to be plus anglais que les anglais . The trouble was, I thought, that Matthews simply didn’t understand the subtle nuances of the English class system and therefore often missed the point of the newspaper stories he was criticizing. On a more practical level, I couldn’t see who would buy the book. English readers would resent being criticized by an American, and American readers were unfamiliar with the problems of Fleet Street and surely not very interested. I read the book quickly, wrote a blistering brief urging its rejection, and went back to Rockefeller Center to leave it for Mr. Simon.
The next morning I was summoned back. Henry was waiting for me, his high, noble forehead creased in a frown, a look of deep suspicion on his face, even of distaste, as if he smelled something offensive. “Did you really read the book?” he asked accusingly. “I expected it to take you a couple of days.”
I explained that I was a natural speed reader and volunteered to take a quiz on the book’s contents, but Henry waved the offer away impatiently. “Never mind that,” he said. “You say here that the book is inaccurate and unpublishable, right?” I nodded. “Would it make any difference to your assessment of it if I told you that Tom Matthews is the former editor of Time magazine and one of my closest friends? Or if I told you that I’ve already bought the book and that I’m publishing it next spring?”
I thought about this unwelcome news quickly, wondering how I had managed to fall into Henry’s trap so easily, and decided candor was the only way out. It made no difference to my opinion at all, I said—I would stick to my guns.
Henry put my report down with a sigh. “It’s funny,” he said. “The other fellow, the one from New Jersey, feels the same way about the book that you do. He didn’t phrase it quite as elegantly as you do, not having been educated in England, but his advice was to turn it down, too. It just shows that you’ve both got a lot to learn about publishing. Well, I suppose you’ll learn …”
“Does that mean I’ve got the job?” I asked incredulously.
He nodded glumly. “The other young man accepted an offer fromDoubleday first thing this morning.” Henry stood up, and we shook hands across his desk. “I’ll have Nancy get you a shopping bag and you can take some of those manuscripts over there on the sofa home to read, since you’re such a fast reader.”
Henry paused and handed me the jacket sketch we had looked at yesterday. His expression showed a certain cunning, as if he had found a way out of an unpleasant task. “While she’s doing that and filling out the forms for hiring you, you might take this down to the art department. Ask for the art director. A fellow called Frank Metz. Somebody will show you the way. Tell him you’re working for me—and that he’s wrong about the goddamn helmet.”
As I left his office, he called out, “If he throws something at you, duck! ” and laughed.
CHAPTER 4
T he first thing I found on my desk when I came to work officially on August 11, 1958, was a cast bronze plaque bearing the words: “Give the reader a break.”
These, it appeared, had been designed by Dick Simon and had been placed on every editor’s and assistant’s desk. It was, in his view, our job to make things as easy and clear for the reader as possible. Left unsaid was how to perform this miracle. It was Henry Simon’s method, I quickly observed, to painstakingly correct his authors’ punctuation, grammar, and spelling with a precisely sharpened pencil and to write queries in a minuscule hand in the margins. Perhaps the first, and most important, difficulty of our relationship was Henry’s discoveries, on day one, that I punctuated by feel and instinct rather than by rule, had a shaky command of grammar, and couldn’t spell worth a damn. (On the other hand, I turned out to be a natural at the kind of picky, know-it-all comment in the margin that drives
The next morning I was summoned back. Henry was waiting for me, his high, noble forehead creased in a frown, a look of deep suspicion on his face, even of distaste, as if he smelled something offensive. “Did you really read the book?” he asked accusingly. “I expected it to take you a couple of days.”
I explained that I was a natural speed reader and volunteered to take a quiz on the book’s contents, but Henry waved the offer away impatiently. “Never mind that,” he said. “You say here that the book is inaccurate and unpublishable, right?” I nodded. “Would it make any difference to your assessment of it if I told you that Tom Matthews is the former editor of Time magazine and one of my closest friends? Or if I told you that I’ve already bought the book and that I’m publishing it next spring?”
I thought about this unwelcome news quickly, wondering how I had managed to fall into Henry’s trap so easily, and decided candor was the only way out. It made no difference to my opinion at all, I said—I would stick to my guns.
Henry put my report down with a sigh. “It’s funny,” he said. “The other fellow, the one from New Jersey, feels the same way about the book that you do. He didn’t phrase it quite as elegantly as you do, not having been educated in England, but his advice was to turn it down, too. It just shows that you’ve both got a lot to learn about publishing. Well, I suppose you’ll learn …”
“Does that mean I’ve got the job?” I asked incredulously.
He nodded glumly. “The other young man accepted an offer fromDoubleday first thing this morning.” Henry stood up, and we shook hands across his desk. “I’ll have Nancy get you a shopping bag and you can take some of those manuscripts over there on the sofa home to read, since you’re such a fast reader.”
Henry paused and handed me the jacket sketch we had looked at yesterday. His expression showed a certain cunning, as if he had found a way out of an unpleasant task. “While she’s doing that and filling out the forms for hiring you, you might take this down to the art department. Ask for the art director. A fellow called Frank Metz. Somebody will show you the way. Tell him you’re working for me—and that he’s wrong about the goddamn helmet.”
As I left his office, he called out, “If he throws something at you, duck! ” and laughed.
CHAPTER 4
T he first thing I found on my desk when I came to work officially on August 11, 1958, was a cast bronze plaque bearing the words: “Give the reader a break.”
These, it appeared, had been designed by Dick Simon and had been placed on every editor’s and assistant’s desk. It was, in his view, our job to make things as easy and clear for the reader as possible. Left unsaid was how to perform this miracle. It was Henry Simon’s method, I quickly observed, to painstakingly correct his authors’ punctuation, grammar, and spelling with a precisely sharpened pencil and to write queries in a minuscule hand in the margins. Perhaps the first, and most important, difficulty of our relationship was Henry’s discoveries, on day one, that I punctuated by feel and instinct rather than by rule, had a shaky command of grammar, and couldn’t spell worth a damn. (On the other hand, I turned out to be a natural at the kind of picky, know-it-all comment in the margin that drives
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