THE TWENTY-SECOND PAGE

A life of solitude in the meat-packing district of Manhattan is probably not what I had in mind when I got off the plane at Idlewild, but as long as I had a clean, not-too-well-lighted place, I could be happy. And was for several years--my books and me.

There were occasional dissatisfactions.

One frosty evening I was paid to enter a forced march through the pages of a manuscript by an out-of-work actress, Jacqueline Susann. I was told by the paperback publisher for whom I was reading the thing that it had not yet been edited, but it was offered by the hardcover publisher for purchase as a paperback reprint by the hardcover publisher. It was a witless, though earnest, concoction of show-biz life earlier in the century, so I dismissed it in a summary reader’s report as no better, though probably less commercial, than a pulpy old love story. I was never handed another love story until a few years later Eric Segal wrote one with precisely that title. My report stated that some books could be too rich and too thin. Once again, I was banned from reading in the deeply moving world of romance.