{"id":78021,"date":"2014-10-14T20:00:15","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=78021"},"modified":"2014-10-15T10:20:40","modified_gmt":"2014-10-15T14:20:40","slug":"the-literary-agent-of-yore-unspeakable-rascal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/10\/14\/the-literary-agent-of-yore-unspeakable-rascal\/","title":{"rendered":"The Literary Agent of Yore (Unspeakable Rascal!)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"bizarre00mack_0175\"<\/a>

An illustration by Lauren Stout for Lawton Mackall’s Bizarre<\/i>, 1922.<\/p><\/div>\n

My continuing odyssey across the World Wide Web\u2014I\u2019ll read it all, someday\u2014has yielded these two gems from the public domain, both early constructions of the literary agent as a type; neither, I\u2019m sorry to say, is very flattering.<\/p>\n

Now as then, agents get a bad rap. In the popular imagination, they\u2019re usually seen as unscrupulous middlemen, always on the phone, insistently plying their wares. The agent, we\u2019re told, is a necessary evil at best, or, at worst, the first in a line of craven corporate interests designed to suck the marrow from a writer\u2019s work, making it suitable for a wide and churlish readership. In movies, writers are always seeking agents, falling out with agents, or at the very least nervously talking to agents, twisting the phone line in their fingers. And then there\u2019s the editor-agent relationship, in which the agent never wins: he\u2019s either part of a profit-obsessed cabal keeping subversive \u201cnew voices\u201d out of print, or he\u2019s a tasteless entrepreneur disturbing the delicate rapport between editor and author.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d thought all this was a fairly recent phenomenon\u2014I had always imagined it came from the eighties, when publishers couldn\u2019t conglomerate fast enough and the soul was said to have fled the industry\u2014but these two old books suggest it\u2019s been going on much longer than that. Which makes sense: in publishing, the sky is always falling. Every year is an abysmal year for books and a terrific year for books. Editors no longer edit, except when they do; publishers care only for their bottom line, except when they don\u2019t; the three-martini lunch is always dead, always quietly continuing. That\u2019s what\u2019s fascinating about these excerpts: they\u2019re both about a century old, documenting that same thwarted intersection of art and capitalism.<\/p>\n

First, from Arnold Bennett\u2019s Books and Persons<\/em><\/a>, an essay collection composed of work from 1908 to 1911, the parts cited below being from 1908: <\/p>\n

\n

The author will insist on employing an Unspeakable Rascal entitled a literary agent, and the poor innocent lamb of a publisher is fleeced to the naked skin by this scoundrel every time the two meet. Already I have heard that one publisher, hitherto accustomed to the services of twenty gardeners at his country house, has been obliged to reduce the horticultural staff to eighteen \u2026<\/p>\n

I am prepared to offer \u00a350 for the name and address of a literary agent who is capable of getting the better of a publisher. I am widely acquainted with publishers and literary agents, and though I have often met publishers who have got the better of literary agents, I have never met a literary agent who has come out on top of a publisher. Such a literary agent is badly wanted. I have been looking for him for years. I know a number of authors who would join me in enriching that literary agent. The publishers are always talking about him. I seldom go into a publisher’s office but that literary agent has just left (gorged with illicit gold). It irritates me that I cannot run across him. If I were a publisher, he would have been in prison ere now. Briefly, the manner in which certain prominent publishers, even clever ones, talk about literary agents is silly \u2026<\/p>\n

According to “a well-known member of the trade,” the business is once again\u2014the second time this year\u2014about to crumble into ruins. This well-known member of the trade, who discreetly refrains from signing his name, writes to the Athen\u00e6um<\/em> in answer to Mr. E.H. Cooper’s letter about the disastrous influence of royal books on the publishing season. According to him, Mr. Cooper is all wrong. The end of profitable publishing is being brought about, not by their Majesties, but once more by the authors and their agents. It appears that too many books are published. Authors and their agents have evidently some miraculous method of forcing publishers to publish books which they do not want to publish. I am not a member of the trade, but I should have thought that few things could be easier than not to publish a book. Presumably the agent stands over the publisher with a contract in one hand and a revolver in the other, and, after a glance at the revolver, the publisher signs without glancing at the contract. Secondly, it appears, authors and their agents habitually compel the publisher to pay too much, so that he habitually publishes at a loss. (Novels, that is.) I should love to know how the trick is done, but \u201ca well-known member of the trade\u201d does not go into details.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

And then, even more remarkably, \u201cLucy the Literary Agent,\u201d from Lawton Mackall\u2019s 1922 collection, the aptly named Bizarre<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI know you will agree with me,\u201d said Lucy, \u201cthat these stories by Perth Dewar are quite remarkable, quite the most distinctive things of the kind that have been done in years, and that your readers will like them immensely.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethridge the Editor said nothing. It was unwise to contradict her; for of all the personal-touch literary agents, Lucy was the personal-touchiest. So he let her run on and on, trusting that eventually she would run down. Also she wasn\u2019t bad looking\u2014in her aggressive way.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve read them?\u201d she queried suddenly.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, certainly,\u201d he lied, glancing with studied casualness at the Reader\u2019s Report slip attached to the blue manuscript cover.<\/p>\n

Ethridge never read anything he could possibly avoid reading. He was one of those successful editors who edit by belonging to the best clubs and attending the right teas. Mere perusal of manuscripts was not particularly in his line.<\/p>\n

The Report slip said: \u201cCostume stories of Holland in the 17th Century. Only moderately well done. Not suitable for this magazine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWho is this Dewar person, anyhow?\u201d asked Ethridge defensively.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou mean to say you haven\u2019t heard of him? Why, my dear Mr. Ethridge! Dewar is a man of independent means\u2014lives on his estate down in Maryland and writes stories between fox hunts. Enormously gifted.\u201d<\/p>\n

She failed to add, however, that Dewar had offered to let her keep any money she received for the stories\u2014provided she could get them printed.<\/p>\n

Resting her white elbows on Ethridge\u2019s desk and eyeing him with calculating coyness, Lucy knew that he had not read the stories. She would make him wonder if she knew he hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you yourself honestly think of them, Mr. Ethridge? Candidly, now. You\u2019re always so delightfully frank with me, Mr. Ethridge. That\u2019s why it\u2019s such a pleasure to deal with you. How did they strike you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cReally, Miss Leech, I don\u2019t see how in our magazine we could possibly\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNow, Mr. Ethridge!\u201d She held up a reproving finger, laughing roguishly. \u201cBut what\u2019s the use of our trying to discuss imaginative literature here in your busy office with the telephone ringing every moment\u2014or threatening to ring\u2014and your discouragingly pretty blonde secretary\u2014the minx!\u2014popping in continually to see if we\u2019re behaving!\u201d<\/p>\n

Ethridge smiled complacently. Why be an ogre?<\/p>\n

\u201cI tell you what. Let\u2019s have supper at my studio this evening,\u201d continued Lucy. \u201cIt\u2019ll be so much more satisfactory to discuss things sensibly, without interruption.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he did, and they did.<\/p>\n

At breakfast it was finally decided that the series by Perth Dewar should consist of ten stories, including four still to be written.<\/p>\n

Ethridge salved his conscience by resolving secretly that they should all be published in the back of the book.<\/p>\n

In due course of time the first story appeared. It contained a mean reference to the Knights of Pythias, or Mormonism, or a former Vice-President of the United States, or something; for which reason the issue containing it was suppressed.<\/p>\n

Whereupon the buried issue became a Living Issue. The intelligentsia rushed to the rescue with highbrow hue and cry. Round robins were circulated. Newspaper columnists got sarcastic. Liberal cliques chittered. Perth Dewar became suddenly significant.<\/p>\n

The issue containing the second story was sold out the day it appeared.<\/p>\n

By the time the third one was out, Professor Lion Whelps, of Yale, proved in an article in the Sunday Times<\/em>, that Dewar\u2019s attitude toward women was like Turgeniev\u2019s, and Professor Brando Methuseleh, of Columbia, discovered he had cadences. Sinclair Lewis inserted a mention of him in the forty-ninth edition of \u201cBabbitt\u201d. Nine British novelists hurried over to lecture on him.<\/p>\n

And Ethridge?<\/p>\n

He was made. In acknowledgement of his peerless editorial acumen that could discern true genius at a glance, the directors of the magazine doubled his salary and gave him a bonus to keep him from being coaxed away by the \u201cSaturday Evening Pictorial\u201d.<\/p>\n

And Lucy?<\/p>\n

Ethridge married her to keep her quiet.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My continuing odyssey across the World Wide Web\u2014I\u2019ll read it all, someday\u2014has yielded these two gems from the public domain, both early constructions of the literary agent as a type; neither, I\u2019m sorry to say, is very flattering. Now as then, agents get a bad rap. In the popular imagination, they\u2019re usually seen as unscrupulous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[9133,13795,15647,15646,125,6053,272],"class_list":["post-78021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-arnold-bennett","tag-book-culture","tag-lawton-mackall","tag-literary-agents","tag-new-york-city","tag-public-domain","tag-publishing"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Literary Agent of Yore<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A century old look at agents in the eighteenth- and nineteenth century.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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