The World Is My Home: A Memoir

by James A. Michener

  They mentioned the names of the three male authors who had disgraced themselves, and distinguished they were, but I have forgotten their names; however, it was the scandalous behavior of Miss Thompson that had prompted the edict. Shortly before he died, Truman Capote went to the University of Maryland to deliver a speech, roared onto the stage completely besotted, fell down, and lay there unable to rise. Later I was told by a professor from the school that a rule similar to Cincinnati’s was instituted thereafter.

  My hero Jim Putnam came to a sad end, at least as far as Macmillan was concerned. At a literary cocktail party he ran into a beguiling Russian adventurer and would-be scientist named Immanuel Velikovsky, whose manuscript entitled Worlds in Collision offered a thrilling account of how extraterrestrial bodies at a time not far distant had collided with the earth, causing many of the phenomena that more conventional scientists ascribed to less spectacular causes. Jim persuaded Macmillan to publish the book, which became a red-hot best-seller and a major topic of conversation across the United States. It was a feather in Jim’s cap and we were glad for him.

  But then the community of scientific scholars descended on Macmillan in outrage, with professors who should have had better sense threatening never again to purchase a Macmillan book if we continued to publish and circulate this infamous trash. I was one of Jim’s defenders, proclaiming loudly that ‘freedom of speech demands that we stick to our guns and allow Velikovsky to have his say,’ but I had scarcely uttered the words when editors from the college department, source of much of our profits, pointed out that if professors of science in the American universities were to boycott our textbooks, the consequences could be disastrous, and much debate was held within the company.

  The professors were adamant, and some who had previously pontificated on freedom of speech as a cornerstone of American democracy, now reiterated that if Macmillan continued to distribute the Velikovsky book, Macmillan was dead. As an underling in the high school division I was not privy to the decision-making, but I well remember the solemn spring evening when a young woman who worked in the college department informed a group of us who had gathered for an evening meal that our friend Jim Putnam had been thrown to the wolves: ‘Yep, fired to satisfy the scientists, and we agreed to give the book to another publisher, something never before heard of in American publishing, a best-seller and all. The scientists are finally satisfied and have promised they’ll continue to use Macmillan texts.’ And I never saw Jim Putnam again.

  While at Macmillan I was myself involved in two cases of censorship and witness to a third, each involving references to religion. In one of the textbooks I had edited I had allowed the author to state what I believed was a historical fact about Mary Baker Eddy and her Christian Science Church. The book had no sooner been published than I was visited by two distinguished-looking gentlemen who explained that their headquarters in Boston seriously objected to what we had printed. When I tried to defend myself I learned that through the years the mother church in Boston had devised a most carefully worded statement about Mary Baker Eddy, each phrase of which had been vetted by experts so that there could be no possible taint of charlatanism, false evangelism or claims for messianism. And I learned further that no one like me, outside the Church, could possibly guess what would be offensive or contrary to official doctrine. In other words, the mother church had determined what could or could not be said about Mary Baker Eddy and nothing more or less would be permitted in print. I did not ask what the penalties would be if we did not remove from all future printings the offending passage and substitute accepted doctrine; I didn’t have to.

  In my second case I was visited by two lawyers from Utah who looked so much like the men from Boston that I cannot now differentiate the four. Their mission was the same. In a book about the western expansion in the United States, I had once more stumbled into an area where accepted doctrine had been laid down, this time by the Mormon Church, and anyone who did not tailor his textbook material precisely to the wishes of that august body was in serious trouble, for not only would his books never be used in Utah but legal suits might ensue. There had been, I knew well from ample documentation, a horrible affair in which settlers moving west had somehow infuriated the Mormon leadership and been annihilated by what seemed certain to have been Mormon gunmen, but it had been decreed that no mention of this affair could ever appear in print. I would later learn that if a public or university library purchased any book that dealt with this incident, mysteriously the book disappeared immediately. The Mormon visitors who came to my office were two of the gentlest complainants I would ever meet during my tenure as an editor, but it was clear that under their dark blue suits they wore armor of steel and if I refused to comply with their wishes they would prove to be fierce adversaries. I did not test them.

  The third case interested me immensely, for it centered not on faulty doctrine or on matters I had not fully understood but on a single word. One of our college texts had used the unfortunate phrase ‘typical jesuitical cunning,’ and the full force of the Catholic educational apparatus in New York and other states fell upon us with the stated—not implied—threat that if we did not remove that phrase from the specific book in hand and, as company policy, ban the pejorative use of the word ‘jesuitical,’ the Catholic institutions would have to boycott not only all our textbooks, but also our other books. There was much discussion about this word in the corridors at Macmillan, and about freedom of speech, but in the end the phrase was dropped and I became so indoctrinated that I find it difficult to use it even today. I notice, however, that the new Random House Dictionary contains as definition (2) using oversubtle reasoning; crafty; sly; intriguing. Well, maybe Random can get away with it. Macmillan couldn’t.

  The most fascinating instance of censorship involved not religion but the entire state of Texas. As one of my editorial jobs I worked on a history of the United States written by Edna McGuire, one of the most polished writers we had, and I, proud of the assignment, was determined to do my best. But we faced a problem, and it was grave. Texas was one of the few states that required every school in the state to use the same texts, and since the state was so big, publishers battled furiously to win what was termed ‘a Texas adoption,’ for this meant immense sales and profits. The competition was brutal, and whenever we lost out to some other house we charged that they had used beautiful saleswomen to influence the selection in some highly improper ways. We swore that Macmillan never used this tactic, but once when I was in Texas helping to supervise the final stages of the contest in which my McGuire history was the leading contender, I saw with some relief that our women consultants were at least as good-looking as the opposition’s and some in my judgment a lot more so.

  Then our field operatives reported a perilous rumor: ‘Opposition teams are spreading the story that Edna McGuire is a Catholic!’ and in the Baptist Texas of those days, that would have killed our book if we hadn’t immediately signed up a gentlemanly elder statesman from West Texas to pose as her coauthor. While I edited his supposed contribution to the book, which was actually written by Miss McGuire, I learned a great deal about Texas.

  Our field men, all Texans, who would have to sell the book to local authorities, understandably felt that they had the right to caution us, within reason, regarding what went into the text, and I became their contact in the New York editorial offices: ‘Jim, if we don’t have adequate coverage of three men, we might as well not offer our book. Sam Houston, Stephen Austin, and Davy Crockett. Picture of each, as big as possible. Full biographies. Glowing accounts of their heroism.’

  ‘But this is a national history for sale in all parts of the country, not a history of Texas.’

  ‘Trick is to write it as a history of Texas and make it look national.’

  But as soon as we tried this, we ran into all sorts of problems: ‘Jim! What in hell are you doing to us—writing about the “Civil War.” It can only be called the “War Between the States,” because we weren’t rebels.
We were sovereign states, our own republic was fighting your republic.’

  ‘Was Texas on the side of the South?’

  ‘Oh my God! You’re not ready for this job.’

  The real problem came when I felt that we must have a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the book. When the Texas men saw that I had introduced a handsome, full-page likeness of our greatest president, they exploded: ‘You’re losing us the adoption right there,’ and they explained that in the Texas of that day there was no greater villain than Abe Lincoln: ‘An enemy of the nation at large. Especially of Texas. It would be better if you could get away without mentioning him at all, and if you have to have a picture, let it be itty-bitty.’

  When the book, properly sanitized for Texas readers, was published, I wondered what understanding schoolchildren in Vermont would have of American history from reading our text: ‘Texas ran the nation and New England trailed along.’ But that didn’t really matter, because the Texas commissioners chose our book, so our company sold a great many volumes in Texas and very few in Vermont.

  The third person who had a great impact on me during my formative period at Macmillan was a delightful, hardworking young woman whose name was Betty. She was almost identical with the scores of imaginative young women who serve as publicists for the major publishers. They all seem to me to be good-looking, in their twenties or thirties, bright college graduates with a love of books and a Machiavellian cleverness. Their employers tell them: ‘We can give you only a limited budget, so get our books as much free publicity as you can.’

  The young women are geniuses at networking in that they get to know everyone in the newspapers, in radio, and in later years, television. They know which literary clubs will be wanting what kinds of authors, and what bookstores in what cities can be trusted to put on respectable autographing parties. And if they like a beginning author and see a reasonable hope that he or she might become a long-term serious figure in their company’s catalog, they can create miracles. They are some of the brightest, most charming figures in publishing, and I have fallen in love with about eight of them, but their names I cannot remember, nor, I suspect, did they always remember mine. But I salute them, for they were very good to me, bringing me in many ingenious ways to the attention of the book industry.

  But as I watched with awe and admiration their machinations, I could not help seeing how unproductive much of their work proved to be. The cocktail party to which no one came, the radio appearance at which the questioner had not read the book, the newspaper interview with the journalist who could not hide his or her contempt for both the book and its author, the frantic casting about for anyone who would say a good word about the book. And yet, when everything clicked, the publicist could work wonders as she orchestrated a new talent’s emergence on the literary scene.

  Nothing illustrated this better than the brilliant manner in which Bel Kaufman’s Up the Down Staircase was mothered into stardom. I had never heard of either the author or her book, but as I was riding into Doylestown one day I heard her on the car radio, and her voice was so appealing, her wit so engaging and her common sense so refreshing that I cried: ‘I must get hold of that book!’ Apparently thousands of others were similarly affected, for a book that might have died unknown and unmourned became a huge success, mainly, I believe, because of the adroit manner in which the Prentice-Hall publicity people engineered its progress. Of course, the book itself was delightfully written and the author was unusually witty, but radio appearances had a good deal to do with its success.

  The publisher’s agents had much to do with my good fortune, too, and on three occasions when I was autographing my later books police had to be called to keep crowds in line: in Washington and Denver and in Centreville, Maryland. But the party I remember most vividly and painfully was for an early novel that was held at Burdine’s grand new store at a shopping center in Miami, Florida. The store people had more than fulfilled their obligations: they had a big sign proclaiming the event, pitchers of orange juice, trays of cookies and attractive salespeople to keep the expected crowds in line. They failed in only one respect: there were no crowds. In fact, during the first awful hour, there was not even a crowd of one, and in the second painful hour only two. At one point I heard the frantic manager yelling at his staff: ‘For Christ’s sake, get some of the salesgirls to walk through and at least say hello.’ He then must have given someone cash, for I heard him say: ‘Take this and buy one of the damned things.’

  At Burdine’s big new store that sunny spring day I sold one book, ate a lot of cookies and drank four glasses of orange juice.

  As a result of having seen at Macmillan the workings of the literary publicity racket, I developed an aversion to the whole procedure and was always loath to lend either my name or my presence to the system. And I would retain that cautious reluctance throughout my writing career. Autographing tours are brutally exhausting; travel by car from one overnight stop to the next is depressing; endless interviews are numbing; and the entire rigmarole is distasteful. I did as little of it as I could decently get by with.

  But I must not take a superior attitude. Any young man or woman aspring to be a professional writer faces a horrendously difficult task in which the chances for acceptance are something like a thousand to one against. Anything honorable that the young writer can do to gain the serious attention of readers is justifiable, and I have repeatedly said that if I were starting over with no track record and no reputation, I would be on the road three nights a week, and I would go wherever and do whatever my publisher’s publicist advised. I am forever indebted to those guardian angels who helped me get started, and I am always delighted when I see them ministering to the needs of some beginning writer.

  My attitude toward the necessity of publicity appearances in the writing profession is best exemplified by a telephone conversation I had a few years ago with Bob Bernstein, the then president of Random House, the company that publishes my books:

  PRESIDENT: Jim, I know you’ve fulfilled your promise to us and done the New York scene, but would you please consider visiting Washington for an autographing?

  J.A.M.: You know our deal. I’ll do one city, as much as you care to load on. But no more.

  PRESIDENT: I understand.

  PRESIDENT (two days later): Jim, I don’t want to put the arm on you. You’ve been decent about these things. But could you, as a courtesy to me personally, drop by Washington for that autographing?

  J.A.M.: The answer’s still no. I’ve fulfilled my obligation and that’s it.

  PRESIDENT: I understand.

  PRESIDENT (two days later): Jim, I don’t think I’ve explained this to you properly. This guy in Washington has the authority to order thirty-six thousand copies of your book, in one order, if he takes a liking to you and the book.

  J.A.M.: (after three seconds’ thought): I’ll be there.

  The point of these memories about my introduction to publishing at Macmillan is that because of my inside experiences in the industry I saw the writer’s life from a perspective that few of my fellow writers could have had. Since I knew how advertising budgets were apportioned, I never once asked about the advertising of my books, nor did I ever keep watch to see what was being done. Because I saw what futile things cocktail parties were for most writers, I never sought any. I preferred to write good manuscripts, turn them over to a professional publisher and allow him to publish, distribute and sell them as he deemed best. I still feel that way; it has been a tactic that has served me admirably and brought me great satisfaction and ease of mind.

  There were two other valuable benefits resulting from my years at Macmillan. I, better than almost any other contemporary writer I know, understand what a book is. I learned how it is made, printed, stored, delivered, accounted for, advertised, remaindered. I came to understand the work of the man with the slide rule—now replaced by a computer—who mercilessly calculated the final days of a book. ‘Look,’ one of these men once told me, pointing to his fig
ures. ‘We have a thousand copies of this title left over and are selling them at the rate of ten copies a year. If you add up the cost of warehousing, keeping the title in the catalog and shipping out the few copies we do sell, you can easily see that it will be cheaper for us to give away the remainder.’

  I then watched the adroit ways in which he disposed of those costly, useless books. First he tried to sell them at fifty cents each to the remainder bookshops that sold them for $1.50, and if they refused to buy he unloaded them at a quarter each, to be retailed at ninety-nine cents each. The ultimate indignity was to sell them for ten cents apiece to the man who used a steel press to cut out the center of each book, glue the pages together and put on a new paper cover with the inviting title ‘Good Reading for a Cold Winter’s Evening’; he sold them for $4.50 each. When the purchaser opened his book he found nestled inside a small bottle of gin. Watching the operation, I hoped that none of my books would fall so low.

  Another important learning experience at Macmillan involved the costing out of the books I myself had edited. On the left-hand side of the publishing order, which had to be signed by the president before a penny could be spent, would be my estimate of the inescapable fixed costs of getting the manuscript ready for printing and publishing. Here were the editorial costs, the research costs, the payments to illustrators, cartographers, experts and readers, the costs of typesetting and making the plates plus a dozen other fixed items the amateur might not anticipate. These were the great immutables that had to be amortized by income from future cash sales.