of these events was a press conference, and
when a writer does a press conference, he's asked
what he's working on now, and what he's planning to
do next.....
FRAME
Three decades previously, after I had finished
writing THE IRON DREAM I got to wondering if there
had been any other instances of civilizations
falling prey to a national psychosis in the manner
of Nazi Germany. The closest thing I found was the
Aztecs, with their massive rites of human
sacrifice.
It started as idle intellectual curiosity, but I
was living with Dona Sadock then, who had an avid
interest in mystical and psychological theology, we
delved deeper, and what emerged was the fascinating
story of how Hernando Cortez had really conquered
Mexico by a 16th century version of theological
media manipulation.
This progressed to the notion of writing a stage
play called THE FEATHERED SERPENT, a small scale
confrontation between Cortes and Montezuma, which
would tell the story compressed into surreal haiku
terms. But I had never written a play, wouldn't
have known what to do with one if I did, and
nothing had never come of it.....
FLASHBACK
Now, this popped into my mind and out of my
mouth as a notion for a novel in a press conference
in Mexico City, and was surprised to see it all
over the newspapers the next day.
Well why not?
It ended up becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The idea for a little surreal play became a full
scale historical novel and the title became MEXICA
because THE FEATHERED SERPENT had been used on two
previous novels.
CONTINUITY
Spinrad finished the second draft of THE DRUID
KING and sent it to Edward Kastenmeier two months
before a planned trip to New York in connection
with the World Science Fiction Convention being
held in Philadelphia on Labor Day weekend, 2001.
Spinrad arrived in New York a week before the
convention, staying with Dona Sadock in her
apartment on 9th Street in Manhattan. They went to
Philadelphia together, then returned to New York,
where Spinrad made an appointment to go over the
rewritten manuscript with Kastenmeier on September
12, 2001.
He then flew to Florida to see his mother,
returning to Dona Sadock's apartment late at night
on September 10, 2001.
FLASHBACK
I awoke about 9:30 AM on September 11, and
looked out the window of Dona's apartment on the
corner of 9th Street and Sixth Avenue. From that
angle the Twin Towers would not have been visible,
but what was visible was a crowd on Sixth Avenue
looking south. I showed this to Dona, expressing my
curiosity at what they could all be looking at.
"Oh," she said diffidently, "they shoot movies
here all the time."
I called my agent but I was told by his
receptionist that he wouldn't be coming into work
today because of what had happened.
And she told me.
And I dashed down in the street, into the
buzzing, milling crowd, looked south, and saw--
nothing.
The familiar giant monoliths simply were not
there. There was an immense roiling rising cloud of
dense black smoke where they had been. And from
these few miles away, I could smell it, that and
the pheremonal odor of the shock and anger of the
dazed onlookers.
FRAME
Dona and I were in the process of rekindling our
old relationship before September 11, but being
thrust together into the Ground Zero of history
added the sheer charge of love during wartime, life
at the center of destiny, at the heart of the
whirlwind.
No non-emergency vehicles were permitted south
of 14th Street, but the subway was running, and
crazy as it sounds, on September 12, I took it
uptown out of the blockaded zone to my editorial
meeting with Edward Kastenmeier.
FLASHBACK
Midtown was functioning as if everything was
normal. Nothing could have seen crazier than that.
Or so I thought.
But Kastenmeier had marked up the manuscript
sentence by sentence as if he was a college teacher
and I was a student. He had run paragraphs
together, rewritten sentences attempting to bend
the prose of an historical novel closer to his
style-deaf concept of standard modern English. Yet
despite the amazing arrogance on display, he had so
little confidence in his own editorial judgement
that he had had his assistant reading ahead of him
and marking up this mess in a different
handwriting.
It was an editorial process that made rewriting
a bilingual script in Bulgaria for Jacques Dorfmann
during an eclipse seem like a session with Maxwell
Perkins in the Algonquin. I was constrained to
debate virtually every sentence with Kastenmeier.
Buildings on either side us were evacuated because
of bomb threats and then reoccupied. It went on
all day and into the evening, for I could not let
Kastenmeier leave until the nightmare task he had
inflicted on me was done and I could escape with
what was left of my sanity.
FRAME
I returned to Paris and put together a clean
final draft of THE DRUID KING. But I was put
through literally endless picayune rewrites that
accomplished nothing but almost a year of my life
lost in agonizing wheel-spinning.
Dona had come to Paris to live with me, but
still had her apartment in New York, and we began
ping-ponging back and forth. On one of these
sojourns in New York, I had given Kastenmeieir six
weeks advance notice that I would be there for a
month, and would therefore be available to go over
the final manuscript with him in person. But he
couldn't even get his reading of it done before we
returned to Paris.
Time Warner UK, long satisfied with the novel,
scheduled it for February 2003, while Knopf was
wasting my time, while I and my agent, thoroughly
exasperated, were on the verge of pulling the book
and taking it elsewhere. But I prevailed on Sonny
to bring the process to an end, and THE DRUID KING
was finally scheduled for May 2003.
FLASHBACK
But when I got the catalog, I discovered that
THE DRUID KING had been dumped into August; a dead
month for sales, promotion, and reviews. And a
cheaper British edition would be out a half year
before the Knopf edition. I knew in my gut that
the novel had been torpedoed. I called to vent my
ire at Kastenmeier, only to learn that he too
learned of the change only when he saw the catalog.
Further inquiry revealed that Sonny Mehta had
done it unilaterally.
FRAME
What act of lese majeste had I committed against
Sonny Mehta? Why would he torpedo a novel he
himself had rescued from purgatory?
This is the "SF writer" surmising now, entirely
appropriate, for I can only surmise that this had
everything to do with it.
When the New Wave had made science fiction a
Fave Wave with the trendie set in London, Sonny had
been a paperback science fiction editor. Now he
was a New York literary lion, in which circles he
would not want such a past clinging to his Gucci
bootheels. Especially when he had been looked down
on as nikulturni by the snob element at Knopf when
he had taken over from the sainted Robert Gottlieb.
Please don't let on that you knew me when.
FLASHBACK
Time Warner had already published THE DRUID KING
in Britain, and bought the treatment for MEXICA,
and I was well into writing the novel. The plan
had been to submit the MEXICA treatment to Knopf as
the option novel when the catalog came out, but
when THE DRUID KING was moved to August, I decided
to wait for a complete first draft to be in the
strongest possible position.
When the finished first draft of MEXICA was
submitted to Knopf, they had 60 days to exercise
their option. The option period expired without a
word, but we decided not to press them, since by
then THE DRUID KING was going to be published in a
month or two.
FRAME
I had allowed myself to be put through such an
amateurish and demeaning editorial experience
chasing the marketing might of Knopf as the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow. Now I knew it
would not be used to my novel's benefit, no book
tour, no ad money, nada.
But I went to New York in August for the
publication on my own nickle, for I was experienced
on radio and tv, and had an 800 pound gorilla of a
demo tape, what has generally been regarded as the
best interview with Woody Allen ever by those who
have heard it. I sent it to the Knopf publicity
department well in advance--use this to get me the
bookings!
The end result: one local New York radio show
which I booked myself.
CONTINUITY
In October, months after the option period on
MEXICA had expired, Spinrad's agent pressed Knopf
for a decision and was told "we are not prepared to
make an offer at this time." There was no formal
rejection nor was the manuscript returned.
FLASHBACK
Phone calls and emails to Sonny by my agent were
never even answered. Meanwhile I found out that
MEXICA had not even been read by anyone but
Kastenmeier's lowly assistant.
So I sent an email to Sonny apprising him of the
situation.
The only reply was the return of the manuscript.
FRAME
At the time, I took it all personally, and maybe
some of it was, but now I understand that what
happened to me was not all that atypical of what
has happened to many writers as a result of what
has happened to American publishing.
American publishing is now dominated by a very
few conglomerates which have gobbled up the
hallowed imprints of yore and turned them into
little more than brands. Knopf is owned by Random
House, along with a bouquet of other brands like
Doubleday, Bantam, Dell, among many others, and
Random House is owned by the German giant
Bertelsmann AG. And that one combine is about 40%
of US book publishing.
Even so, two bookstore chains control the market
to the point where they even dictate the cover
prices of books to the publishers. If they don't
order a sufficient number of copies or don't order
at all, a book is not commercially viable. And the
publishers know when this will happen before they
even read a manuscript because the chains base most
of their distribution on "order to net."
If the chains ordered 10,000 copies of your last
book and sold 8000, they order 8000 of the next
one, and if they sell 6000, they order order 6000
of the one after that, and if that sells 4000....
Where the math leads is of course to the tarpits
for writers without previous previous best-seller
numbers, which I didn't have when Knopf published
THE DRUID KING. Only by telling the chains in
advance of their buy that there would be an author
tour and a significant promotion budget could Knopf
or anyone else break any writer out of this trap.
When they didn't, that novel, like thousands of
others, was chewed up by the gears of the machine.
When when it was, Knopf rejected MEXICA unread
since the iron diktat of the numbers now renders
literary judgement of such a submission redundant.
And threatens to render my career as a novelist,
along with those of many other, redundant with it.
The end of the line for me as a novelist?
Or not. I have been here before.
And MEXICA is shortly to be published in a
serious manner in Britain. And when I arrived in
New York to confront the terminal phase of the
Knopf mess, I had just received a Lifetime
Achievement award at a major literary event in
Nantes from the hands of the mayor.
So let's just call it the end of this chapter of
my autobiography
And rather than leave it and myself with an
unresolved cliff-hanger, I'll expiate the necessary
egotism of this experiment in autobiography by
closing it with a summary version of a little story
written not by me, but by Ray Bradbury.
FLASH
FORWARD
The United States has been nuked and gringo
tourists are pouring north past a roadside gas
station as two Mexican attendants watch in
bemusement. When one stops to gas up, one of the
Mexicans asks the American tourist what's happened.
"Haven't you heard?" says the American. "It's
the end of the world!"
And dashes frantically back up the road.
One Mexicans look at the other and shrugs.
"What do they mean by the world?"
end