Walking on the Bones: Two Novellas

By Joyce Engelson

Joyce Engelson surely knows what shes writing about in Walking on the Bones as she spent 30 years as editor-in-chiefat top traditional publishers, editing and acquiring in all the genres. Shes worked with Richard Condon (who called her the smartest girl in town!), Norman Cousins, Heywood Hale Broun, Irving Howe, Samuel Shem (House of God), Gael Green, Ishmael Reed, Baxter Black (renowned cowboy poet and novelist,) Max Frisch, Myron Sharaf, Hettie Jones, Chandler Brossard and thatswell only the tip of the iceberg in a working career filled with many highlights.

She acquired and edited: first contemporary comic captions book (Captions Courageous); the now famous Prizzi series by Richard Condon; one of the best selling sex therapy volumes of the 70s, Making Love, How To Be Your Own Sex Therapist; first successful Assertive Training volume: the multi-million-copy When I Say No, I Feel Guilty (still in print); and the wildly successful medical novel The House of God (four million copies, 28th anniversary).
She is herself the author of two novels -- The Silent Slain (mystery) and Mountain of Villainy and many short stories published in Playboy (First woman published!)
,Atlantic Monthly, Quarterly Review of Literature, Quixote

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477117828

Book preview

I

In The Gloaming

In the late night of the book publisher’s office, 8 floors up, shades down: slightly cracked green and very cracked yellow shades over huge dirty windows, shards of available light gleaming through. Now they substituted for lamplight. As figures scurried, maybe mice, surely cockroaches, certainly persons of cryptic purpose. Publishing folk at night, in the masks and dominos of a new line of work: rogue, pirate, thief, intriguer.

Two figures of substance, not fat but fleshy: poking in little golden oak card files after hours, and in the major wall bank of files too — in spite of the young woman’s whispered warning: and stay you big oaf out of the file clerk’s drawers! No, her lover reminded, those are the very drawers, or some of ‘em, of sexual attraction in this case! Hie you to the files. Whispers hissing. Careful of those file cards, the cards, the cards, they’re fragile. She worried about those purpled curly cards, bent, faded, or smeared already, the work of years, the past, the history of PP&W Books . . . bought and published, bought and not published, published but not bought. Were there any other categories? Yes, not bought and not published . . . but noted. And at last, after a good search, No, no, here we are. Ah here we are, here are some good things! Here live possibilities. The very thing sought.

Out the company doors, and through the exit door, instead of leaving by elevator, on automatic at night, instead of the good morning and have a good weekend elevator operator, they pushed past the back door and erupted, dusty, out onto the stairwell. You could wait inside an office during the day and simply not leave with the five o clock rush (ohh the five o’clock whistle neh-vah blew..) or at the seven o’clock boss-exit time. Or the six o clock pick-me-up hour. Suppose they lock the door downstairs, the door to the street? she fussed. Well, then we’ll go back up and eat mice and paper for supper and breakfast too.

Your Scottish Irisher accent does not help me, she flamed in whispers. I’ll get claustrophobia. No, you already have that, but I won’t let you get a reason for it, he boasted, slipping along softly, despite his bulk, gracefully rubber-footed down the dusty stairs, seldom used except for fire drills. And out on the first floor. Ah, gods, locked from the other side! Terror! Airlessness! No, no, further on, they tread another floor down into the basement, and surely there; yes, yes, relief surged through the pair, a door that opened onto a little extra flight of stairs, barricaded by garbage pails and huge baskets of paper overflow: barricarded but not stockaded. Pushing them aside, the man made a path of escape for himself and his girlfriend. A girl good for this kind of adventure since she did not cherish her clothes, nor concern herself for their stains or rips. Especially if they were roommate-borrowed. Down the evening street, dark, but light to their eyes, full of noble city air and freedom, cars, honks, a slight rain in the air, fresh and bean-y smelling. They skipped down Madison. Should we have a fast one? At home, he indicated. Drink at home. Because we might be daft if dopey-drunk and leave our cache behind. He indicated the cards and files stuffed in a pretty shopping bag . . . . decorated with flowers and string, Bonwit Teller’s. God knows whose.

We don’t want to get silly and leave our goods under stools, on bar floors!

Gently, he pinched, or perhaps plucked, her left buttock.

Let’s go to my little flat, have a drink and . . . yeah, call our friend . . . the mighty . . . 

Our jewel, the future nobelist! triumphantly.

So yes, there it was, one corner of the scheme that became their great fame: major Southern writer—a cam, a one-timer, fireworks: the commercial success of a great American tale teller; plus the find of their scavenging night, a script bought, delivered and not yet published; and part three to come; maybe the best invention of all, which would prove to be the salvation of a failing author: a victory for all. A great put-together. You could get an MBA today just by explaining this whole-greater-than-its parts. Enough of a triumph to raise money on the Street. Quite a mountain they climbed, these two little out-of-towners, an uncommon occurrence for New York in 1952 when smarts not yet named belonged to local talent only.

II

Oh, So Many Years Later—Maybe More Than Half A Century

Rosie sits on the deck of her handsome gated-community apartment over the East River, a place worthy of Claus Von Bulow. The journalist at her side is taking notes for a memoir, not particularly of Rosie (who is known today mainly for her work on behalf of the homeless as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art: my two babies she explains), but of the book business as she knew it, and as her lover Briney used to say, knew it and blew it, as in balloons.

The journalist is curious but he does not say this, that in his tour of her vast living quarters (he had not known that in low life New York, brackish city of sin, crime, the homeless, of selling and being sold, there were palaces, and, amazingly, in the common form of apartments!), he has seen collections of wine, collections of prints (l8th century French and Bulgarian), engraved silver belt buckles, a small—they seem to have tired of it early—set of decoy ducks, but no collection of books, hardly any at all in fact; a coffee table book of wines of France, where else?—a couple of mysteries and two women’s romances in the bedrooms—perhaps for guests? Paintings, prints, rare vintages, several interesting photographs artfully hung, even some small sculptures . . . but no books.

The extravagance here has nothing, of course, to do with publishing, so perhaps the absence of a library is a symbol, conscious or otherwise of this fact? The widow (fifth and final wife, lucky again) of a major Broadway entertainment entrepreneur, Rosie is known to have been genuinely fond of her husband (her one and only in that category), his deepest love, and certainly his finest caregiver. Her luxuries have to do, largely but not entirely, with that part of her life, and therefore don’t interest the journalist who is on the scent—for his masters—of book bidness factoids.

He’s heard that the great success of PP&W Publishers, widely thought to have been engineered by Briney & Rosie, was founded on a fluke, and knitted into shape only when more senior heads were turned away. Was this true? He holds his breath; it isn’t rude, it’s the new journalism, but of course he is not (thanks god) Tom Wolfe and she isn’t of course, bound to answer, but once turned hostile witness, Rose will cost him a valuable witness. And she’s been so generous, so jolly, which is more than he can say about the rest of this business which, alas, is beginning to irritate him with its mixture of bigtime pretension and smalltime achievement. How will he manage at this rate to interview fifty more souls, some whose brains are already sagging into their wattles?

She turns, one can’t swivel in a deck chair, and gazes at him (later he would report, I never knew what that was till then, ‘a level gaze!’) And he is surprised at her reply. Had she looked deep inside him, he wondered, and found something, to their mutual amazment, worthwhile?

Our success, she says at last, like most of ’em, was accidental really. All schemes are ad hoc or harebrained, all happiness is luck.

An aphorist without a book collection! He is astonished. But you were so clever, you two—a scheme has to have schemers.

Sounds like one of those pop-y philosophies, she sneers but sweetly, y’know, Thoughts without a Thinker, Salvation without a Savior. Lissen, a scheme is only a plan with fingers crossed. She taps him just above the knee with the bottom of her wine glass. You overvalue what you see, you overconceptualize as they say today. That’s why you’re a writer, and I’m a rich widow. She had the grace to laugh.

You don’t value writers?

Don’t be silly; I value writers above all else, they were the making of my fortune!

Not your face?

Fresh! And not too original. But she laughed. No, I was okay in that department but not enough for that. Not plain, but I couldn’t have gotten to publishing heaven if I were Beauty-dear herself. This isn’t a looks business! Believe me! Not for the big stuff. It doesn’t hurt, but this is not Hollywood, and there was no Schwab’s drugstore. Smarts and Luck, a little judicious sleeping-about: that’s the recipe. And I had the best luck of ‘em all: I HAD A SMART BOYFRIEND, THAT’S PROBABLY THE BEGINNING AND THE END.

The sun sets in the west, yes, even in NY and over the other river the earth rotates. Here at the eastern end, barges, tugs, bodies float by in the pink reflected dusk.. Rosie is still sober enough for memories and only a tiny bit maudlin.

Oh, shit, Rosie thinks: give him what he craves. So let’s return, as the Lone Ranger said, to yesteryear; let’s see where the book bidness was more than half a century ago. Maybe we can judge if the ligature of change was already stiffening, melting, already turning—turning, back there somewhere, yeah, back there under our very eyes . . . when we never even noticed.

At PP&W—a book publishing house no one can imagine today—there were two classes, the owners (we really said bosses till that became stockholders, but never no never did anyone say employers), who were also or thought they were, editors, and in the same class, the real editors, golden creatures who discovered and nurtured authors with praise, money, and booze; then in a slightly lower dimension but still up there with them were assorted publicity directors, production men, sales managers, etc etc but all, yes, all, under the direction of the GE &Os, the golden editors and owners, yes, subject, always subject to them.

And then there were the Other Ranks, the girls and boys, old and young girls and boys, who typed, and took dictation, heard and maybe followed orders, sharpened pencils, did research, sometimes read manuscripts, and sometimes delivered clean hand towels on Fridays. They were praised—occasionally (it was not known then as a managerial method) got raises—occasionally, ditto, but they never rose out of the Ranks. It would be astonishing to them today to understand that you take a lowly job in publishing in order to rise, to rise, to achieve and rise, to sleep around and rise, but always to rise or to quit . . . only to rise elsewhere. It was another time.

Today we walk on the bones of that world, far beneath our feet, as we rush to find the new hot book, steal the Big Author, seal the successful writer to us tight with reins of leather, and yes, yes, that sound is a faraway crunching, really just a soughing beneath the grass, the moss, the magma, as it falls below. Was it Eden then, then? Not for a moment. It was only a different hell.

III

Editors

Who in those days were the editors, those yet more golden creatures of today’s publishing? In truth, the three owners (the bosses) were still the buyers of merchandise, as we shall see. But by the time Rose arrived, the new category level was in place, so successful had PP&W become: another level of three editors who bought manuscripts (not just ideas for manuscripts, that moronic simplicity—the G-Spot of Publishing—came later). These had considerable authority, but still had to go to the management for money to buy these properties and what’s more . . . . still had to sign in with Lola Swift to see the files! Decades later, what they did would with great vulgarity be called acquiring. Laughably. Even five and dime girls knew it: does he acquire? No, he just edits. Disdainfully.

Who were they then, the splendid editors? Rosie doesn’t remember as well as she used to; she doesn’t have to, she doesn’t care. But because it was a time when everyone stayed put for great swatches of years (before the editors jumped rope, running as they sang their verses, from publishing house to publishing house, dragging their reputations with them, sometimes their authors, their contracts, sometimes making more money, getting higher titles, glamorizing their lives, their jobs, and never noticing how they had—oh, not their fault!—left behind them a brutal business in dregs and shame), you really only had to tap your head and plunge the right year into your memory bank.

Yes, when Rosie arrived, Plane and Percy and Walker were assisted in building their list by three editorial men, one alleged to be a woman. There was Childers West, the famous critic on the twenties, who seldom came to the office, but in his parttime way, deaf stutterer though he was, brought not only literary work of distinction to the company, once in awhile even profits, but his presence on their staff automatically cloaking PP&W in a shimmering gloss, an aura even of merit, of literary value, his presence subtracting visibly, noticeably, from the strands of the company’s past and present vulgarity, cheapness, yes, dare we say it, from the sense of lower classness which surrounded the company’s creation and present management.

And there was Kurt Cobain—no, no, not the musician to come (and go) so much later. Nor was he an ancestor, though this Kurt was also young, and tan. Possibly also gifted, this was hard to judge because of his excellent outgoing manner and his grasp. He was popular with almost everyone. Plane liked him because he had so far proved mostly right. Though they argued with him, wagged their heads at most of his suggestions, some considered too commercial, some not enough, and the worst, those that were thought to be neither commercial nor worthy, each season he, so far at any rate, had come up with a title that—despite their doubts, and he never grumbled at them—had worked. The women all adored him, even the sour Teasle (Rose’s superior) preened at his clever attentions. Strangely, he was, though a good looker, not a favorite of Rose’s. Something between them—and he was very democratic, as no other editor was, chattin’ up the help, etc.—had got stuck when they were introduced. Perhaps it was that she was not, like Marjorie and Lola, moved by his kind of manliness.

And finally, the deep-voiced Dorian Schneide, six foot, big mouth and nose, much wild hair-colored hair, who had taught writing for years at midwestern universities, and was now helping to find a public for it.

Is that a man or a woman? Rose wondered cruelly.

It’s Miss Schneide, Teasle answered, snippy—having come in behind the question. Marjorie gasped but Rose just looked idly, surprised.

And she is a most distinguished editor. She brought us the Alsimmion series, the trilogy of midwestern family life. This was indeed a big popular success with, unusually, very good reviews too, even from those who liked to look down their noses at the genre. It was about four Milwaukee sisters, one lame, one deaf-mute, one actress, one cook. Rose did read that one, and laughed all the way through its highmindedness. It was a category she came to understand and always called Ya laff-ya cry novels. Mr. Walker adores her, Teasle said sarcastically, meaning either that it was ironic when he ought to have adored Teasle herself, or perhaps that he would certainly never adore these silly girls. Hah!

Well that settles that, Rose thought, speculating that not only was the distinguished editor’s gender ambiguous but so was Miss Schneide’s age.

And so are her clothes! Marjorie added later.

Dorian was to surprise them all before the following year was up. When the announcement of her marriage to one of the Bigs at PP &W hit not only publishing news but even real news, The New York Times, that settled it. Of course. What did we know in those days? Rose laughed. We were so innocent. Maybe it was a love match, maybe just a match. Anything is possible. We didn’t know about all those possibilities. We didn’t know anything . . . .

Rose kept her eye on all three: Kurt, Dorian, Childers when he was there, calling them by their first names as the staff did of course behind their backs, but do not ye forget—this was an age when everyone above Rose’s level was Mister or Miss or Mrs . . . no foolin’ around (with the exception of Teasle)—since she was supposed to make yourself available to them for dictation or whatever they needed, Teasle told her. But they were so lofty, so famed, their voices full of marbles, written about everywhere, talked about, and they were so often out to lunches or breakfasts, or teas, or drinks . . . and they all had young women working for them already, so in fact though Rose came to feel very comfortable, homey even, with management—the PP&W of PP&W—these golden editors were always—as Jilke used to joke, strictly l68th street, above our station! Proud to have them aboard, Ted Plane himself was in awe, afraid of their knowledge, their literary contacts; his partner Sol Percy thought they were full of themselves, stuck up, but Paolm Walker, third partner and the firm originator, who himself had been drunk in Trieste with James Joyce, poured tea for Compton Mackenzie, single malt for Ivy Compton Burnett, taught writing with Whit Burnett, had no time for the possible pretensions of his editors. He dealt with them as he did with the rest of the staff. Good humored and even handed, he told fine stories, quoted poems, encouraged their acquisitions. Perhaps the Golden Editors weren’t pretentious. Perhaps they were just the form fruste, the template, the still shifting first pattern of that self styling later grandeur and shame of the book biz: The Acquiring Editor.

Who cares, Rose said, and that was good enough for her. She was ready to do their chores. Available for all, like a char girl, she thought.

IV

The Company

Marjorie (later known of course as Marjorie the Kleptomaniac), not yet having discovered her real vocation, did her sorta-clerking at the Publicity Department which in those days prepared flap copy (yes, the era of the paper dust jacket had already arrived, hey, it was the twentieth century) under the direction of editors, releases to newspapers and magazines, called up the few radio programs where books were reviewed (this was before live interviews with live stuttering author-personalities of course). TV, a new phenom, was outside the pale of the world in which publishing then existed. Marjorie’s boss, constantly giggled at by the friends but never sassed, was a chinless Irisher, daughter of a famous short story writer from the Sad Sod. He looked just like his American daughter or she like him. His stories were in that incomprehensible high Irish mode, and they were not published at PP&W. Iris Irish they called her, and oddly Rose and Briney met her years later, her hair dyed blond and nicely page-boy coiffed, smartly done up, and damn if her chin hadn’t moved out an inch, (what Rose called the eye-shades of Kilgallen, the columnist reputed to have had her chin surgically stretched on being