THE FIFTY-SECOND PAGE

Or was I the fool? I became the hero of my own life virtually overnight as a young editor snapped up my first submission of the book.

It appeared nothing could go wrong. In the space of twenty-four hours: the editor read it and thrilled associates by ringing them up in the evening time and reading sections aloud, sneaked it to a movie company and a favored book club and a paperback concern, presented the art director with jacket designs ripped from a magazine, and declared it fit for passage to production with no editorial needs other than simple copyediting. It was in the works before there was a contract, a deal sealed on a mere telephone handshake.

The upfront money was not princely, but surely lordly, a far cry from the Vermont sheckles and a responsible figure that would command the attention of everyone and make it a company-wide effort. The real money would surely come later when the subsidiary rights were auctioned off for unheard-of amounts and I would become the darling of Wall Street as well as the New York Review of Books.

I was astonished by the efficiency with which the giant publishing house was working. The publishing horror stories I had read about in the Times apparently were not true, or perhaps I was extraordinarily lucky.