The Tender Hour of Twilight

by Richard Seaver

  28

  A New Life

  IT WAS ALL WELL AND GOOD to start a new life. The question was: What life? For Jeannette, she had her career in music, no problem. For me, the sobering two years in the navy had broadened me in both mind and geography, taught me that Paris, while still “home” in my mind, was not the center of the universe. Still, it beckoned to both of us. I had dispatched letters to four or five people in Washington, in both the private and the public sectors, seeking gainful employment in France. Going back to Paris seemed the natural thing to do—not to my old life, not to Merlin, not to Olympia, but to something new. I had written to George Plimpton. Did George need a Paris editor? He did, but when he told me what it paid, that was quickly ruled out. Because now we had a child on the way.

  Unable to locate a Parisian job, I ended up accepting a position in a totally new field. It seemed a lark, and we left for Venezuela shortly thereafter, me, most improbably, as management consultant for a pharmaceutical company. I spoke fluent Spanish and was told that all that was required was pure common sense to do what was needed. Our Venezuelan adventure turned out extremely positively for us both. As management consultant, I must have performed well because the CEO whose company I was helping reorganize begged me to stay on. As for Jeannette, she was able to pursue her music and give a few concerts there. But we were expecting our first child and were eager to return to the States for the birth. A few months later, when I reported to Scarsdale upon my return from Venezuela, at the world headquarters of Direct Energy—the management consultant firm—my boss was reassuring: of course I still had a job.

  Within twenty-four hours Jeannette and I had found a place to live, a new building on Palmer Road in Bronxville, and paid an urgent visit to the doctor, who pronounced Jeannette in perfect health and predicted the baby’s arrival in four weeks, maybe sooner. “Just don’t go taking any airplanes,” he warned.

  Shortly after midnight on June 5, Jeannette woke me with a gentle jab in the ribs and announced quietly that her labor had begun. In fact, had begun some hours before, but she didn’t want to disturb me. Disturb me? If not now, when? I jumped out of bed, thrust on my trousers, realized I had put both legs in one side, the left as I recall, stumbled across the room like a drunkard as I tried to pull them off. Jeannette, having turned on the light, started laughing so hard she couldn’t stop, saying, “Mon Dieu, j’ai épousé un unijambiste!” Good God, I married a one-legged man! I stayed at the hospital through the night, holding her hand as the frequency of the contractions increased. At five, the doctor arrived and suggested I go home and get some rest. They’d call when birth was imminent. I crawled into bed, fell into a deep sleep, didn’t hear the phone till the tenth ring. June 6. “Come down as soon as possible.” When I arrived, Jeannette was fast asleep, having been given anesthesia an hour before the baby came. So I had missed the birth. It was a girl, I was told, would I like to see her? What kind of question was that?

  I pressed my face against the glass of the nursery. A nurse’s index finger pointed to my own, who was sleeping peacefully. I stared in disbelief, like every new father. After blowing my baby a kiss, I checked in on Jeannette, still asleep, and headed for the nearest florist, returning with a bountiful bouquet of red roses. When I reentered the room, Jeannette was just coming to. Minutes later I brought in the babe, so tiny, so small, to me, so beautiful, exactly seven pounds. Gently, I laid the child, still asleep, in her mother’s arms. Mother and child. All those thousands of paintings over the centuries on the subject: it wasn’t just the Christ Child that had inspired them; it was all the millions of moments exactly like this. We named her Nathalie Anne.

  Meanwhile, a broken record kept playing in my head: Did I really want to be a management consultant? Of course not, was the answer.

  * * *

  Our friend Jerry Stone had the same idea. “You don’t want to be a management consultant, for Chrissake. You should be writing. Or working in publishing—wait a minute, I have a thought. Call this man tomorrow—and mention my name. He’s got a couple of book clubs, and his editor, George Brantl, who’s been with him for years, is leaving. Or just left. Brantl’s a friend of mine—I’ve been writing book reviews for their monthly newsletter—and if I knew anyone who might fit the bill, I should let him know…” He quickly scribbled a name and number on the corner of the paper tablecloth: George Braziller.

  The following afternoon I called Braziller. Yes, Stone had told him about me. Several years in Paris, I understand, running a magazine and book-publishing company, no? I decided modesty was not in order, so failed to minimize or contradict the information received. From Braziller’s rather high-pitched, slightly plaintive voice, I pictured a slight, effete man of late middle years, scarcely my type, so when the next morning—he had wasted no time making an appointment—I was ushered into his large, well-appointed, book-lined office overlooking Park Avenue South, I was surprised to see a muscular, athletic-looking man whom I judged to be in his late thirties. We had an hour-long chat, at the end of which he introduced me to his pretty secretary, Susan; his young lady in charge of publicity, Phyllis Bellows, all sweetness and light; his accountant, Herman Figatner, a small, owlish, unprepossessing man, born to the profession, I immediately decided, if looks have anything to do with choice; and last but certainly not least, my namesake Edwin Seaver, a short, curly-haired man in his late fifties, I judged, whose sly smile made me feel I would have an ally in more than name only. He then offered me the job of editor of his two book clubs, the Book Find Club and the Seven Arts Book Society, the former a politically liberal nonfiction club, the latter specializing in relatively high-priced art books. Could I let him know immediately? I’d like to discuss it with my wife. And I couldn’t start for a couple weeks, because I would have to give notice. He agreed, handing me half a dozen newsletters for each club and suggesting I take a look at them, for I’d be writing them from now on. The term “writing” alone made me feel the move would be right, for I knew that what I’d done for the past year, however pleasant, had been a lark.

  Next morning I told Barnum, my boss at the management consultancy firm, I’d be leaving. He seemed truly crestfallen. “I was grooming you to take over the business someday.” I thanked him. “I’ll bet you tell that to all the departing employees,” I said to myself.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, I showed up at 215 Park Avenue South precisely at 8:51, a logistical triumph. Susan greeted me and showed me to my office, a nine-by-twelve cubbyhole next to hers, which was next to George’s. Braziller was less expansive and welcoming than he had been at our initial encounter, his face all frowns with barely a “g’morning” as he strode past my nook, but I shook it off and settled in. We needed fourteen books a year for each club, twelve regular selections, a midsummer selection, and a Christmas selection. Twelve wouldn’t do, Herman assured me, explaining the math: with that monthly-only number you might break even; the extra two accounted for the profit, assuming overhead remained intact and, of course, the main selections “performed.”

  At precisely 9:50, George called me in to his office. The core of my job was to comb every publisher’s catalog for possible selections, he explained, then negotiate the deals, with his prior blessing of course. He would tell me how much I could pay, not a penny more. Business was tough, he said, because we were up against the two big guns, Book-of-the-Month Club and the Literary Guild. Survival depended on getting there first, before either of them, not picking at their leftovers. Didn’t seem too daunting to me. You’ll have to take people to lunch, George said, maybe as often as two or three times a week, charm them, especially the young sub-rights girls, so they think of Book Find first. No fancy restaurants, I’ll give you a list.

  Going back through the newsletters of both clubs, I was impressed. Next to the behemoths of the business, Book Find was small potatoes, but with roughly a hundred thousand members it still had an impact. Before I had been there a week, I was overwhelmed. It was one thing to lunch or cal
l the publishers and request a book or two for consideration, quite another to deal with the flood of entries that flowed in, unasked for, at a rate of twenty to thirty a week, all of which I was expected to evaluate. I found myself reading as much as I could during the day, but mostly at night and on the weekends, to the gentle sound of Nathalie cooing or crying.

  I was grateful to have at my disposal half a dozen freelance readers, themselves poets and writers and critics, to whom the most likely candidates for selection were given. They included an old friend of George’s, a lovely man in his early sixties, Isidor Schneider, who had been blacklisted for his left-wing involvements, whose three or four readings a week were his sole source of income in these post-McCarthy but still semi-hysterical days, when the fear of the Communist menace was still rife. Another reader was Norman Rosten, a close friend of the playwright Arthur Miller’s and himself a poet of note, whose constant smile and innate charm endeared him to everyone he met. Two younger readers were Dan Wakefield and Michael Harrington, the former an aspiring journalist and writer who would go on to publish several successful books, the latter the future head of the Democratic Socialists of America, a thankless task politically but one that put him throughout his life in frequent contact with the great socialist leaders of the Western world, from Willy Brandt to François Mitterrand. And of course the man who had steered me here, Jerry Stone. Still, despite this invaluable, nay, essential, help, I was reading as never before. Looking back, Merlin had been a cinch. Maybe I was simply entering the real world, or at least the real America, where work—intense work—apparently was the center, if not the goal, of life.

  The reading pressure, which I was learning to cope with despite the growing flood of submissions, was compounded by George’s daily, and to me irascible, demands. Nothing I did, wrote, or said seemed to elicit a positive response. Some weeks I would write him brief reports on a dozen books I had read, plus half a dozen more from the freelance readers, none of which passed the acid test. I heard him mutter “Brantl” under his breath at least two or three times a week, which made even my untutored mind understand that my predecessor would never have taxed his patience thus.

  One day when I, though clean shaven, was likewise muttering in my figurative beard, wondering why the fuck I had taken this job, Susan loped around the corner and perched herself on the edge of my desk, her handsome, unsheathed legs swinging like two seductive pendulums, her ready cleavage adding to the unsettling scene as she leaned forward. Obviously, one or more of my mutterings had penetrated the thin wall between us. “Don’t let him get you down,” she said in a near whisper. “He’s not as tough as he seems.” Susan had been working here for two or three years, and my sense was that she and George were an item, though I understood from Herman that George’s wife, Marsha, was a rare gem, a woman as beautiful as she was talented, who, when George was drafted and went to war, had run the clubs with a sure hand and clear vision, so that when George returned and took over again, they were thriving as never before. “He’s a worrywart,” Susan went on. “George sees the big clubs gobbling up all the best books. Which puts the pressure on you.” I mentioned the repeated, under-the-breath “Brantl” references. She laughed. “He was just as tough on Brantl as he is on you. Except Brantl didn’t seem to care. Wait’ll you have a breakthrough,” she added. “It will all change, you’ll see.”

  “A breakthrough?” I asked.

  “A main selection that sells 30 or 35 percent,” she said.

  The norm, I knew, was 18 to 20 percent; that is, about one out of every five members accepted the selection. So far, none of mine—ours, for George was the final arbiter, though when they fell below the norm, they automatically became Seaver’s—had broken through. Still, a book Isidor and I had both just read and highly recommended to George, John Kenneth Galbraith’s Affluent Society, struck me as a remarkable candidate. George concurred, urging me to make an offer immediately. That day. That hour. Our offer accepted, it became that month’s main selection and, mirabile dictu, not only scooped the Book-of-the-Month Club, which belatedly added it to its Alternate Selection roster a couple months later, but became one of the Book Find Club’s all-time bestsellers, with upwards of 40 percent of the membership taking it. Herman was ecstatic, Susan all smiles on the now-familiar corner of my desk. Phyllis made a point of kissing me on the cheek and offering her hearty congratulations, at the same time telling me she was leaving to take another job. I looked surprised, for in my months there I had found her a steady friend, like Susan telling me to weather whatever storm was brewing or unleashed by our BFM—Book Find Master. I did a double take when she said she was going to “Grove Press. As director of publicity. It’s a young house, but they’re doing some very interesting things…” Hmmm.

  Predictably, George never acknowledged I had anything to do with that month’s success. Waiting outside his office one day to see him about the next month’s selection, I heard him on the phone saying: “Thanks, yes, it’s a great success. One of our best in years. I sensed the minute I read it we had a winner.” Still, as Susan had predicted, that mini-triumph made me less vulnerable, and George not only became immediately more affable but paid closer attention to my readers’ reports. Further, at lunch one day the saintly Isidor offhandedly mentioned that George thought I was doing a great job. “Could’ve fooled me,” I said. “Must be the Galbraith.” “No,” Isidor replied, “he’s told me that almost from the start.” All that reminded me suddenly of my father, who for most of my youth had carefully refrained from ever paying me a compliment, whether forehand or backhand. A problem of his makeup perhaps? Only Mother’s frequent assurances that Father did in fact love and even admire me kept me from total self-doubt. “He simply has trouble expressing himself,” Mother would say. “But I know he loves you,” I would counter. “Of course,” she would reply, but by her hesitation, and the slight downward tilt of her head, I knew that much the same doubt applied to her. And to sister Joan as well. Funny man, mon père …

  * * *

  Despite the general climatic improvement at the clubs, George still continued to worry day in and day out, with me the main target. I tried to leave the problem at work, let it simmer down on the twenty-nine-minute train ride home, but there were days when I couldn’t, and at some point in the evening I would blurt out my frustration to Jeannette. “If you let him rant and rave without fighting back, he’ll never stop.” Of course she was right; I had till now avoided confrontation, out of insecurity—this was my first real job—and a sense that I still had a lot to learn. But in one of the nether reaches of my mind, I tucked that advice away.

  One day a couple weeks later, George called me in and took me to task over two of the three alternate selections I had suggested for the upcoming newsletter, to which he normally paid scant heed. Calling them “terrible choices,” in fact “disgraceful,” he added that they would garner few readers, if any. A total waste of good space, he said, referring to the newsletter. I had cleared these choices with him a week earlier, I reminded him, before writing the copy, and besides, the full material was due at the printer tomorrow. Never mind, he said, find two new alternates. Today. Turning bright red, I’m sure, I slammed down the packet I was holding, the entire contents of the issue, on the corner of the desk and told him what I thought of him, no holds barred. He sat there stunned, hardly blinking, and let me go on till I could think of nothing else to add, at which point I turned and left the office, repaired to my cubbyhole, sat down, and wondered what to do next. Gather my belongings, I guessed. Susan, privy to the scene, sidled in and winked approval. Was I wrong about her relationship with George? I opened my desk drawer and started pulling out personal papers. What are you doing? she wanted to know. Packing to leave, I said. Did he fire you? He didn’t have time, I said. So you’re still employed, right? Why don’t you put the newsletter to bed and then decide? I can’t, I said, all the material’s in George’s office. Let me go fetch it, she said, pivoting and heading for the tiger’s den, t
hen reappearing moments later with the contents in hand. How was His Majesty? I asked. Staring out the window, she said. Not boiling mad? I asked. No way of telling, she said—maybe contrite, who knows? That I doubt, I said. A pause. What, I wondered aloud, shall I do with these “disgraceful” alternates? Is that what he called them? I nodded. She shrugged. I know what I’d do—tear them up. Eliminate them. Go with only one alternate? Another shrug. He can’t blame you for eliminating what he said are terrible. I fingered the two “worst” culprits, extracted them from the pile, and ceremoniously tore them to shreds. Here, I said, handing her the truncated contents, would you be so good as to messenger this to the printer?

  What is moral, Ernest had said, is what you feel good after. Simplistic maybe, but tonight I wholly concurred. Next morning, before I left for the train, I said: “You may see me home a bit earlier today.” But, no: instead of passing my office on his way to his own with barely a word, the normal custom, this morning George popped his head in, smiled broadly, and said, “Susan told me you cut two alternates. Good! And I have a strong feeling about this month’s main selection.” That was a meaty book by Max Lerner, America as a Civilization, which not only Dan Wakefield and I but George as well had read and loved. When the results were in three weeks later, Lerner’s book was almost as successful as the Galbraith. More important, from that “blowup” day on, my relations with George improved to such a degree that I can honestly say we never had another major confrontation. Disagreements, yes, but basically civil. As Susan had said, George was a born worrywart; while it wasn’t always darkness at noon, by three o’clock most days the black clouds had gathered on the horizon and permeated the whole office. The difference was that now, generally, if not always, I was able to ignore them.

  * * *

  I had been at Braziller for several months when Barney called. In the evening, at home. Could we have lunch? Sure—lunches were now an integral part of my life, whether I liked it or not. Again to One Fifth Avenue. Again, for Barney, two martinis and little food, while I downed a hearty hamburger, much missed during my Paris years, I am forced to admit, and a beer. Halfway through the second martini he came to the point: Would I like to come and work for Grove? As managing editor of the publishing house and of his fledgling magazine, Evergreen Review. I’d been reading the magazine, a quarterly and damn good, an eclectic mixture of American and European writing, mostly avant-garde and solidly grounded, a rare mixture. Really impressive. “With your Merlin background,” he said, “it’s a natural fit. Beckett of course, in almost every issue. Artaud, whom we also talked about in Paris. And your friend Ionesco, too. We’ve signed him up for several plays. You’d feel right at home.”