Read Online Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 by A Likely Story (v1.1) - Free Book Online

don’t know quite what
to think about Kurt Vonnegut’s submarine story, “Captain Nemo’s Christmas,” and
just last Friday I sent it to Jack Rosenfarb for his opinion. Now, of course,
he can take his opinion and shove it.
                I have also received several polite
turndowns, from (or from the secretaries oft Helen Gurley Brown and Annie
Dillard and Gerald Ford and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Joan Rivers and Isaac
Bashevis Singer (“It is not my subject; I’m sorry”) and Jonathan Schell and
Jamie Wyeth. The “How much?” letter has been received from Ann Beattie. E. L. Doctorow, Richard Nixon, Tom Wolfe, John Simon and Calvin
Trillin. A brief typed note from Mickey Spillane said, “You gotta be kiddin .” I wrote him that indeed I was not.
                Isaac Asimov has sent me another
article, this one on the calendar dating of Christmas. I’d already told him I
was taking the aerodynamics-of-the-sleigh piece, so I don’t know why he sent
another, but he did; anyway, I liked the first one better, so I sent the
calendar piece back.
                In the middle of all this, Pia Zadora’s
agent phoned to say his client might be persuaded either (a) to give me a
Christmas-theme photo spread, or (b) to contribute a Christmas song she’d
written. I said I’d take it up with the staff.
                As winter fades, it’s becoming
harder and harder to think about Christmas. Here it is the end of March, little
round pregnant buds protrude from every branch, there’s a smell of mud and
mildew in the air, spring is on the way, and in the apartment hallway Bryan and
Joshua simultaneously play baseball and soccer. The sight of a pair of boys
dressed in Mets caps and first baseman’s mitts kicking a soccer ball back and
forth is rather too heartwarming and Norman Rockwell for somebody who’s
spending all his waking hours with Christmas anyway, but there they are.
                On the other hand, it is nice the
way those two boys get along. My Bryan is nine and Ginger’s Joshua is ten, and I
think maybe they have the best alliance of any of the teams involved in this
over-extended family. As is so often the case, their relationship started when
they went to bed together. Ginger and 1 don’t have a lot of extra space in this
apartment, so whenever my kids stay over Bryan bunks in with Joshua. (Eleven-year-old
Jennifer, who does not hang out with eight- year-old Gretchen, sleeps on
blankets on the floor in Gretchen’s room on those occasions.) The boys early
discovered a mutual interest in sports and truly rotten television reruns, and
have been fast friends ever since. I think I may have to take them to the Mets
opener.
                But what’s going to happen to The
Christmas Book ? With Asimov and Capote and Kosinski and Rooney and Vonnegut
and Clarke and Galbraith and Davis and Wilson I’ve already got name-strength;
they cant let the book languish now, can they?
                Sure they can.
                But they’ve got so much money
committed.
                Sure they can.
                But it’s such a great idea.
                Sure they can.
                But I’m working so hard.
                Sure they can.
                But it’s their one best hope for a
Christmas book.
                Sure they can.
                Sure they can.
                 

          Monday, March 28Ih
     
                TOMORROW is the first day of
Passover. My new editor told me so today at lunch, several times. In fact, I
have come to the conclusion that the purpose of our having lunch had nothing to
do with The Christmas Book —which was barely mentioned—but that we had
gathered at the Tre Mafiosi for sole and chablis so that Ms. Douglas could
explain to me what tomorrow, the first day of Passover, meant in the ongoing
troubled