The Novel

by James A. Michener

I doubt that she called the Times itself, because she once told me: ‘Early in my professional life I learned a basic rule: “Never try to force a journal to alter a review, nor even to review a book when they’ve decided not to.” I had one young man, fearfully proud of himself and his book, which wasn’t worth a damn. I’d edited it only because Kinetic forced it upon me. I thought it so bad that I was relieved when the Times ignored it, but the young man mounted a savage campaign to force me to make the paper review his book. When I refused, advising him to let the matter drop, he wrote a vicious letter to the daily reviewer asking in insulting terms if the man had even bothered to read his book.’

  Some days later the daily review began: ‘Last week I received a plaintive letter from Harry Jackman asking if I had bothered to read his book Desert Nights, and when was I going to print my review? Yes, I did read it, and here’s my review.’ It was so scathing that Yvonne never heard from the young man again, but she made copies to send to young writers who insisted upon promoting their books by insulting newspapers.

  There was a more important reason why she could not do anything to offend the Times; in the course of a normal year she would personally oversee the editing and publishing of at least eight books, so she dared not bellyache about bad treatment to Yoder, when doing so might imperil her other seven books. Her response to a bad review had to be: ‘Better luck next time.’

  But apparently the Times itself must have had serious doubts about my two papers, for one of the women at the Book Review called me at the college. She was told: ‘Professor Streibert’s in class and cannot be disturbed.’

  ‘He must be disturbed. This is what you might call crucial,’ and when I took the call she said: ‘We have your two papers, the review and the accompanying essay. They’re rather more negative than we expected. We’ve decided we must drop the essay, but, of course, you get a kill fee.’

  ‘You asked for two articles of a certain length and I submitted them.’

  ‘We’ll run your review exactly as written, you’re entitled to that, and we never censor except certain words we like to avoid.’

  ‘It sounds like censorship to me.’

  Gently she said: ‘Professor Streibert, you must consider one aspect. Rumor is you’re taking an important new position at Temple in Philadelphia. Don’t start with what could become a scandal in the profession.’

  This was advice so pertinent that I had to take it seriously. Personal spite had played no part in my essay on Yoder. I had been motivated only by a desire to elevate American fiction to a level far higher than his rather pitiful novels had attained or even aspired to, but if the reader interpreted my words as petty vengeance, I would be doing myself harm, and at the very moment when my career was on an upward course again. In a humbled voice I said: ‘Consider it killed. But you did promise that the review would run as written.’

  ‘That promise will be honored.’

  I knew it was legitimate for Yvonne to try, discreetly, to ferret out what she could about the Times plan for my review, and I learned later that one of her friends at the paper told her they were appalled and would bury it on page 11 or 12. The informant said: ‘So Streibert’s demolition derby won’t cover more than a quarter of a page,’ but then warned that the essay wasn’t dead, in that I might find a publisher among the little magazines.

  I don’t have to guess what Yvonne did next to protect her valuable property, because a bookseller in Bethlehem was chuckling when he called me: ‘Karl, amigo, you must have dropped a bomb on Yoder. Yvonne just called, breathless. Said that the Sunday Times review was somewhat negative but to ignore it, because she was sending me post haste raves from half a dozen other important media. She said Kinetic was making Stone Walls their major fall effort and it was off to a magnificent start. I asked her: “What’s this we hear about snide comments from the book clubs and orders slashed by the chains?” and she said: “No significance whatever. We’re certain it will gallop to the top of the lists, thanks to the good work you men and women in the retail stores always do with a Yoder book.” ’

  That covered, she seems to have telephoned individually each of Kinetic’s top field representatives to inoculate them against bad news, and I heard from one of them I had interviewed when researching the Kastle story how she had massaged him: ‘She was calm and sweet. Confessed up front that we’d been slaughtered in the Times but assured me that the other reviews fluctuated between very good and raves. She admitted frankly that millions of dollars were riding on this book, and assured me that Kinetic would be fighting all the way. More than half a million copies in print. She predicted it would remain near the top of the list for at least half a year, and she closed with a typical Marmelle zinger: “Paul, if you find in your sample case any copies of Streibert’s own novel, burn them.” ’

  A publicity person at Kinetic with whom I had become friendly when conducting my interviews on Kastle told me how close I had come to frontal assault by Yvonne: ‘When her rage subsided she gave me three jobs. “Find me the lushest possible photographs of Grenzler terrain—Lancaster farms, barns, cattle grazing. Dig out the most favorable preliminary reviews and six raves on previous Grenzlers. And finally, I want a handsome photograph of Karl Streibert.” ’

  ‘What was her plan?’

  ‘She and I put together an eye-catching ad. Your picture real big, beneath the caption: “This famous critic who lives in Grenzler country did not care for Lukas Yoder’s masterly novel Stone Walls. The rest of the nation did.” ’

  ‘I never saw such an ad.’

  ‘It never ran. When I had it laid out, with your photograph dominating, Yvonne came to my workbench, stood for some minutes tapping her heel, and finally placed her hand completely over your face. “Kill it,” she said. “He’s a man fighting to build a new life, and I can’t roadblock him with a cheap shot.” ’

  My review of Stone Walls evoked a storm, nowhere more virulent than at our college, where it was seen as one Mecklenberg graduate trashing another. When President Rossiter summoned me for a castigation, I saw a man very different from the official who fawned over potential donors. Like a bulldog protecting his turf, he growled: ‘It’s so damned juvenile, Karl. You’re leaving us in a huff because you’ve made a mess of your private life. And, like a sixteen-year-old, you want to celebrate your going with an explosion. Well, you’ve done yourself more damage than you’ve done us. Any sensible faculty member of any college will see that it was reprehensible of you to abuse the man from whom you accepted a million dollars for your department.’

  When I tried to defend myself he struck at me in an area where I belatedly acknowledged that I was vulnerable: ‘Did you, as a professional critic, consider how inappropriate it was for you even to review Yoder’s book, let alone condemn it? Had you praised it you would still be academically suspect—too closely related to the author, too personally involved. I hope for your sake that you behave more maturely at Temple than you’ve been doing here recently. You’re wise in leaving, Streibert. You’ve worn out your welcome.’

  Mrs. Garland also called to reprimand me: ‘Infamous! You must have rocks in your head—or mush.’

  It was from one of the students that I learned what Yoder himself thought, and his reaction surprised me: ‘My aunt helps Mrs. Yoder clean on Thursdays and she told me that on Sunday he opened his copy of the Times, turned first to the The Week in Review, then casually flipped through the Book Review and saw at the top of page 12 the bold headline GRENZLER OCTET COLLAPSES NOT WITH A BANG BUT WITH A WHIMPER. He stopped to notice that the review had been written by Karl Streibert, but, as was his custom, he refused to read it. And after a casual scan of the front page of the news section he put the heavy Sunday edition down and walked out to his carpenter shop.’

  My student told me that Emma did turn to the review, which she supposed would appear in this edition, and let out a roar when she read the nine paragraphs in which I had skewered her husband and his novel. Although she knew that Lukas tried to avoid
such moments, she burst into his painting area: ‘Darling, you’ve got to know about the terrible thing that’s happened—’ With quavering voice she read aloud my two closing paragraphs:

  ‘ “Stone Walls, coming as the capstone to the chain of tedious novels, reveals in pitiful detail the wobbly base on which the whole was built. It is drawn out, sentimental, and carelessly written. Its characters are wooden and their dialogue sawdusty. Action flags, plot creaks and the skill for description for which Mr. Yoder is supposed to be famous is repetitious. Most reprehensible, he makes his fellow Pennsylvania Dutch amusing buffoons and misses entirely the grandeur of their stubborn resistance to a modern world they cannot trust.

  ‘ “That any supposedly serious writer would waste his time concocting such a confection is inexplicable. That any attentive reader would bother to read to the end of this wearisome guff is unimaginable. Just as the sixteen trifles in the Jalna series bear no discernible relationship to the Canadian experience, so the eight Grenzler volumes relate not at all to America, past or present. And of the two sorry accumulations this final volume of the so-called Dutch material is the worst. As the poet predicted, ‘Stone Walls do not a novel make.’ ” ’

  The cleaning woman said: ‘When Emma slammed the review to the floor, she cried: “Well, Lukas, what’re you gonna do about it?” and he said from the bench where he was cleanin’ one of them hex signs he fools with: “Do? I’m gonna finish this paintin’.” ’

  IV

  THE READER

  Sunday, 6 October: I woke early this morning aware that today was special in the Dutch country. Books are so important to me, and I am so proud that my grandson has published one and seems to be completing another that I take special interest in any written by a neighbor. I was delighted when Professor Streibert at the college did his book on literary criticism and shared his disappointment when his novel turned out so poorly. But my joy for the past fifteen years has been the nationwide, indeed worldwide, reception given the novels of my friend Lukas Yoder.

  Because I follow his career, I have been aware that the final novel in his Grenzler series, Stone Walls, is being published tomorrow, which means that the important New York Times review would probably be in today’s Sunday edition. I’m ashamed to say I was inattentive when his first three novels appeared, and didn’t even hear of them, though I live almost in the heart of the area in which they’re set. But then, millions of other Americans didn’t hear of them either, for the sales were either minimal or nonexistent.

  There is in the Dresden Public Library a dear, thoughtful woman, who reminded me of my poor headstrong daughter in that she willfully married a world-class zombie, but unlike my Clara, she had the sense to kick him out when she learned that he was foul-mouthed, a drunk and a womanizer. There are rumors that on her vacations she is apt to go where a married professor of English from Penn State is taking his, and this causes comment locally, but I feel that if she’s worked out a satisfactory pattern of life, it’s no business of mine.

  She’s just what a librarian should be, and fifteen years ago she did me a good turn when she said: ‘Mrs. Garland, you really must read Lukas Yoder’s new novel, The Shunning. It has a classic simplicity and a compelling sense of tragedy.’ That’s the kind of book I seek, something real and irresistible in its force, Madame Bovary for one, or Anna Karenina. The Shunning was such a book, with people in it that I might have met in the Lancaster markets at the turn of the century, and I’m delighted that it’s in the process of becoming a motion picture.

  But it didn’t sell, at least not when published, although I’m told it’s now being taken by all the European houses. I was impatient to learn how Stone Walls would be received, for I wanted Yoder to finish his career in a blaze of glory.

  As I left my bedroom and started downstairs I stopped, as I so often do, at a landing from which I could survey the splendid room so symbolic of my wonderful husband, Larrimore, and the energy with which he faced life and the challenges of the steel industry. He had designed the room, supervised its construction, and to a large extent determined its decoration with a tasteful mix of Pennsylvania Dutch and American colonial. It was also he who had insisted upon a wall of windows looking south over the gently sloping lawn; these windows made it possible for anyone sitting in what was always called ‘the big room’ to have a panoramic view of whatever weather was sweeping the valley below.

  When visitors entered this room, they had an immediate choice between two smaller rooms: to their left was a formal dining room seating twelve; to their right, a comfortable paneled library, whose walls were covered with books, not studiedly arranged in ostentatious order because these were books that had been read and reread. I thought of these three rooms as my special domain. Larrimore had named our place Windsong from the breezes that roamed the valley; locals still called it the Mansion. I thought of it as home.

  On this morning I rang for Oscar with just a touch of urgency and when he appeared I asked: ‘Have you gone for the Times yet?’ and he said patiently: ‘Madam, you know that on Sunday the last-minute sections arrive late. Have to be assembled with what came in during the week.’

  ‘You told me, but I forgot. I am anxious.’

  He laughed: ‘You know that if I go now, I’ll have to sit around and wait.’

  ‘Of course. But please be a good fellow and get it as soon as you can.’

  Sometime later, when he delivered the heavy Sunday edition, I shuffled the sections till I found the Book Review. I supposed that because of its importance, Yoder’s novel would be featured on the front page and was disappointed when I did not find it there. Flipping the pages with growing concern, I came finally to page 12, where I found a savage review by Karl Streibert, my friend at the college.

  Gasping at its annihilation of what I had been led to believe would be the finest of the Grenzler novels, I threw the Review onto the coffee table, upsetting an empty cup. Staring at the offending page, I muttered: ‘Infamous! The men are neighbors! Almost colleagues.’

  Retrieving the paper, I read each sentence with the care I had once expended on reading assignments at Vassar, and this made me even angrier. I had always loved books, and almost every room at Windsong had its own corner library; I couldn’t take an insult like this to one of my authors silently.

  Dialing with ill-controlled fury, I placed the first of the many calls I would make that day; it was to Streibert, but he was not in his rooms at the college. Shifting impatiently to my grandson’s number, I did catch him before he was out of bed: ‘Timothy! Have you seen Professor Streibert’s review of Lukas Yoder’s novel?’

  ‘Yes. Thorough scrubbing, wasn’t it?’

  ‘It was infamous!’

  ‘Grandmother—’

  ‘But the men are friends—they almost work together—on good projects at the college.’

  ‘Now, Grandmother! Streibert’s review deals with standards that are of great significance to all writers—’

  ‘But to go out of one’s way to be insulting—to a friend!’

  ‘He wasn’t insulting. He was defining an intellectual problem, and disposing of it rather neatly, I must say.’

  ‘Do you forget that Mr. Yoder supported you when you brought out Kaleidoscope? You’re as bad as Professor Streibert—worse—you’re ungrateful. And among gentlemen that’s a dreadful charge.’

  ‘Streibert and I—we’re not monsters. You know I’m fond of Mr. Yoder and I am grateful to him. Simple fact is across America teachers of real literature know that Yoder’s a dodo.’ He paused, chuckled, and said: ‘What a great title for my own essay, “Yodo the Dodo”!’

  ‘You write something like that, I’ll disown you. Worse, I’ll disinherit you.’

  ‘Don’t talk nonsense, you darling antediluvian.’

  When I was left the sole guardian of my grandson I encouraged him to treat me not as some sacrosanct Grimms’ fairy-tale grandmother but as almost an equal, and on this arrangement we thrived. Now he said: ‘Go back and read
The Bobbsey Twins, leave Yoder to us.’

  ‘Why are you both so savage?’

  ‘Because in the American system, a man like Yoder does a great deal of damage. He writes a book, or even a group of books, that may have been appropriate in its day. Never significant, never relevant to any major problem, space-fillers, but acceptable, I suppose, because they keep publishing houses viable.’

  ‘What’s dishonorable about that? He helped Kinetic to be there when you wanted it.’

  ‘Honorable it is. Significant? No.’

  ‘Then what’s the trouble?’

  ‘Men like Yoder preempt the space needed by real writers. They flood the market with junk, and Gresham’s Law of Literature swings into action. Yoder’s bad drives out Streibert’s good.’

  ‘Streibert’s novel was unreadable, and you know it.’

  ‘By the canaille. Those in the profession thought it significant. Spelled out the future.’

  ‘God help America if Empty Cistern is the future. There goes any necessity for eyeglasses—nothing to read.’

  ‘I love you, Grandmother. But we do have different ideas about what’s worth reading.’

  ‘And the money Yoder makes for Kinetic will enable you to get yours published.’

  ‘Ta-ta, you darling. I’ll send you an autographed copy of “Yodo the Dodo.” ’

  My next call was to President Rossiter at the college: ‘Have you seen your Professor Streibert’s devastating review of Lukas Yoder’s current novel?’

  ‘Yes. I was shocked.’ After we exchanged reactions to the various points the critic had made, Rossiter said: ‘Jane, this is far more serious than you might think.… What I mean is, it’s worse than you would be in a position to know … the details, I mean.’

  Since he was far more agitated than I had expected, I said: ‘Norman, you’re mumbling. Please give me the details. I am a member of your board.’

  ‘Privileged news, of course. But sometime back, as you know, Lukas and Emma gave me one million dollars, to do with as I thought best for the college. No announcement, of course.’