THE FIFTY-FIFTH PAGE

With apparent excitement, my editor one day rang me up and asked if I would come to his offices to look at the jacket sketch. I hastened right on down to the offices.

The portly art director presented it with obvious pride. He explained that the sketch would appear in the catalog because it was too late to employ finished cover art. Who cared if it was only a sketch? It was swell, a valentine.

The art director made a copy for me. I had some Xerox copies of my own made and bought a frame at Woolworth’s for proper display of the sketch until the real thing came along.

My affection for the sketch probably reached its most ridiculous point when I used the backside of the Xeroxes for my correspondences. “ONLY 74 MORE SHOPPING DAYS UNTIL. . .” My normal reticence had disappeared with the signing of the contract. I contemplated sending out birth announcements.

When the cover proof, stamped FINAL, arrived, my heart sank. It in no way resembled what I proudly had been sending out. It looked like an ill-rendered sketch for a fifties paperback cover.

My editor told me it was out of his hands. I asked why he had not discussed the change. He may have been too embarrassed to continue the conversation or didn’t know what to say or had fallen asleep. I suspected the latter.