SOUR GRAPES? YOU BET ON IT!

UPDATING MY VICISSITUDES IN SECURING A CONTRACT TO PUBLISH MY MEMOIR

BACKGROUND

It took me thirty five years to feel I could be objective enough in sorting out a life defining experience that happened to me from October, 1967 - through April 1969. I was offered a job as a novice psychotherapist to treat heroin addicts in an innovative seminal therapeutic community program located in the Greenwhich Village called Odyssey House.

 I began my work there as a "psychologist" and ended up as an Assistant Director. During this time I secured a dilapidated "house" in Harlem, named it the pressure cooker, organized an entry program for raw heroin addicts, and successfully ran it.

 In the beginning I thought that I had stumbled onto my own version of the perfect "garden of Eden" ( a personal 'spiritual' sancuary) I had long been consciously and unconsciously searching for ever since my troubled high school and college days.

For the first 2 months my fantasy of perfection remained relatively intact. But a series of 5 events were to occur that would blow open my illusion of the ideal treatment community. As the bitter facts of my hard won experience collided with my almost desperate need to maintain my illusions I was swept over with a black cloud of increasing disillusionment, depression, and quintessential confusion in working at Odyssey about the nature of reality and the search for truth.

The executive director - a 35 year old woman of renown - both a psychiatrist and a lawyer was the equivalent of a mad, evil, enlightened 'genius'. In many ways she was one of the most charismatic and inventive people I have ever met; while at others she was a brutal dictator abusing authority and loving every moment of it.

I loved and hated her. And began confusing the present and the past as my Odyssey at Odyssey stirred up the best and the worst from my emotionally tortuous past.

 After finally leaving Odyssey, I found the experience so personally and professionally traumatic that it propelled me into a successful 11 year psychoanalysis to help me sort out the wheat from the chaff. My memoir was - is - the culmination of this lengthy process to order my own chaos.  

STEPS TO PUBLISHING

 Deciding against self publishing I finally found a reputable literary agent who for the last two years has been sending out my manuscript to top of the line publishers. To date I have received thirteen promising but ultimately rejecting rejections.

I am aware that multiple rejections is not uncommon and indeed is probably the norm for an unpublished author. But I cannot help but be chagrined and dissappointed at the quality - or lack of it - I have encoutered from the so called 'lights' of the publishing world.

Since I have already made a vow that my memoir will one day be published - if not by an established publishing house - then by self publishing-  giving up is out of the question. It is in this context that an article in the back of today's [09/09/07] New York Times  book review called "NO THANKS, MR. NABAKOV" [David Oshinsky] reopened a thinly veiled scab prompting my writing of this post.

The article is about multiple manuscript rejections from top tier publishing houses of what later turn out to be huge literary successes and often best sellers. I was particularly moved by the last paragraph. David Oshinsky writes:

"Today, as publishers eschew the finished manuscript and spit out contracts based on a sketchy outline or even less, the scripting of rejection letters has become something of a lost art. It's hard to imagine a current publisher dictating the sort of response that Alfred Knoph sent to a promising Columbia University historian in the 1950s. 'This time there is no point in trying to be kind,' it said. ' Your manuscript is utterly hopleless as a candidate for our list. I never thought the subject worth a damn to begin with and I don't think it's worth a damn now. Lay off, MacDuff.'

The writer of the article concludes; "Now, that's a rejection letter."

I vigorously second the motion - and the emotion.

As for my experience in receiving rejection letters if I were to grade them for quality of response they would all get F-. And the low grade is not because I do not receive anything positive. Quite the contrary. Most of the letters indicate that a given editor finds my subject matter to be important, relatively unique, and the writing 'compelling". [That is initially encouraging.] There is more encouragement when many responders indicate they personally find what they have read [only an outline, and two sample chapters, and the agent's letter, and my marketing plan] of great interest. [More encouragement] Then comes the triad of their questionable judgment expressed in their collective reasons for rejecting my work.

1 - There are presumably  too few potential readers who would be interested in my experience that occurred over thirty five years ago. [So the Diary of Anne Frank would probably be rejected by this collection of publishers if it was sent to any of them today]. Additionally, the implication is that time and place have to be modern, current, of the immediate and the now or the events of 'ancient history' [35 years ago in this case] are irrelevant and passe. This is too simplistic to comment on. My memoir has a timeless/universality context thus although it is located in a concret space-time continuum it has overlapping universal themes, conflicts, perspectives, and potential solutions. Its message is for all individuals of whatever time and place. Everyone sooner all later runs into their own personal Odyssey.

2 -  I may have a Ph.D and have been a practicing psychoanalyst for the past thrity seven years, and have written a number of original papers on the subject of the nature and effective treatment of drug abuse but I am still an unpublished author so we can't take a chance to invest in a relative nobody. [No comment is necesary]

3 - Whereas my story is important, and the material compelling we are afraid that there is not enough potential buyers of your work. They can say this with a straight face despite the fact that I have amassed a thirty five page single spaced marketing plan of concrete places and people to market to. All one has to do is to look at the comments made on Amazon - and Barns and Noble - even today about the pros and cons of Frey's - A Million LIttle Pieces a so called true account of one addicts fall and rehabilitation to appreciate that there is a wide readership for what has turned out to be a contrived non fictional fantasy. Additionally there is a world wide explosion in the explansion of the Therapeutic Community concept.

 But what really aggravates me is the cutesy ending that many of my rejections so far tagged on at the end:  Although compelling I'm afraid we just don't love it enough."

 IF I WAS IN CHARGE

I would like to think that if I had the  job of publishing house editor, finding myself at all interested in the subject matter as well as finding the writing to be "compelling" but still having doubts about whatever - I would ask the author to send in the entire manuscrip,  perhaps have a personal interview or at least answer in detail his counter arguments for my initial rejection of his manuscript.

It is common knowledge that the publishing houses are only 40% successful in choosing what will be a 'success' for them. That does not strike me as a particularly promising success rate for new authors, or even themselves.

And please don't waste your time sending me responses to the effect that you can't change city hall because that's the way it is. Nothing times nothing is nothing and nature abhoars a vacuum. Isn't it obvious there needs to be a radical revision of attitude in publishing or am I truly blind to what seems so perfectly clear to me?

As I previously stated I have as yet no secured publishing contract but I will persist until either I have one to my liking or I will self publish.

And to be as objective as I am cabable of being although in the grips of passion - I guess the bottom line truth is  I have not yet found a potential publisher who is - in actuality  -  in "love" with me enough.

"Tomorrow is another day."

P.S. The tititle of my proposed memoir is:

                                        SMACK INSIDE REHAB:

                                     My Odyssey Treating Heroin  

                                          Addicts in the Sixties