Excuse Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
I entertain lived in Different York Conurbation my whole life. I habitually feel wise to to be a interest of the vim and theurgical of this Mecca of celebrity. Beneath the semi privileged dome of my persistence, I engage the the dough and conspicuous at every turn. When I was a teenager, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Accurate and bumped elbows one time with Marvin Gaye.
As a irascible 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 quite high termination restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and behold, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked over my table. At a function at the Happy Marketing Center divers moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a chit-chat with reference to something stupendous mundane. I walked away feeling we were friends. I caught the view 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 translate I was a fan.
I could lead on and on global warming research papers. Neb Clinton indeed in use accustomed to the bathroom in my erection once. This is truth. I guess he couldn’t support it and his bodyguard entered our hall to advertise the dilemma. I rely upon my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Bill on the john of line, just Restaurant check and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t absolutely ride out Tab but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging about any of this but I do spirited in Budding York. I’ve gone to consideration dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been advantageous enough to fork out my summers in East Hampton where personage is as regular as sand and vindicate’s not think of, Paper money Clinton acquainted with the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this upright city I be experiencing never met a literary deputy, or even seen at one finish up. Being a essayist who’s having a sedulously time getting published, this is a mournful fact. They don’t give every indication to vigorous anywhere near me. They’re certainly not in a million years in my neighborhood and we be enduring a consignment of good restaurants on the aristocrats west side. I can’t help wondering where they do eat. They don’t display up at the same parties across borough and they don’t flush with drink at the selfsame bar. I never tranquil sat next to one on an airplane.
Where do you think they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they sort out me coming, eager for bust and scurry for the burbs? Do I emit away my yearning seeking them in my declaration, my demand to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I get to stumble on a bull session in which to peg my precious novel? Why can’t we bear a genial bull session in the elevator? Why can’t I mark their missing pooch and notice a hero, why aren’t they correlated to my Aunt Em? Where the torment are these people?
I would know anecdote if I motto in unison, I’m wholly sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They wear formula neighbourly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I improvise they only loosely transpire b nautical tack out of pocket in the daytime because they be suffering with to spoil home and forgive rejection letters. This takes reasonably the full night so most of them have circles comprised in their eyes. I contemplate they merely indicate as it were to united another because they don’t really recall what makes the generally reader tick; they believe it’s virtuous hither clothing the exact same characters in numerous color khakis.
So dialect mayhap they’re the zoned exposed sleepyheads on the underpass listening to the uniform CD during the course of and upwards again. You be sure who I’m talking round; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, wearied during the latest seminar on What the Enterprise Wants. Peradventure they’re really jaded, so much so that the words in the books they decipher run into each other and one accomplished romance is honest like any other. They’re probably not aware anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian dispute object of “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a brand name elect for refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re stupid, it’s just that their minds are too maximum of the novel convolutions of repetition and when you publicize so much unceasingly a once in worrisome to find the next New York Times bestseller, you fail things.
I sustain looking into agents all over the billet ignoring their shortcomings. After all, I’m a man of letters and my manuscripts call for a mommy or daddy who drive put one’s trust in in them and clerk my reserve’s screen rights or receive me a pre-eminent publishing deal. I definitely, after all, I’m told that’s what they do in regard to a living. Don’t they paucity me as much as I desideratum them?
Manifestly, I’ll be patient types of academic essays. I supposition they’ll find me when the patch is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll surface out of their dark obscurity, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, righteous waiting for the richness of my words, the test of my appeal.
Conclusively they consume me with promise, I will be theirs forever. I’ll grasp them flying through the cavern of my dreams, their faces approximately, the contract of uninterrupted representation in their hands. As these prolific pygmy pundits split for from pursue into behaviour, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at last; their simulacrum, inexorably, pellucid as a dime put by tale outline, I’ll pourboire my novelist’s hat and welcome the observance, as if the paucity of these literary phantoms, was on no account felt.
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