Not much remains

As my friends know, for a few years last decade I had the honor of being represented by a real literary agent. However, my novel Make Nice failed to sell; then my agent quit the agency and the business, leaving me high and dry without an agent -- a state in which I still find myself. (I recount the tale at greater length here.) A little while after that, the agency's most famous client, David Foster Wallace, killed himself.

Now comes the news that the founder of the agency, whom I recall having met very briefly in my one and only visit to the office, has died.

I was so dumb when I was a client of the agency that I didn't even know Wallace was a client. And I had to read the founder's obit today to know about other well-known clients. I'm not sure what to do with this fact -- that the agency was better known than I realized at the time. It didn't do me much good in the end, though my agent was successful in getting my book looked at by major publishing houses. Maybe they recognized the name of the agency, maybe that's the reason they looked at it. Anyway, realizing all this years later just makes me feel stupid.

Things not to be

This literary agency has a helpful list of "Things To Be" and "Not to Be":

Things to Be:
- Confident
- Talented
- Marketable
- Objective
- Scrupulously Self-Critical
- Patient
- A Good Typist

Things Not To Be:

• Insecure - If you lack confidence in yourself, in your writing, or in your ability to become a full-time freelance writer, you'll never be able to stand up to the rigors and the brickbats that lay ahead.


• Marginally Talented - If you haven't yet developed into the kind of writer who works diligently at turning out only the best examples of whatever literary genre you're creating, you're not ready for agency representation.


• Conveniently Self-Forgiving - No one--from Ernest Hemingway to Homer and back again--ever wrote a single draft that "sang." Every writer worth the name knows when and how to rewrite, rewrite, and rewrite some more.

...

More at the link. I guess if you weren't sufficiently "Confident" this would scare you off, but I don't think it's bad advice. But I'm not sure there are that many people who combine the qualities of being confident while at the same time are "Scrupulously Self-Critical."

In this Galleycat interview, the agent goes on to request "fiction that is starkly unique and startlingly appealing," qualifying that requirement with "at least." It's good to set the bar high, but how many people who pass all these criteria would really be good? Can I think my work is "starkly unique" and at the same time be "scrupulously self-critical"? Man.

What agents want: memorable 'stories or characters that gnaw at me weeks later'

Interesting exchange in an interview with an agent:

Q: What types of books are you looking for that you haven't found yet?

A: Despite the fact I read so much, I rarely find stories or characters that gnaw at me weeks later, and good literature should have that sort of staying power. Writing something memorable requires originality in voice, style and plot, but it also means tapping into the human consciousness and making readers feel something outside themselves. Cultivating that emotional investment simply requires a lot of talent, but real, relatable, and lovable characters are a good start.

That's about the size of it. But what alerted me to this interview was a statement the same agent made a few moments before:

2666 by Roberto Bolaño is a masterpiece -- but I wouldn't necessarily recommend emulating it. It's a novel that wouldn’t seem like it could work on paper -- I'd certainly have my doubts if it were pitched to me -- but it does because the writing is so strong. It is important to point out that even when dealing with higher concepts and more elusive goals, Bolaño's characters are still accessible, and that connection to the reader is the most important element.

technorati: literary agents, publishing, fiction

Economics of publishing, part CXDVIII

First, the good news: "There are more agents than writers."

Now, the bad news: "And there are more writers than readers. I'm convinced of that."

That's from an interview with big-time New Yawk Litarerry Agent Lynn Nesbit, whose clients have included Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, and Donald Barthelme, whose short story "The Big Broadcast of 1938" got him representation by newly-minted agent Nesbit and occasioned the above reflection on the economics of publishing.

She goes on:

I tell Tina [Bennett] and Eric [Simonoff], "You missed the good days." When I worked for Sterling Lord, I had a loft, a sort of duplex loft apartment on Barrow Street. And Michael Sissons, who's now the head of Fraser & Dunlop, and Peter Matson, who's also an agent, used to give these parties at my house. They would make these drinks of half brandy and half champagne, and people got so drunk. One night Rosalyn Drexler, the lady wrestler and the novelist, picked up Walter Minton and just threw him against the wall. I'll never forget that. There was just more of a sense of fun.... It's the corporate thing. People are too scared. It doesn't attract eccentrics anymore.

technorati: publishing, literary agents

How On the Road was created, edited and sold

"All Things Considered" today has a story about the genesis (and exodus) of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, probably one of the ten most famous and influential novels of the 20th century. A nice long print (i.e. not audio) story is here, and that page contains a link to an even more "in-depth feature," as well as video of the famous 120-foot-long scroll typescript.

The piece includes usually not-discussed information about how Kerouac got an agent for the manuscript and how the agent and the eventual editors at Viking dealt with the unweildy book.