{"id":1367,"date":"2022-07-22T17:26:15","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T17:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomabate.com\/ruminations\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2022-12-22T20:32:24","modified_gmt":"2022-12-23T02:32:24","slug":"when-top-book-editors-said-fiction-wasnt-my-forte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomabate.com\/ruminations\/when-top-book-editors-said-fiction-wasnt-my-forte\/","title":{"rendered":"When top book editors said fiction wasn\u2019t my forte"},"content":{"rendered":"In 1990, I gave up trying to publish a novel based on my experiences as an enlisted man serving in the U.S. Navy around the time that the fall of Saigon ended the Vietnam War. I made the decision to become a journalist rather than a novelist after getting a thoughtful rejection letter from Robert Giroux, a now deceased founding partner of the literary house Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.\r\n\r\nIn those days, when it was still possible to get an editor to read a manuscript, I had shown up at the firm\u2019s Greenwich Village offices, uninvited, to explain that Mr. Giroux and I had graduated from the same high school, about 40 years apart; that I lived in Northern California, but was in the city to visit family; and that I hoped to get in for a few minutes to pitch a novel that I\u2019d finished after five years.\r\n\r\nEven then it was a cheeky request, so I was delighted to be told that Mr. Giroux was out to lunch but that I could return later to try again. So, I rode the building\u2019s creaky old elevator back down to the lobby and waited on the street. Before long I saw a tall young man leaning over to talk into the right ear of an older gentleman who moved slowly. I advanced until I stood before them, backpedaling as I said, \u201cMr. Giroux,\u201d and took his glance as an invitation to gently edge the tall gentleman aside, gaining the right ear as I explained the old school tie, the circumstance prompting my intrusion, and my novel.\r\n\r\nThe latter was a mouthful, but in between the closing of the accordion gate in the lobby and its reopening on his floor, I had said enough to secure Mr. Giroux\u2019s promise to read the manuscript if I would mail it to him when I returned to California, which I did.\r\n<blockquote>In due course, I received a letter written on a manual typewriter and signed with a flourish.<\/blockquote>\r\n\u201cYour story of the ammo ship in the Pacific, especially of its crew\u2019s adventures at sea and ashore, is well told,\u201d he wrote. \u201cYou have the gift of dialogue and your picture of the petty tyrannies and stupidities of Navy life is realistic and convincing.\u201d But my characters were \u201c\u2026 flat rather than rounded portraits \u2026 this is particularly true of the women \u2026 The book lacks narrative or dramatic impact (think of the <em>Caine Mutiny<\/em>) to counterbalance the flatness of the characters.\u201d\r\n\r\nI got the same verdict, though with less in the way of prescriptive critique, in rejections from other editors who I had prevailed upon to read my manuscript through pitch letters delivered via snail mail. \u201cThe book works well enough, I have to say,\u201d wrote William B. Goodman of the David R. Godine publishing firm. \u201cBut it lacks surprise and that decisive twist that would lift it out of the familiar.\u201d\r\n\r\nDespite some disappointment, I had to admit that the editors correctly identified my talent deficit. Moreover, I thought it unlikely that continuing to collect rejection letters would result in my eventual vindication, or that my technique would markedly improve by writing in a vacuum. Now, having gotten on-the-job training until Medicare, Social Security, and a newspaper pension could provide room and board, I hope to put into words the <em>je ne sais quoi<\/em> demanded by fiction to satisfy my ambitions in that regard.\r\n\r\n<!-- \/wp:post-content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I took this to heart and spent 30 years practicing nonfiction.<br \/>\nHave I learned enough to make stuff up convincingly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1482,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anecdotes"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.12 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>When top book editors said fiction wasn\u2019t my forte - Tomabate<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tomabate.com\/ruminations\/when-top-book-editors-said-fiction-wasnt-my-forte\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"When top book editors said fiction wasn\u2019t my forte - Tomabate\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I took this to heart and spent 30 years practicing nonfiction. 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