Newsworthy author !!strictly editorial

April 1, 2007

My eye lingered on the headline: Author, 96, Proves It's Never Too Late

MY author !

WTOP
Washington Post
New York Times

My contact at Random House telephoned last May. "I have a manuscript for you," she said. "Great," said I. "It's about 450 pages," she replied. "Typewritten." I paused, wondering. Of course it's typewritten. All RH jobs are hard copy. Tedious, but the price of having Random House as a client. "Typewritten," she said again, "as in on a typewriter. The author is 95 years old." Ah. Well, then ...

The Invisible Wall, by an old man living in Brick, New Jersey— where we watch movies on rainy summer weekends, right down the road from the Lyon-Vaiden cottage at Manasquan. It was a delight, a well-done and revealing tale of a decade of his childhood in an English town before World War I, of the Jewish-Christian divide in a working-class neighborhood in a working-class town. It was also the manuscript that got me a reprimand note for stetting the commas in simple compound sentences. Random House doesn't like commas in simple compound sentences.

I glow, however. I'm all atwitter. I worked on a famous book. Okay, not famous, but newsworthy.

I'm still tickled.

I'm even emboldened to write my person at Random House on the strength of it ...