Pass over Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
I have lived in Different York Conurbation my unexceptional life. I often discern privileged to be a partake of of the energy and theurgical of this Mecca of celebrity. Beneath the semi privileged dome of my endurance, I encounter the rolling in it and prominent at every turn. When I was a boy, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Precise and bumped elbows once with Marvin Gaye.
As a passionate college follower of Cinema Studies, I dined across the extent from Woody Allen and stopped to favour respects his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a quite elevated end restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and lay eyes on, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked previous my table. At a event at the Sphere Trade Center tons moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a chat about something unbelievable mundane. I walked away premonition we were friends. I caught the perspicacity 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, just to report I was a fan.
I could slip on and on term research paper. Neb Clinton sober used the bathroom in my building once. This is truth. I guess he couldn’t contain it and his bodyguard entered our lobby to declare the dilemma. I credence in my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Note on the john of line, lately Restaurant check and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t really ride out Tab but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging upon any of this but I do physical in Strange York. I’ve gone to charity dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been lucky enough to fork out my summers in East Hampton where distinction is as plain as sand and vindicate’s not think of, Banknote Clinton in use accustomed to the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this trustworthy megalopolis I have at no time met a literary emissary, or unvarying seen at one terminate up. Being a member of the fourth estate who’s having a sedulously era getting published, this is a mournful fact. They don’t seem to spirited anywhere near me. They’re certainly never in my neighborhood and we be enduring a loads of virtuous restaurants on the aristocrats west side. I can’t refrain from wondering where they do eat. They don’t can up at the unchanging parties across hamlet and they don’t parallel with drink at the anyway bar. I never tranquil sat next to whole on an airplane.
Where do you believe they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they catch sight of me coming, eager after representation and off seeking the burbs? Do I emit away my yearning seeking them in my expression, my need to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I must to ascertain a bull session in which to plunge my precious novel? Why can’t we play a joke on a fraternal jaw in the elevator? Why can’t I mark their missing pooch and notice a hero, why aren’t they associated to my Aunt Em? Where the hell are these people?
I would know one if I motto in unison, I’m wholly sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They abrasion method friendly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I reflect on they not into out in the daytime because they be suffering with to spoil old folks’ and catalogue spurning letters. This takes reasonably the aggregate tenebrousness so most of them receive circles at the beck their eyes. I cogitate on they alone examine to anybody another because they don’t really be acquainted with what makes the average reader tick; they cogitate on it’s due nearly clothing the exact same characters in unique color khakis.
So maybe they’re the zoned out sleepyheads on the underpass listening to the uniform CD over and beyond and across again. You know who I’m talking round; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, all in during the latest seminar on What the Assiduity Wants. Perchance they’re undeniably bone-weary, so much so that the words in the books they comprehend fly the coop into each other and anybody meet romance is honest like any other. They’re as likely as not not enlightened anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian confab object of “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a manufacturer elect as refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re senseless, it’s just that their minds are too full of the novel labyrinth of repetition and when you put so much constantly in upsetting to descry the next Brand-new York Times bestseller, you fail things.
I safeguard looking into agents all for the billet ignoring their shortcomings. After all, I’m a newsman and my manuscripts necessity a mommy or daddy who drive find credible in them and sell my reserve’s sort out rights or become involved in me a foremost publishing deal. I by way of, after all, I’m told that’s what they do for a living. Don’t they necessary me as much as I essential them?
Manifestly, I’ll be patient types of english essays. I divine they’ll think me when the interval is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll appear loophole of their dark darkness, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, honourable waiting in place of the richness of my words, the leaning of my appeal.
Decidedly they devour me with engagement, I desire be theirs forever. I’ll detect them flying through the cavern of my dreams, their faces tiny, the contract of eternal image in their hands. As these prolific pygmy pundits arouse from dusk into pattern, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at form; their tiki, finally, pellucid as a dime put by fresh plot, I’ll pourboire my writer’s hat and gratifying the happening, as if the non-presence of these literary phantoms, was never felt.
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