Monday, Sep 8, 2008
Karl's manuscript exhibited all the signs of a crazy-person submission: written on a manual typewriter, single-spaced with no margins, utterly incoherent. (Alternatively, the cover letter might be handwritten in a childish scrawl, the page enlivened with line drawings of planets and aliens. Letters sent from prison are also usually handwritten. But neatly.)
I read a paragraph, stuffed the manuscript back into the envelope with an unsigned rejection slip and left it at the front desk, hoping that was the end of it. But that evening, a colleague came by and told me there was a young man asking for me in the now-deserted lobby. I freaked. A crazy person whose manuscript I'd just rejected was stalking me ... and he knew me by name.
Gallantly responding to my panicked pleas for help, one of our executives dispatched Karl -- who, as it turned out, had arrived after the receptionists had left and only wanted to know where his manuscript was -- and escorted me out of the building. Unfortunately, as soon as we parted ways, I remembered that I'd forgotten some books in my office. Turning back alone to retrieve them, I felt like the hapless teen in a slasher flick, the audience screaming, "Don't go back, you moron!" as the rejected writer grinned in the shadows.
In the end, it wasn't the crazies that proved the biggest threat to my own sanity. The dirty little secret -- the one that made my job both easier and harder -- was that all unsolicited submissions sent to my publisher were in fact routed to an editor who didn't exist.
Duncan Klein, as I'll call him, had been created years before, after another slush handler had started to get calls at home. The name was listed in several writers' directories and served as a code: Anything addressed to him was presumed to be slush. Duncan Klein was my alter ego, my grown-up invisible friend. It was, to say the least, a dysfunctional relationship.
As Mr. Klein's putative assistant, I told callers that he was "not in"; if pressed, I explained he was "on vacation." Once or twice, I said he was on an extended camping trip and couldn't be reached. Gradually I got tougher, painting Mr. Klein as a recluse who never met or spoke with anyone at all.
Lying, which had never been easy for me, was now a job requirement. I pretended to take messages that I warned would never be answered; I put people on hold, twiddled my thumbs and then said I'd consulted with Mr. Klein; I gave him a distinctive signature. I half-hoped someone would call to complain that the signatures on their two form letters (signed by different readers) didn't match, so that I could say Mr. Klein had broken his hand skiing and was temporarily using his left hand instead of his right. But no one ever noticed.
Much as I grew to loathe my imaginary boss and the company he kept, I remained strangely protective of his reputation. "I'd like to talk to Duncan," callers would say. How rude, I thought, bristling. He could be 90 years old, and you're calling him by his first name? "I'm sorry," I'd reply indignantly, "Mr. Klein isn't in, may I help you?"
To some slush callers, I was an ignorant underling to be treated with contempt. Duncan Klein, on the other hand, held the real power. More than one caller mentioned that he'd "chatted with Duncan" about his work; one of my predecessors told me a caller claimed to have met Duncan at a party. Small-time agents visiting New York called to make lunch dates with Duncan Klein and expressed outrage at his lack of professionalism in declining. (I didn't point out that cold-calling a work of fiction didn't lend these "agents" much professional credence.)
Only once did I have to ask a fellow assistant to pretend to be Duncan Klein in order to appease an irate slush writer, the victim of an editorial mix-up, who called every half-hour but refused to let me handle his problem. The minute the caller thought he was talking to someone with authority, his anger and condescension vanished. Come to think of it, that's sort of what it was like working for a real editor.
Slush was both my albatross and my entertainment, with anything remotely comic circulated to my friends around the office. We got infantile hate mail ("I hope you slip in doggy doo and chip an elbow"), vulgar haikus, modeling head shots, a query for a novel titled, with no apparent irony, "Finnegan's Wake." One person sent in a Ziploc baggie containing a swizzle stick and what we guessed might have been excrement. An office favorite was the query letter from "Santa's little Brother ... Uncle Billa Claus." Chapter titles for stories from Santa's "personal diary" included "Naughty Bells," "The Hole in the Wall" and "Basement Surprise." I'm guessing the "surprise" wasn't a new skateboard.
Was it cruel of us to make fun of the slush? Sure, maybe. But we were overworked, underpaid assistants at the bottom of a lofty totem pole, and putting down bad writing was our way of lifting ourselves up. For me, swamped as I was with mail and phone calls and complaints, it was easier to think of slush writers as anonymous, deluded nut jobs than to contemplate the effect that our rejection slips might have had on them. And anyway, what would be the point if I did? To our credit, we readers did give every single submission, no matter how ludicrous, a fair and honest appraisal. During my reign as slush handler, a few projects garnered further consideration from our editors; one was even published.
Duncan Klein, whose existence had become more hindrance than help, eventually retired (I told people he was "no longer with the company"), and I moved on to other jobs. And these days, as a freelance writer, I am chagrined to find that the worm has turned. Suddenly, I'm the desperate one, the hopeful neurotic who waits impatiently only to be met with rejection or no response at all. Interestingly enough, my background in slush sometimes works against me: I am less persistent than I could be, worried that editors will find me annoying and pathetic. In my weaker moments, I wonder if my story pitches are being passed around, ridiculed and ignored. I wonder if the people I'm querying even exist. Maybe what goes around really does come around.
But I never, ever call.
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