On whatever Monday months and months ago, I receive her ream of paper, Fed Exed no less, and she wants me to read it and give her, as she insists, my very honest opinion, with an underlined very and a doubly underlined honest, because she claims that I, who have eased a handful of authors onto the best seller lists in the past two years, that I am a brilliant judge of the written word, and I start reading and think gawd a’mighty, this is the worst piece of prose I have ever read, but then she did phone beforehand, and in a moment of friendship and editorial weakness I agreed to it, saying that, yes, I would be honest, painfully honest if necessary, and she should prepare herself for the worst, although I seriously doubted that would be the case, and she laughed her programmed little laugh and said, fine, that’s what she expects from me, so I do want to give her so-called novel (that’s what her impeccably formatted title page calls it) a fair shake, and I read, and I read, turn page after page of high quality bond, and I keep asking, why am I bothering, wasting my time, when is this going to get any better, but of course it doesn’t, at least not during the first 150 pages, which just coast along in neutral, then downshift, getting progressively worse, which leads me to believe that I have no taste, no critical eye, no whatever-you-want-to-call-it, and I put her manuscript away, telling myself, well, maybe I’m just in a mood, a non-receptive phase (even editors have off days), maybe I feel the pressure of three best-selling authors in two years combined with our friendship of twelve, and I go back to it the following Thursday and read 150 more pages, and lo and behold, the piece of crap reeks more than before, if such a thing is humanly possible, and the characters, the ones I can even remember, are uninspired beyond belief, and what they do is beyond boring, -- bibbidi-bobbidi- booboo boring -- and the only positive comment that pops into my addled, editorial brain is, well, she does know how to format, so perhaps I should be honest, which she did, after all, insist upon, and tell her to forget writing as a career and suggest that good secretaries, sorry, administrative assistants (more politically correct, I guess) are a rare commodity, and that a weekly paycheck means a guaranteed income (a bird in the hand, as it were), and she could, if necessary, always write on weekends if she felt driven, so, no, she definitely shouldn’t count on her prose to feed her, to clothe her, she couldn’t live from her ideas-on-paper, such as they are, which, now that I have the critical distance of 150 additional pages and the following Saturday, are less than less, are excruciatingly banal and tedious, decidedly more effective than Nembutal and Valium, and, should her tome ever see the fluorescent glare of a big box bookstore, would only contribute further to the destruction of the rain forests in South America, and this I, ecologically aware as I am, simply cannot justify, but here the fire and Lesli come to mind, meaning I would most likely resent anyone and anything of value, and I do value her as a friend and should see her work, her writing, as an extension of her personality, of her, a person I have always admired for her lively, active intellect, a person who, at parties and public gatherings, turns a finer phrase and quips wittier cocktailisms better than the best of them, so why then, ohwhyohwhy, is her prose such drivel, why are her characters such deadbeats, deader than deadbeats, why are the situations so hackneyed, why is the plot, if I can use the term in this context, so plodding, so crawling (turtles and snails come to mind) – plod, plod, plod, crawl, crawl, crawl – why are the idioms, similes, and metaphors so trite, so downright insulting, such slaps in my editorial face, such grey slugs on paper, and I become depressed, dejected, despondent, all those stimulating d-words that signify doom, the ultimate d-word, and I start doubting myself more than I doubt her, think that perhaps three authors in two years were the exceptions in my previously non-illustrious career as an editor, but I persist, and I read and read, turning Saturday into Sunday, Sunday into Monday, Monday into Tuesday, turning page after page of tedium’s torture, only fifty to go, turning page after page of beautiful, clean, neat formatting, perfect spelling, and irreproachable grammar, turning, turning, a sacrifice that should earn me a higher niche in editor heaven, if there is such a place, and if there isn’t there should be, and I groan that proverbial sigh of relief when the pile on the right is but a minuscule fraction of the pile on the left, moan a sigh of disbelief (or is it a death rattle?) when on Wednesday I approach the final countdown of ten, turn, nine, turn, eight, turn, seven, plod, six, turn, five, crawl, four, turtle, three, snail, two, yawn, one, slug, and exhale with ultimate enthusiasm when I read THE END, the most effective, significant, redeeming, and exhilarating words in her manuscript, not a blast-off but a shutdown of all systems, mine included, and, applauding myself at having survived such penance, I forgive her, for she knows not what she does, look at the stillbirth on paper, immaculately presented but conceived in darkness, ask myself why I spent some ten days, on and off, with her and her miscarriage, a fetus that should have been aborted long before it was allowed to increase in volume (I consciously avoid the word grow), and with the realization that good friends with better quips do not necessarily best manuscripts make, I come to resent her in an instant for taking up my time, for being an unknowing sadist, come to resent myself for being a masochist, for entering into her bondage and discipline state-of-mind, for falling into her prose trap, and I attack the phone when it rings, am startled to hear her voice produce its programmed little laugh, as she giggles that she has just signed a three book contract with Prestigious, that her agent's dropping my name at the negotiations produced miraculous financial results, which, of course, she intends to share with me, that her book would appear in under six months, so what could I say but congratulations on your success (we both sidestep – on purpose? – any mention of the manuscript which weighs heavily on my desk and mind), what could I say but I am truly happy for you, and I am startled a few months later when she asks me to hold her hand on Oprah, Stephen, and one of the Jimmies, those one-monikered, media drivel darlings, to engage in the obligatory prepublication publicity, so I agree and on national television equivocate through my plastered-on smile, term her book a challenge, a milestone, nod in agreement with the reputable and the respected and the revered – why I’ll never know – wizened book critics, whose names sound like body secretions, all the while thinking that I am out of touch, that I just didn’t understand her manuscript, that I should give it a second read, that, in fact, she never even bothered to retrieve her Fed Exed torture, and I watch her book top the various lists, knocking King, Steel, Crichton, Tyler, and Hawkins – such forceful names they have – knocking them from their pitiable supermarket pedestals, and I help her celebrate each signing, each talk show, each reading, each royalty check, with champagne and caviar, and I tell myself that Lesli might not have burned to death had I been home, that Lesli, who had urged me to straighten and to organize my study, who had pointed out over and over and over andoverandoverandover that the space heater, that tiny, inconspicuous space heater we so rarely used – only on chilly nights – was entirely too close to the pillar of my half-finished novels, who, no thanks to perhaps one sleeping pill too many, had fallen victim to the conflagration which destroyed three quarters of our weekend getaway, that Lesli might still be alive had I only stayed, and listened, and accepted, and I am startled one last time when the phone rings, and I hear her voice – whose voice? – with its programmed little laugh (oh, that voice) ask if she could come by right now, I'm in the neighborhood, to pick up the copy of her manuscript with my blue-penciled corrections, now a superfluous gesture at best, she says, but would I mind because we have so much to talk about, especially her follow-up, and I reach into my desk and wonder if she, too, is startled when she hears the sharp BANG that puts an end to what never should have occurredinthefirstpl … |
christian-albrecht gollub flash |
| a slightly different version of "flash" was originally published in litspeak: a magazine of fiction, poetry and the visual arts, No. 15, pp. 6-9 (1999). |