When It Started

We met in l979. I was thirty-seven; he was twenty-seven. I had been twice divorced and had four children, Chuck was happily married and had none. I was working at a publishing company as the slush reader, which meant I handled everything that came without an agent. He took over my job because I had been promoted to editorial assistant. Slush was the only position lowlier than editorial assistant, but instead of a cubicle, it came with its own small office. It had a door that closed and a window that opened. The walls were lined with bookcases, the bookcases filled with manuscripts, some read, some waiting to be read. I would read and return, read and return, putting aside for further consideration the few too interesting to reject out of hand. The trouble was that after a week I regarded those partially read manuscripts with the same lack of enthusiasm one might feel for somebody else’s half-eaten sandwich, which made me so guilty I began to resent them, so I’d box them up and send them back without reading another word.

The big gray desk took up most of the space.

It was my job to train him, but all I wanted to do was make him laugh. He was good-looking and nervous, an interesting combination. “Open everything that comes without an agent,” I told him. “Open everything addressed to the president of the company, or the editor in chief. And then make it go away. If anything is good, you can show it to a real editor. And you know what you never want? You never want to encourage somebody who tells you she has been writing since she was five years old.”

I may have been a little intense, because I remember his face twitched, out of anxiety maybe, or the pressure of having to pay close attention in such a small space. We were both smoking our heads off, the window wide open, the door shut.

We took out a manuscript dedicated “To my wife and children whom I love very much, and to the memory of all those who have died by choking.” I’m certain we took a look at the book (who could resist?), but all that remains is the dedication.

When I had nothing pressing to do, I helped Chuck with the stuff that piled up on his desk. “Listen to this,” we’d say, in the weeks that followed, waving a manuscript around. And there would be something hilarious, or terrible, or sad. We particularly loved the letter from a man who had managed the produce section in a big supermarket on Long Island. He wanted to write a novel about his experiences in the retail grocery business—he had seen so much—but didn’t know how to begin. He was so earnest. He thought we really were the editors in chief. “Just tell me what to do,” he wrote at the end. “I’ll do anything you say.” We laughed. We weren’t laughing out of meanness. We weren’t unkind. We laughed because it was all so hopeless.

“It’s not about making the cosmic joke,” Chuck said the other day. “It’s about getting it.”