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October 05, 2005
The Quick and the Sharp
I just signed a contract for a memoir that has set me to thinking—not because of the subject of the book, not because of the nature of the writing (or maybe so, but I’ll get back to that), and not because it is an historically revealing memoir. Indeed, what set me to thinking was not the book at all.
It was the author.
Her name is Mireille Marokvia. I published her first book, too—a decade ago, when we were at MacMurray & Beck.
What I’ve been pondering since we struck the deal for this one, and since I began insisting that she keep working on the third one, is the fact that Mireille is 97 years old. And yet we are publishing her—without her being already famous. What would marketers on the Island think of such a thing?
Believing what we do—believing what many small presses do—that the first task is to publish the best writing we can find, we don’t consider whether the author is young and beautiful, already celebrated, telegenic, ready to travel, networked, online, hip. Believing what we do, we can consider the manuscript instead.
A local newspaper columnist once asked me to name a single notable writer whose career was not established before he or she was 35 years old. I couldn’t, off hand, though I could mention many writers who began late and haven’t (yet) been called notable. Perhaps there are few. I suppose Henry Roth doesn’t count.
But writers who’ve been around the block intrigue me. I believe they can intrigue others, too—if we can bring them the right kind of attention. These folks are amazing.
Mireille has photographs to illustrate what she describes. Old ones. I remember one of her wedding in Germany before the war: She, a tiny, dark woman beside her astoundingly tall husband, a blond suit, his best, a man at that moment uncomfortable even with his arm held by his brand new wife, a man who has in his hand a book.
“Do you know what that book is?” she asked in her charming, breath-filled French accent when she first showed me the photo—in a tiny house in New Mexico.
“A bible?”
“Noo-o-o-o-n.” Did I mention that she’s French? “It was Mein Kampf,” she hissed. “They made everyone who got married take one from them.”
What has astounded and horrified in Mireille’s life is different from what unsettles in the world I am living through. Perhaps that’s why I publish older writers. It’s because I think we need them.
The inaugural Unbridled list included another work of nonfiction (Fear Itself), which we published on the author’s 80 th birthday. At MacMurray & Beck we published Frank Waters’ last book alongside his widow’s memoir. She, too, was over 80. We also released an experimental memoir by a man named Arnold Schwartz, who had written many of the first Superman comics in the 1930s. This spring, we will release a novel by Lloyd Zimpel, who published his first novel in 1973 and who now has 75 years behind his powerful voice. Perhaps not quite actuarially the same thing: I’ve worked for several years now with an astounding, brilliant novelist (Marc Estrin) who began writing only after he turned 60.
[I admit that this may not be the only unique strain in what we do: We’ve published the debut novels (so far) of a drywall hanger, a roofer, and a carpenter. I’m still trying to figure out whether that signifies. And I know that other small presses have other defining characteristics even within their recognizable niches.]
My point here is that the older authors who have entrusted their work to us obviously don’t write for the great, fast-dancing and fickle marketplace. They don’t write Chick Lit. And all told, their irony is a bit more refined than the arch young condescensions readers of fiction run into so often these days. What intrigues is the pace at which these writers address their world. No, it is not break-neck—not even in so rollicking a novel as Insect Dreams. These are writers who walk through history, but who are looking around them all the while. And it seems to me that their eyesight is clear—most likely because, while their trusty eyeglasses may not be stylish, they aren’t jaded either.
Nearly all of them are difficult to work with. And most of them would be willing to acknowledge that. Some actually have. A couple are downright uneditable, and they know it. But when we find older writers whose skills and talents are equal to their vision, we know that we can lay their books out in the readerly world and that one day, one day, people just might look back on them and marvel as we have.
If all this is not foolhardy in this quick culture—and it may well be—I suppose this account must sound self-congratulatory. I don’t mean it to be. I mean instead to say that there are reasons to publish that the Island may acknowledge but that seem out of reach to Island editors because they don’t make the pages of McSweeney’s.
There are reasons to publish that don’t fit the demographics that corporate houses must pursue (or plug).
Publishing for such reasons is what small presses do: We hope to bring out what should be read not only this season, but for a long time. In our case, here at Unbridled, those writers with the longest view sometimes seem to have the richest perspective through which to pursue our own vision.
This may be quixotic. But who knows? Maybe Oprah would like to talk to Mireille—a woman unlike anyone I’ve ever known, a writer who has burned as many manuscripts as she’s published, who has lost others in a war when her publisher was firebombed, a woman who has always been caught between cultures and chased by ghosts.
The best writers always are.
Fred Ramey
Posted in: Publishers Blog, | Keywords: publishers blog
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Comments
I didn’t realize un-editable was a compliment. I’m so pleased. — - -
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