The Tender Hour of Twilight

by Richard Seaver

  One day I came back from lunching with an agent—still, fitfully, looking for books—to find my desk had been completely trashed. Yes, trashed. To be fair, holding down three or four jobs, including editorial and production, I had allowed my cubbyhole to degenerate into a mess, a cloaca, with correspondence, manuscripts, and galleys covering not only every last centimeter of the desktop but both chairs to boot. Apparently, Barney, not for the first time, had pointed out the mess to Fred, who always agreed with him, and together they had done a surgical strike while I was at lunch. I looked at the clean desk, started to turn, sure I had landed in the wrong office, realized I had not, turned back, and like a blind man began sifting through the wastebaskets and bins corralled for the occasion, kneeling to empty first one, then another. I felt violated. That Barney had taken this route infuriated me, but that Fred had joined in struck me as unspeakable betrayal.

  I stormed upstairs and let Barney have it with both barrels. Did he have any idea what he had done? There were precious manuscripts ready for copyediting, galleys ready for proofing, submissions I had read and was ready to report on—there was even a new Beckett translation he had tossed God knows where. He listened, head bowed, whether chastened or silently chortling I had no idea. “You should be fucking ashamed of yourself” was all I could muster as I turned to leave the room, then, an over-the-shoulder parting shot: “You’ve never had a more faithful employee. Or friend. And you never will.”

  Downstairs, I called Alan Williams, a friend at Viking whom I greatly respected, and announced I was leaving Grove. “Seriously? Let me call you back.” Against my better judgment, I decided not to clear out my desk, but used a Magic Marker to write on all the bins and wastebaskets a bold DO NOT REMOVE UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH!

  It was with heavy heart and Sahara-like mouth that I left the office very late that afternoon. Home, Jeannette seemed elated. “You should have left years ago,” she crowed. “And the kids agree with me.

  “You’ll find something, I am certain of it,” she insisted. “Anyway, it’s a cause for celebration.” With which she headed toward the kitchen and reemerged with a bottle of champagne.

  Next morning, as I was quietly reconstituting my desk to its former mayhem, the phone rang. Alan Williams. Was I free for lunch next day? Of course. “I’d like you to meet Mort Levin,” he said. I’d never heard of the man, who turned out to be the general manager of Viking, the publisher Tom Guinzburg’s trusted second-in-command, a man I sensed as soon as I met him was decent, gentle yet firm, and very knowledgeable about the book business. I expected him to ask why I was leaving, but he did not, spending most of the time talking about Viking, its past, present, and especially its future. At two thirty on the dot he looked at his watch, thanked me for having come uptown, and said he had a three o’clock meeting. Thinking back to the last time I had ventured outside the office for lunch and the repercussions thereof, I was fully prepared for anything as I stepped back into my Eleventh Street lair. To my practiced eye, not a hair had been moved; the paper clip I had planted at precisely a forty-five-degree angle was still there, intact and untouched.

  Only two people were aware of what had happened—the violation of my desk—dear Marilynn Meeker and a relative newcomer, Rusty Porter, a young, buxom blonde I had hired as production manager, not for her looks (though they may, I must confess, have played a part), but for her boundless energy, past production experience, and loyalty. Both women, who had seen the sad results of the office invasion, had come to me openly and commiserated. Marilynn, who had been at Grove longer than I, tried to make excuses for Barney. “He’s under such pressure,” she said. “But,” she added, “that Fred went along is unforgivable. Have you talked to him since?”

  I shook my head. “I told Barney what I thought, but not Fred.”

  “But please don’t leave,” she said. “Please!”

  I went over and took her frail body and hugged her. She let her head rest on my shoulder, and I felt a shudder pass through her before she pulled away, her eyes bright with tears.

  * * *

  A week later Mort Levin called and asked if I could come next morning to the Viking office at 625 Madison Avenue. He came out to meet me and take me into his relatively modest office, next door to the Big Man, Tom Guinzburg. There was no editorial opening at Viking itself—the letdown must have been visible despite the forced smile—but what Tom and he were proposing was an imprint, similar to that of Kurt and Helen Wolff at Harcourt, Brace. I would have an acquisition budget to be determined, a monthly draw against future profits, and full editorial control, unless an intended acquisition reached a certain figure, at which point I would have to consult him or Tom for approval. The smile was no longer forced. To start when? I asked. Mort shook his head. “We’ll need to work out the details, then you’ll need a lawyer to meet with ours, but that shouldn’t take more than a few days. Which leads me to ask you: When would you like to start?” “Let me talk to my wife tonight, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow.” “Fine. Now, let me introduce you to Tom Guinzburg.”

  He led me to the next-door office, one of the most bizarre adult playpens I had ever seen. Tom, tall, angular, and uncommonly awkward, rose from his throne behind a gilded desk and shook my hand firmly. His smile was broad but, I felt, forced, as if one of many facial gestures his position obliged him to make, perhaps daily, in which he did not really believe. His father, Harold Guinzburg, had founded Viking in 1925 and, from all reports, was a consummate diplomat, whose charm and charisma had enabled him to build, in a mere three decades, one of the premier publishing houses of his time. His son Tom, using his name and fortune, had, after graduating from Yale, opted for the fast lane, soon an intimate of the rich and famous. His close friends included young Jacqueline Kennedy and Grace Kelly, whose wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco he had attended, to judge by the enlarged photographs prominently displayed in his office.

  No doubt concerned about the playboy path his son’s life was taking, Harold had brought him into the business some years before, but instead of making it clear to all and sundry that Tom was his automatic successor and moving him routinely from mail room to senior executive in rapid succession, the usual nepotistic route, Harold made Tom earn his stripes. From that initial encounter I got the distinct feeling that Tom had never recovered from his father’s dictates. In any event, he had had his filial revenge, for Harold keeled over one day, and suddenly Tom was in charge, ready or not. He hired Mort Levin, a soft-spoken, self-effacing, rabbi-like man of great charm and utter common sense, held in the highest esteem by everyone, to be his alter ego in the house.

  Jeannette wanted to know my candid opinion of Tom, for, however independent the new setup sounded, a boss was a boss, and she wondered if, exchanging Barney for Tom, I was going from the frying pan into the fire. “He was extremely nice and welcoming,” I said, “but I’ve never met anyone who seemed so … uncomfortable. He can’t seem to sit still, as if he’s not in control of his own body.” “Your own list, independent editorially but with all Viking’s apparatus to make it work? For God’s sake, take it!”

  That night we moved from sparkling California to Veuve Clicquot. As our glasses clinked, Jeannette said simply: “I knew you’d find something else. But I didn’t think it would be this soon.”

  * * *

  Next day, I walked up to Barney’s office to find him unshaven, a bottle of beer in hand. An all-nighter, no doubt. He gestured me to sit, and his smile was genuine. I had to admit I still liked the bastard. I said I was leaving Grove—regretfully, but I thought it better I did, both for him and for me. He listened impassively. “Have you really made up your mind?” I nodded. “I hope it wasn’t that incident the other day,” he offered. “I felt bad afterward…” “That was a factor,” I said. “The message was pretty clear, no?” He said nothing, rolling the slim neck of the half-empty bottle between thumb and forefinger. “It’s been a rough couple of years,” he began, then his voice trailed off. “You simply can’t aff
ord me,” I said, “and I had the feeling you couldn’t bring yourself to fire me. So I had to take matters in my own hands.” That brought a smile. “Where will you be going?” he asked. “Not sure,” I lied, but only partially, for nothing had yet been settled, and I knew how often things could fall apart at the last minute. “Don’t worry,” I said, “I’ll clean up that damn desk before I leave.” At which he got to his feet and, with all his 130 pounds, gave me a bear hug worthy of someone twice his size and weight. A hug as hearty as any I’d ever had.

  Was it relief I felt as I left his office for the last time, or regret? A chapter of my life had been closed, a very important chapter. Would the new chapter be as challenging? As daunting? As fun filled? As crazy? As debilitating? As rewarding? I doubted it. Only time would tell …

  Epilogue

  AFTER HIS TWELVE INSPIRING AND EXCITING YEARS at Grove Press, Dick carried on his sterling publishing career for more than five decades. He always maintained close ties with literary France and with European writers. One of a handful of old-school book editors, Dick nurtured and worked hands-on with his authors, line by line, paragraph by paragraph; the editing process was something he approached with passion and great care.

  In 1971, Tom Guinzburg, the head of the Viking Press, invited Dick to form his own imprint, Richard Seaver Books. After being trained by him, I joined him at the imprint. William Burroughs, Octavio Paz, Emil Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, and many more followed him there, and Dick happily continued in his tradition of seeking and introducing new, often provocative literary voices from around the world. Dick became head of Penguin USA in 1975 and I took over the imprint, which became simply Seaver Books, and would continue in its original mission for the next fourteen years.

  In 1979, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, one of the oldest American publishing houses, recruited Dick as its president and publisher, a position he held for ten years.

  In 1989, Little, Brown and Company, another distinguished house, then a division of Time, Inc., asked the Seavers to create and head a new division, Arcade, the primary goal of which was to attract international authors to Little, Brown’s already robust American list. Shortly thereafter, when Time merged with Warner and Little, Brown became part of the Time Warner Book Group, Dick and I initiated a management buy-out.

  In 1993, Arcade Publishing became ours, and over the next two decades we published more than five hundred books from more than thirty countries, thriving as one of the last independent literary houses.

  Throughout his life, Dick also translated more than fifty books from the French (it was only after his death in 2009 that he was officially revealed to be Sabine D’Estrée, the translator of Story of O). In 1996, we were both awarded medals of the Ordre Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres—Knights of Arts and Letters—by the French government.

  JEANNETTE SEAVER

  Notes

  1. Café Sitting at St. Germain

  1. But at what cost? A pathologist, he had upon arrival been “selected” by the infamous Dr. Mengele to assist him in his mad experiments on dozens of inmates. In so doing, however, he saved not only himself but his wife and daughter. A complex case of the will to live versus morality. Easy to condemn the good doctor, but what would you have done?

  2. Meeting Alex Trocchi

  1. Elliot Paul was an American writer and journalist, a friend of Joyce’s and Gertrude Stein’s, who lived in Paris after World War I. He was the author of many books, and his Last Time I Saw Paris became a must-read for anyone traveling to Paris.

  3. Meeting Merlin

  1. As for closing soon, as of 2009 it was still running at the Théâtre de la Huchette, to which it transferred soon after it opened, fifty-six years later!

  15. Brendan Incoming

  1. Quote from Ulick O’Connor, Brendan Behan (London: Coronet Books, 1972), p. 292.

  2. In her earnest but badly flawed 1978 biography of Beckett, Deirdre Bair places Christopher Logue at the rue du Sabot when Brendan stumbled in that morning, but, alas, it was only me holding the fort.

  16. Thief, Pederast … and Genius

  1. “Tony Clerx” was the pseudonym of Jacoba van Velde, the sister of Beckett’s friend Bram van Velde, a Dutch painter Beckett greatly admired. In dealing with editors, be they magazine or book, Beckett preferred not to negotiate directly but to use an intermediary such as Clerx or George Reavey, or even his beloved Suzanne, who had personally traipsed around Paris for years with copies of Molloy and Malone under her arm, looking in vain for a publisher. Beckett’s own self-doubt, plus the plethora of painful rejections he had suffered over the years at the hands of publishers, made him editor-shy, until at long last not Suzanne but the Becketts’ mutual friend Robert Carlier finally had the good fortune of dropping off his work at Les Éditions de Minuit in 1950.

  2. Paule Allard, one of the magazine’s editors.

  19. A Bigger Decision

  1. French slang for “drink.”

  21. High Finance and Misdemeanor

  1. Years later, recalling the transaction to Lindon, I indelicately asked him over lunch if he knew how important it was that we deposit his check first. He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “In fact, I held yours for three days.”

  2. It turned out that Trocchi, by his own admission years later, had kept most of the hors commerce copies for himself, planning to sell them off as needed to feed his growing heroin habit. By a sad stroke of poetic justice, someone in Paris, probably a fellow junkie, stole them from Trocchi and sold them to Gaït, who in all innocence offered them to her customers for the stated rate of 2,500 francs. In a 1981 interview, Trocchi also acknowledged that he had kept the manuscript of Watt, which should have been returned to the author, and, again to feed his habit, sold it in the 1960s for £400. In today’s market, Lord only knows what that precious manuscript would fetch, but it’s safe to say it would be in six figures. More to the point, the manuscript should be in the Beckett archives, for when he thrust it through the door at the rue du Sabot that rain-sodden night in November 1952, he gave me to understand that it was his only corrected copy.

  29. To the Budding Grove

  1. In 1959, George was forty-three. In 2006, Jeannette and I attended his ninetieth. His hundredth? We’ve already entered the commitment in our calendar.

  30. Lady Chatterley’s Lawyers

  1. For a detailed history of both Lady Chatterley trials, those of Henry Miller, and the problem of literary censorship in general, see Rembar’s End of Obscenity, originally published by Random House in 1968 and reprinted in 1986 by Harper Perennial. Highly informative, it also demonstrates that lawyers can write in lucid, understandable prose.

  31. Back with Beckett

  1. Only the regular edition was the “awful magenta.” The hors commerce copies were a lovely off-white.

  34. The (Over)Heated Tropics

  1. Huge for anybody: today’s equivalent would be roughly a quarter of a million, maybe more.

  2. Review of Contemporary Fiction (Fall 1990), pp. 77–78.

  35. Frankfurt bei Nacht

  1. Years later, ten to be exact, when Jean Genet came to New York, he asked Jeannette to escort him to the sex parlors at Times Square, which he declared utterly joyless. But my money’s on Frankfurt’s warrens.

  37. Exit Trocchi

  1. There is an account, in a well-meaning but seriously flawed biography of Trocchi published in Scotland in the early 1990s, The Making of the Monster, that claims Trocchi “stole” the clothes in George’s absence, but Plimpton has refuted that.

  38. Naked Lunch

  1. In his fascinating and nuanced book on the Olympia Press, Venus Bound, John de St. Jorre claims that that ruling on Naked Lunch effectively ended censorship in the United States. That is only partially correct; though the date of 1966 is right, it was also Charles Rembar’s victory that same year at the Supreme Court level, in the case A Book Named “John Cleland’s Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure” v. Attorney General of Massachusetts, that
literary censorship was effectively ended in the United States. The team of Rembar and de Grazia 2, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 0.

  This said, in reality censorship is never dead. A simple change of regime in any given country can, in one fell swoop, wipe out past gains and reinstate the Deacons of Decency once again.

  42. Plays and Playwrights

  1. By the strict definition that it never made that august list. But by its steady backlist sales over the years, Godot was by any definition a bestseller.

  47. The Autobiography of Malcolm X

  1. A year later we did indeed bring out a paperback at $1.25.

  48. Story of O

  1. The full title for which was The Black Diaries of Roger Casement. Casement, born in 1864 in Northern Ireland, joined the British Civil Service and served with distinction as consul in a number of African countries, where he discovered and exposed the lamentable conditions used by virtual slave labor in the mines and on the plantations of the Belgian Congo, for which he was knighted. At the outbreak of World War I, he joined the Irish independence movement, therefore allied himself with Germany, where he moved. In the spring of 1916 he landed on the Irish coast from a German submarine, was captured, and was sent down to London, where he was tried for high treason, condemned to death, and—despite serious diplomatic efforts to save him, not only from his native Ireland but from Britain and the United States—hanged himself in the summer of that same year. Since then, questions abounded about the diaries Casement had kept, some people questioning their authenticity and claiming they had been fabricated to help the prosecution, for Casement was homosexual and the diaries contained explicit sexual descriptions in an era when homosexuality was still very much anathema. Unlike so many of his other books, where often he sent them to press without even a cursory look, for the diaries Girodias acted as editor and, together with his secretary, Miriam Worms, fashioned a strong volume out of the raw material. We—Grove—had published it the year I arrived. Barney—half Irish himself—loved the book almost as much as Maurice did, for as both gentlemen have admitted, in Casement they saw many personality traits they saw in themselves. The book was a nonsuccess commercially on both sides of the Atlantic.