The Plant

interoffice memo TO: Roger FROM: John RE: Submissions/January 11–15th, 1981

A new year, and the slush in the slush pile grows ever deeper. I don't know how the rest of your toiling editorial minions are doing, but I continue to roll the existential rock of America's unpublished aspiring-at least my share of it. All of which is only to say that I read my share of crud this week (and no, I haven't been smoking what W. C. Fields called “the illicit sponduix,” either-I'm just having a prolix day).

With your concurrence, I'm returning 15 book-length manuscripts which arrived unsolicited (see Returns, next page), 7 “outlines and sample chapters” and 4 unidentifiable blobs that look a bit like typescripts. One of them is a book of something called “gay event poetry” called Suck My Big Black Cock, and another, called L'il Lolita, is about a man in love with a first grader. I think. It's written in pencil and it's hard to tell for sure.

Also with your concurrence, I'm asking to see outline and sample chapters on 5 books, including the new bodice-ripper from that bad-tempered librarian in Minnesota (the authors never snoop in your files, do they, boss? Ordinarily it would be a flat submission, but the poor performance of His Flaming Kisses cannot be justified even by our horrible distribution set-up-any word on what's happening with United News Dealers, by the way?). Synopsis for your files (below).

Last, and probably least, I'm appending an odd little query letter from one Carlos Detweiller of Central Falls, Rhode Island. If I were back at Brown University, happily majoring in English, planning to write great novels, and laboring under the misapprehension that everyone who publishes must be brilliant or at least “real smart,” I'd throw Mr. Detweiller's letter out at once. (Carlos Detweiller? I ask myself even now, as I rattle the keys of this ancient Royal-can that be a real name? Surely not!) Probably I'd use tongs to handle it, just in case the man's obvious dyslexia was catching.

But two years at Zenith House have changed me, Roger. The scales have fallen from my eyes. You don't really get heavyweights like Milton, Shakespeare, Lawrence, and Faulkner in perspective until you've lunched at Burger Heaven with the author of Rats from Hell or helped the creator of Gash Me, My Darling through her current writer's block. You come to realize that the great edifice of literature has one fuck of a lot more subbasements than you expected when you sneaked your first stroke-book up to your bedroom under your shirt (no I have not been smoking dope!).

So okay. This guy writes like a moderately bright third-grader (all declarative sentences-his letter has the panache of a heavyset guy walking downstairs in construction boots), but so does Olive Barker, and considering our creaky distribution system, her Windhover series has done quite well. The sentence in the first paragraph which says he knows all of these things “from first hand” suggests he's a ding-dong. You know that. His assertion that he's going to direct the movie suggests that he's a ding-dong with delusions of grandeur. I think we both know that. Further, I'd stake my last pair of skivvies (I'm wearing them, and mighty gray they are!) that, despite his disclaimer, every publisher in New York has seen True Tales of Demon Infestations. Loyalty to one's company can go only so far, chum; not even a moderately bright third-grader would start at Zenith House. I'd guess this letter has been patiently retyped and sent out by the indefatigable (and probably obsessed) Mr. Detweiller at least forty times, starting with Farrar, Straus & Giroux, or maybe even Alfred A. Knopf.

But I think there's a possibility-albeit an extremely thin one-that Mr. Detweiller may have researched enough material to actually make a book. It would have to be rewritten, of course-his query letter makes that abundantly clear-and the title sucks, but we have several writers on our books who would be more than happy to do a little ghost-writing and pick up a quick $600. (I saw you wince-make that $400. Probably the indefatigable Olive Barker is the best of them. Also, I think Olive has a thing for Valium. Junkies work harder than normal people, boss, as I think you know. At least until they die, and Olive's tough. She doesn't look too good since her stroke-I hate the way the left side of her face just hangs there-but she is tough.)

As I say, the chances are thin, and it's always a trifle risky to encourage an obvious crazy, because it is so difficult to get rid of them (remember General Hecksler and his book Twenty Psychic Garden Flowers? For a while I thought the man might be genuinely dangerous, and of course he was a large part of the reason poor old Bill Hammer quit). But actually, Bloody Houses did do pretty well, and the whole thing-blurry photos and all-came out of the New York Public Library. So you tell me: do we add ole Carlos to Returns or do we invite him to submit an outline and sample of chapters? Speak quickly, o great leader, for the fate of the universe hangs in the balance.

John