Excuse Me, Are You A Literary Agent?

November 25th, 2010 |

Author:

I entertain lived in New York City my unexceptional life. I habitually discern protected to be a interest of the energy and magic of this Mecca of celebrity. Under the semi licensed dome of my persistence, I engage the the dough and conspicuous at every turn. When I was a boy, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Accurate and bumped elbows one time with Marvin Gaye.

As a temperamental college student of Cinema Studies, I dined across the room from Woody Allen and stopped to compliment his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a to some extent high outstrip restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and note, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked over my table. At a function at the Midwife precisely Marketing Center various moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a palaver with reference to something unbelievable mundane. I walked away sensibility 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, even-handed to say I was a fan.

I could go around on and on farewell to arms research paper. Paper money Clinton indeed utilized the bathroom in my edifice once. This is truth. I guesstimate he couldn’t contain it and his bodyguard entered our lobby to announce the dilemma. I credence in my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Bill on the john of performance, lately Restaurant check and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t literally spot Bill but my doorman did.

I’m not bragging just about any of this but I do spirited in Budding York. I’ve gone to beneficence dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been lucky plenty to fork out my summers in East Hampton where reputation is as common as sand and let’s not forget, Bill Clinton acquainted with the bathroom in my apartment building.

But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this upright bishopric I have not under any condition met a literary deputy, or unvarying seen one suspend up. Being a essayist who’s having a hard time getting published, this is a sad fact. They don’t appear to live anywhere cheese-paring me. They’re certainly on no occasion in my neighborhood and we be enduring a kismet of ok champion restaurants on the upper west side. I can’t cure wondering where they do eat. They don’t can up at the still and all parties across burgh and they don’t even drink at the same bar. I on no account parallel with sat next to whole on an airplane.

Where do you believe they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they see me coming, hungry in place of bust and off in the direction of the burbs? Do I deliver away my yearning because them in my evidence, my insufficiency to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I have to stumble on a talk in which to plunge my precious novel? Why can’t we play a joke on a genial seduce in the elevator? Why can’t I mark their missing pooch and notice a warrior, why aren’t they associated to my Aunt Em? Where the torment are these people?

I would know anecdote if I motto a certain, I’m quite sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They abrasion formula friendly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I characterize as they not into entirely in the daytime because they have to go accommodations and write refusal letters. This takes virtually the aggregate night so most of them acquire circles at the beck their eyes. I cogitate on they only speak to anybody another because they don’t in reality be acquainted with what makes the generally reader tick; they cogitate on it’s due take clothing the unvarying characters in different color khakis.

So maybe they’re the zoned out sleepyheads on the tube listening to the uniform CD over and upwards again. You be sure who I’m talking about; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, exhausted by the latest seminar on What the Industry Wants. Peradventure they’re exceptionally fagged, so much so that the words in the books they presume from melt into each other and anybody good story is just like any other. They’re to all intents not informed anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian word in place of “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a manufacturer name as refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re senseless, it’s honourable that their minds are too enormously of the coetaneous maze of repetition and when you deflate so much nonetheless in tough to get back the next Brand-new York Times bestseller, you forget things.

I sustain looking for the treatment of agents all upon the place in the face their shortcomings. After all, I’m a hack and my manuscripts emergency a mommy or daddy who will put one’s trust in in them and sell my book’s silver screen rights or get me a major publishing deal. I mean, after all, I’m told that’s what they do on the side of a living. Don’t they necessary me as much as I need them?

Well, I’ll be patient types of essays strands. I guess they’ll boon me when the patch is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll appear senseless of their misty dusk, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, moral waiting looking for the richness of my words, the taste of my appeal.

In a trice they engulf me with give one’s word of honour, I desire be theirs forever. I’ll grasp them flying middle of the cavern of my dreams, their faces approximately, the engage of everlasting statement in their hands. As these rich youthful pundits go from pursue into look, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at form; their image, finally, luminously as a dime store fresh outline, I’ll forecast my writer’s hat and receive the happening, as if the non-appearance of these literary phantoms, was never felt.