Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript

Memos from a publications editor

Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Anonymous, The Bible

I must say that the first few hundred pages of this manuscript really hooked me. Action-packed, they have everything today's reader wants in a good story. Sex (lots of it, including adultery, sodomy, incest), also murder, war, massacres, and so on.

The Sodom and Gomorrah chapter, with the tranvestites putting the make on the angels, is worthy of Rabelais; the Noah stories are pure Jules Verne; the escape from Egypt cries out to be turned into a major motion picture . . . In other words, a real blockbuster, very well structured, with plenty of twists, full of invention, with just the right amount of piety, and never lapsing into tragedy.

But as I kept on reading, I realized that this is actually an anthology, involving several writers, with many--too many--stretches of poetry, and passages that are downright mawkish and boring, and jeremiads that make no sense.

The end result is a monster omnibus. It seems to have something for everybody, but ends up appealing to nobody. And acquiring the rights from all these different authors will mean big headaches, unless the editor takes care of that himself. The editor's name, by the way, doesn't appear anywhere on the manuscript, not even in the table of contents. Is there some reason for keeping his identity a secret?

I'd suggest trying to get the rights only to the first five chapters. We're on sure ground there. Also come up with a better title. How about The Red Sea Desperadoes?

Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Kant, I.,Critique of Practical Reason

I asked Susan to take a look at this, and she tells me that after Barthes there's no point translating this Kant. In any case, I glanced at it myself. A reasonably short book on morality could fit nicely into our philosophy series and might even be adopted by some universities. But the German publisher says that if we take this one, we have to commit ourselves not only to the author's previous book, which is an immense thing in at least two volumes, but also to the one he is working one now, about art or about judgment, I'm not sure which. All three books have more or less the same title, so they would have to be sold boxed (and at a price no reader could afford); otherwise bookshop browsers would mistake one for the other and think, "I've already read this." Remember the Summa of that Dominican? We began to translate it, and then we had to pass the rights on to Sheed and Ward because it ran way over budget.

There's another problem. The German agent tells me that we would also have to publish the minor works of this Kant, a whole pile of stuff including something about astronomy. Day before yesterday I tried to phone him directly in Koenigsberg, to see if we could do just one book, but the cleaning woman said the master was out and I should never call between five and six because that's when he takes his walk, or between three and four because that's nap time, and so on. I would advise against getting involved with a man like this: we'll end up with a mountain of his books in the warehouse.

Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Kafka,The Trial

Nice little book. A thriller with some Hitchcock touches. The final murder, for example, It could have an audience.

But apparently the author wrote under a regime with heavy censorship. Otherwise, why all these vague references, this trick of not giving names to people or places? And why is the protagonist being put on trial? If we clarify these points and make the setting more concrete (facts are needed: facts, facts, facts), then the acton will be easier to follow and suspense is assured.

These young writers believe they can be "poetic" by saying "a man" instead of "Mr. So-and-so in such-and-such a city." Genuine writing has to keep in mind the old newspaper man's five questions: Who? What? When? Where? Why? If we can have a free hand with editing, I'd say buy it. If not, no.

Regretfully, we are returning your manuscript: Joyce, James, Finnegan's Wake

Please, tell the office manager to be more careful when he sends books out to be read. I'm the English-language reader, and you've sent me a book written in some other, godforsaken language. I'm returning it under separate cover.


The selections above are from Misreadings, by Umberto Eco.
(who shares Calvino's great translator, William Weaver)


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