LITERARY AGENTS

Well, I have completed my social satire now. It’s out and available on AMAZON. I shall spare you the details. Rumours that I’m in discussion with a New York literary agent for a deal that could be worth $ 1.5, are, I’m afraid, precipitous. But I am obviously hoping for a sycophantic reception. There is much that I never imagined I would submit to paper. It should in my view create the worst possible outrage. Will it be read as much as Alice in Wonderland? I certainly hope so. But I must give my full attention now to the subsequent endeavour. The Moonshine Memoranda, amongst other things, part of a critical survey of the decrepit blogosphere. Which is chiefly interesting to me as an antidote to literary convention. So it’s going to be fun.

First, though, some history.

I came across my first literary agent some years ago, when he was an editor and I was a fashion model with one of the top West End agencies. My image then, was one of teenage innocence. I was so wholesome you could have wrapped me up in pink and produce me as a chick-lit cover. My enthusiasm for the man was undiminished by the fact that he had rejected every MS I ever submitted. I will not mention his name, but if he’d spotted my talent he might by now be one of the plenipotentiaries in the publishing division of Time Warner rather than endure the agonies of a literary shyster.

I have written frequently to this thoughtless man.

I even accepted I might have lunch with him. He begged to be excused.
I tried every angle, including massive elasticity about rates of commission. What was his response to that?
To put the phone down, if you must know.
“Are you going to read my book?” I demanded at my next opportunity.
“It’s too intellectual for me.”
I made no attempt to argue.
“It’s an outstanding script!” I wrote the following day. And clearly, I meant it. But his retort, conveyed to me with none of the restraint which one would expect from a person so sublimely entitled, left no doubt as to my error.
“You’re the only one who thinks so.”
I hung my head.
Here is another gambit I used unsuccessfully.
“I understand you’ve placed a lot of very successful authors,” I said.
“No,” the reply went, “good authors place themselves.”
“I’ll try and remember that,” I said.

Then I met a milk-faced agent. My name meant nothing to him. I gathered that he had yet to place his very first client. He was as doubtful about his role in the literary business as I was certain of mine. More startlingly to me, there was a nice reverence in his matter, as though there was every possibility that I were the women of letters and he was the neophyte.

“Excellent manuscript!” he said.

I was flattered, even surprised. I’d never had anybody say that to me before, least of all a literary agent. I wanted him to expand more upon the secrets of sinuous, sub-claused prose, technical competence, purple prose style and an opulent vocabulary, but he changed the subject right back to sex (He sure knew a lot about it). It could not have surprised me more if he had been a recruitment pimp.

I am concerned. Perhaps he was!

Agents are not, of course, either divine or inhuman; it is, however, worth remarking that we are the people who invented them. The real trouble is, of course, that nobody has the time anymore or the emotional energy to sit down and write a great book. Everybody wants to get published, have great reviews, win awards, and even give lectures. So the result is that agents are perceived as pompous, self-centred, arrogant by expediency and imbued with a sublime sense of entitlement, whereas authors, staggering aimlessly around the literary circuit in search of representation, have little more than creative writing seminars or workshops on synopses as their literary heritage.

Personally I have never felt the need to follow protocol. For me, the charm of writing lies in its freedom from convention. Indeed, I have to admit to a certain dereliction in never even having enquired as to academic procedure. But then again, I am a vociferous supporter of laissez faire and sex in the afternoon (which imposes little in the way of procedural constraint). It is only gradually that I changed the issue into one of literary freedom. And that, to me, is twice as compelling as any manager menace or editorial emergency room.

Write and be damned!

Dreamy