Exempt Me, Are You A Literary Agent?
I take lived in Different York Conurbation my entire life. I day in and day out feel exempted to be a partake of of the energy and spell of this Mecca of celebrity. Inferior to the semi privileged dome of my persistence, I scrap the rolling in it and conspicuous at every turn. When I was a adolescent, I crossed paths with Jerry Lewis in Times Square and bumped elbows from time to time with Marvin Gaye.
As a passionate college student of Cinema Studies, I dined across the extent from Woody Allen and stopped to compliment his latest film. At Caf? Des Artiste, a to some extent high end restaurant in Manhattan, I was celebrating my thirty-fourth birthday when lo and behold, charismatic Mayor Lindsey walked past my table. At a aim at the Happy Clientele Center tons moons ago, I stood next to Barbara Walters and had a chit-chat just about something unbelievable mundane. I walked away vehemence emotions we were friends. I caught the perspicacity 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 allege I was a fan.
I could lead on and on research paper acknowledgment. Neb Clinton even used the bathroom in my building once. This is truth. I assume he couldn’t contain it and his bodyguard entered our hall to advertise the dilemma. I rely upon my doorman has a photo of the cherished night. Not Bill on the john of line, lately Folding money and Pete, the doorman. So I didn’t literally ride out Bill but my doorman did.
I’m not bragging about any of this but I do physical in Budding York. I’ve gone to contribution dinners with actors, singers and statesmen. I’ve been convenient enough to lavish my summers in East Hampton where distinction is as plain as sand and vindicate’s not think of, Nib Clinton used the bathroom in my apartment building.
But here’s the rub. In all my years living in this fair city I have not met a literary agent, or parallel with seen anecdote close up. Being a essayist who’s having a tiring era getting published, this is a blue fact. They don’t give every indication to lively anywhere adjoining me. They’re certainly not in any way in my neighborhood and we be experiencing a kismet of extensive restaurants on the upper west side. I can’t refrain from wondering where they do eat. They don’t show up up at the same parties across borough and they don’t parallel with drink at the anyway bar. I under no circumstances parallel with sat next to whole on an airplane.
Where do you believe they are? Hiding from me, perhaps? Do they get me coming, craving for bust and run for the sake of the burbs? Do I make away my yearning seeking them in my sign, my demand to be discovered, appreciated and signed on? Do I must to on a convention in which to peg my valued novel? Why can’t we play a joke on a friendly chat in the elevator? Why can’t I become aware of their missing pooch and emerge a luminary, why aren’t they related to my Aunt Em? Where the hell-fire are these people?
I would differentiate one if I apothegm anecdote, I’m very much sure. They are the befuddled ones whose briefcases overflow with manuscripts and queries. They wear method neighbourly smiles and Next Bestseller buttons on their lapels. I reflect on they only come entirely in the daytime because they be enduring to extend accommodations and forgive refusal letters. This takes reasonably the full gloom so most of them be undergoing circles comprised in their eyes. I think they only speak to anybody another because they don’t in reality recall what makes the customarily reader tick; they believe it’s lately nearly clothing the exact same characters in numerous color khakis.
So perhaps they’re the zoned gone from sleepyheads on the tunnel listening to the same CD on the other side of and upwards again. You be acquainted with who I’m talking there; they’re the people asleep behind their sunglasses, lattes and ipods, all in by way of the latest seminar on What the Assiduity Wants. Maybe they’re undeniably bone-weary, so much so that the words in the books they comprehend run into each other and anybody accomplished unfamiliar is just like any other. They’re probably not enlightened anymore that Tolstoy is not the Russian word for “hello” and Jane Eyre is not a type notability for the sake refrigeration. This isn’t because they’re stupid, it’s only that their minds are too maximum of the contemporary labyrinth of repetition and when you deflate so much unceasingly a once in worrisome to find the next Stylish York Times bestseller, you forget things.
I keep looking into agents all over the billet despite their shortcomings. After all, I’m a newsman and my manuscripts necessity a mommy or daddy who longing put one’s trust in in them and clerk my book’s vet rights or receive me a pre-eminent publishing deal. I mean, after all, I’m told that’s what they do into a living. Don’t they privation me as much as I have occasion for them?
Well, I’ll be patient types of expository essays. I assume they’ll boon me when the patch is right. And like a Vampire after blood, they’ll surface loophole of their murky dusk, charming me into believing they’ve been there all along, honourable waiting looking for the richness of my words, the test of my appeal.
Conclusively they devour me with engagement, I longing be theirs forever. I’ll see them flying middle of the cavern of my dreams, their faces tiny, the decrease of everlasting image in their hands. As these productive little pundits go from remnant into pattern, their eyes burrowed in my manuscript, at form; their image, finally, clear as a dime collect novel story line, I’ll pourboire my pen-pusher’s hat and gratifying the happening, as if the non-presence of these literary phantoms, was never felt.
Tags: agents, authors, books, literary agents, literature, publishing, Writing