Carol Gelderman: The Lure and the Love of Trying to Write a Serious Book that Makes a Fortune

THE LURE AND THE LOVE OF TRYING TO WRITE A SERIOUS BOOK THAT MAKES A FORTUNE

by Carol Gelderman

When as a new assistant professor of English, I read A. Alvarez's The Savage God, the 1972 best seller about the history and literature of suicide, I was thunderstruck to discover that a scholarly work that talked seriously about Dante, John Donne, and 20th-century existentialists could also be popular.

To think of reaching an audience numbering in the millions, when, so far as I could make out, literature appeared to be attracting fewer and fewer adherents with each passing year, excited me to rapture. And then there was the not-so-small matter of remuneration. That a book could be serious and at the same time make a fortune was heartening news. I had three small children to educate on an academic’s salary; why not try to write a reputable, and at the same time, money-making book myself?

I got busy right away. First, I had to secure tenure, which I did by writing articles for journals in my field (modern drama) and by publishing my dissertation and a book on writing. All the while, however, I was collecting material for the Big Book.

My best seller, I decided, was to be about the portrayal of alcoholism in American literature. Most people find it fascinating (l know I do) and perhaps sociologically significant, that American writers so often mix the martini with the muse. The litany of American alcoholic authors is appallingly long – Edgar Allan Poe, Sinclair Lewis, Eugene O'Neill, William Faulkner, Ring Lardner, Dashiell Hammett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the list goes on.

I read them all. I subscribed to the Quarterly Journal of Studies on Alcohol, and the Encyclopedia of Alcohol became my constant companion. I applied for grants from the National Institutes of Health and from a foundation that supports studies on alcoholism. I visited the Center for Alcohol Studies, and finally, I wrote a proposal for the book.

My only connection with trade publishing (it seemed unlikely that a university-press book would make the best-seller list) was a woman I had known in college. At the time she was a senior editor with Simon & Schuster and, although I hadn’t seen her in 20 years, I sent her the proposal.

“Why not a biography of Henry Ford," she suggested, ignoring the alcoholism-literature project. I had grown up in Detroit, she argued, and I had gone to school with the grandchildren of the “principals” of Ford’s story.

“Do you mean to say there's never been a biography of Henry Ford?” I wrote back incredulously.

“Well, yes,” she replied, "there have been a couple of dozen.” But, she hastened to add, “not one engrossing, single-volume biography in the lot.”

Two dozen should have given me pause, but who was I to question the wisdom of an eminent senior editor? So, mistaking her polite brush-off for intent to publish, I lost no time in organizing a summer in Michigan. We headed north from our home in New Orleans as soon as my children’s school was out.

When I presented my credentials for admittance to the Ford Archives, the archivists were dubious about the likelihood of publication, but because they were pleased that at last a native Detroiter would endeavor to explain Ford, they granted me total access to what is arguably the largest private archives in the country. The collection contains not only the Ford Motor Company’s historical records and the family’s private papers; it also includes personal papers of company executives, memoirs of people who knew the Fords, and more than 400,000 photographs. I spent 180 eight-hour days over two summers at a library table there, even bringing a sandwich from home every day so as not to waste valuable time going out to lunch.

Back in New Orleans, I read hundreds of articles and dozens of books pertaining to Ford and began to worry about how to organize the ever-increasing volume of material I was accumulating. Fortunately, I got my first sabbatical, which gave me the time I needed to pull it all together. (I was also lucky that my chairman and dean approved my project. Many colleagues – failing to find any connection between it and modern drama – looked askance at it.)

Imagine the surprise of a certain senior editor at Simon & Schuster when the

650-page manuscript landed on her desk. Along with my cover letter rejoicing that exactly three years after she had “proposed” that I write a new biography of Henry Ford, here it was! While she figured out what to do with it, I acquired an agent.

“What the publisher really wants,” the editor announced by phone a week later (and rather too blithely, I thought) “is a biography of Henry Ford II. We’ll gladly reconsider your manuscript, but only after we get the story of Henry Ford’s grandson out.”

I declined that offer and sought a more hospitable home for my labors, which my agent found at Dial Press.

Emboldened by having brought order out of what had seemed at first to be a chaotic deluge of automotive information. I proposed the alcoholism project to my agent. Like my editor friends, she recommended other subjects, disregarding the one I wanted to work on. Then one day I happened to mention that Memories of a Catholic Girl was a favorite book of mine. I, too, had been a Sacred Heart pupil and Mary McCarthy’s descriptions of life in a convent was evocative of my own. “Why not write her biography?”

“But she’s still alive,” I protested. “I can’t write about a living person!”

My agent persisted, however, and before long I was on my way, uninvited, to Castine, Maine, where I hoped somehow to see Ms. McCarthy. Although I had no way of knowing it at the time, her unfailing courtesy was to be my ally, for when I telephoned her from the Pentagoet Inn only a few doors from her own home on Main Street, she invited me for tea, a civilized ritual she observes every afternoon.

She, too, was uneasy with the idea of a biography of a living subject. but my argument that I wanted to write the story while people who knew her well were still alive was persuasive.

After reading the Ford galleys, she agreed to cooperate, without once mentioning the odd juxtaposition of my chosen subjects – a nearly illiterate auto maker and a leading American intellectual. She gave me introductions to those who knew her best, access to her correspondence, and a willingness to answer a host of personal questions.

Thanks to an N.E.H. scholarship. I had a year and two summers to interview

more than 150 people all over the United States and Europe, to gather copies of her correspondence, and to examine the papers of dozens of her writer friends. At home in New Orleans, I pored over her 24 books and read the memoirs of a number of New York intellectuals in her circle.

During all that time, she never asked to see what I wrote.

Three years after our first meeting in 1980, I mailed her the manuscript, asking her to check it for factual errors. She found an abundance of them and stylistic and grammatical mistakes, as well. In fact, she ended the six-page, single-spaced letter she wrote enumerating her objections with the observation that I didn’t know grammar and what’s more, was too old to learn.

My response was to take off one more time for Castine, where (again, thanks to McCarthy’s courtesy) we talked for two days.

The discussion continued for the next year via the mails. Then in desperation, I said, “Are you or aren’t you going to give me permission to quote?”

“Well. the milk is spilt: let’s hope for the best,” she answered, with a sort metaphorical shrug.

I got the best of our bargain, and I am grateful. Not only was my world view changed by the six years spent in her company, but both my writing and grammar improved. So, she was wrong about one thing: I was not too old to learn.

“LET THE BEAUTY WE LOVE BE WHAT WE DO”*

by Irene Poe (with assistance from Beth)

I really shouldn’t be sharing with you what I am about to write. My sister Brenda has begged me not to publish this essay for fear that it will make our mom’s friends think less of her. But I reminded Brenda that most of Mom’s friends, like her, are humans, which means that it is unlikely they will take anything I say very seriously, given that I am a cat.

For the past five years, Brenda and I have been trying to educate our mom. We had hoped that she could learn to appreciate everything we do to make Apartment 1007 a more beautiful place. But those hopes were dashed a couple of weeks ago when we overheard what she said in response to a provocative question addressed to her by a visitor who apparently values upholstery more than cats.

The question was, “Don’t you have any scratching pads in this apartment?” To which Mom replied, “Of course I do: two wing chairs, a recliner, a sofa, a rug, and a yoga mat.” Whereupon, the visitor forced a polite smile, and Mom beamed with immodest satisfaction at her own cleverness, oblivious to the devastating effect of her words on Brenda and me. We were in shock, as we realized that we have been in total denial this whole time about our mom’s dearth of imagination and her lack of understanding of who we really are.

Mom’s disrespectful remark about what we do to the furniture makes it clear to us that she has forgotten the terms of the contract we negotiated before moving into Apartment 1007. In essence, it stated that she would pay the rent, in exchange for which we would allow her to live here, thus ensuring that not only the apartment itself but also its contents are ours, not hers. Yet, in spite of this agreement, she acts as though she were the primary, if not the sole, occupant of the place. She regards it as her sanctuary, her safe space. That may be true for her, but, for us, Apartment 1007 is first and foremost our studio, our atelier.

How can Mom be so blind? Somehow she fails to recognize that what she sees as, say, a wing chair, is to our eyes something else entirely. We see it as a blank canvas, to which we are naturally attracted, not because we are innately destructive (as many unenlightened humans firmly believe) but, rather, because we are artists. To be more precise, I am the artist; Brenda is my apprentice.

In my capacity as my sister’s mentor, I would describe her as a dilettante, content with producing small pieces of disposable art. With Brenda, it’s all about spontaneity. Seemingly from out of nowhere, in a rare burst of energy, she will stick her claws into a roll of toilet paper or paper towels, shredding square after square, until — just when she’s getting into a nice rhythm — Mom starts screaming and Brenda stops short. [See photo.] I keep telling her that great artists do not let themselves be deterred by their critics, even when their chief critic happens to be the one who feeds them. But Brenda won’t listen to me. It’s a shame, really, because the talent is there. What’s missing is the drive.

Meanwhile, I do my art whenever I can. I am particularly pleased with a piece that I began several years ago. I would have finished it by now, had it not been for the pandemic, which forced Mom to stay home pretty much 24/7 for months on end. (I assume that I do not need to explain to you why I can get nothing done when she is around.) To be honest, I can’t put the full blame for my slow progress on her. The project is an unusually difficult one, requiring great ingenuity and persistence.

The work to which I am referring is an in-depth study of the wing of a wing chair. The challenge that presented itself to me when I undertook this project was that the aforementioned wing chair is covered in microfiber, an abominable synthetic material, which, having no discernible weave, is touted as “cat-proof.” I suspect that is why Mom chose it. But if she thought that I would not find a way to tear it apart, she grossly underestimated my abilities. Microfiber may be resistant to shredding, but it is not puncture-proof. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if you make enough puncture holes into any fabric, shredding is not just possible, it’s unavoidable. A smart cat with claws is all the brain power and equipment needed for the job. The attached photos prove my point.

*Quotation that I ran across one day in a collection of poems by Rumi, my favorite 13th -century Persian mystic.

Fig. 1: Brenda Interrupts Her Work When Mom Screams at Her Fig. 2: My Work-In-Progress: Before and After