A Word on Words; 3621; Gary Fisketjon

fb liz from nashville studio way celebrating offers the ideas for more than three decades this is word on words most aren't dancing in the once again welcome to word on words i guess today gary fifty job he's an editor and vice president of opera cannot he won the two thousand and six michael bergen toward the publishing world's highest among his author's it won all the major awards for fiction including carver richard ford cormac mccarthy very welcome

it's great daddy are you know far thirty six years hundreds of all those have been in the chair your first fender bender and on reddit is that the nation's premier editor and we're no worse a talk about books and their authors and again out there somewhere out there everywhere we are authors and one of the authors and reviews we never really have considered understood how the manuscript builds from layoffs computer or pan or a typewriter and an infant into their hands and on the second year and the attitude plays a crucial role in that sense to me and i guess there are all sorts of items on but how does the process work what word has it been at what point do you get the manuscript on an animal happens will generally speaking and then this is a big

obstacle for a lot of aspiring writers generally speaking everything i and the publishing i get from an agent now always people are trying desperately hard to get an agent and having no luck at all though sometimes come director publisher and i'm interested in something then it's very easy for them to get a drink but i always tell people live what they wore when you feel as a writer when you approach a publisher you want to approach that publisher while being able to say here is somebody else who believes that i'm pretty good whether it's an agent whether it's people who published little magazine a literary precedent and so for these people thought i'm pretty good and you have to kind of bring something to the table as it were i was say look you might be great but you send me some stupid cover letter starts high gear something like

that then you haven't published a fairly easy ed where else and nobody but aside from yourself think you're a good that's not a good way to kill that i mean it's like driving up to yankee stadium and famine on the door and fritz and i wanted to try out right now because i got a great fastball that laffey of parthenon so you've essentially started to take small little steps and try to get a kind of body of people behind you who were your supporters or if you do all those things directly and figure out who the right age and for your work might be chiefly somebody who represents authors you like for example then you went to push out of anybody a major blow to senator mike white says the senator won't

here's your one we should concentrate on and it goes from there have that's all pretty much invisible male advise people as best they can but they just don't do it only there but when i get something from an agent so i look at it and will the only thing i look for is something worth the level writing is good enough what's being written about isn't compelling enough that we keep turning the pages it can be virtually any style about any subject because i've long been convinced that that editors and publishers they don't come up with the ideas of what fiction should be for example they are they're not fiction writer only fiction writers can come up with something compelling in that respect and if i were to say no one early like realistic fiction well iran right off a number of very good books without giving them a chance

because some preconceived notion of what a good book should be i don't really have any notion what book should be except it should be good old promotional and i don't know if it's good in the nhl you know until you read it and there was a case when i published an english writer for janette went to sing for a great many books in her first book was called barges are not the only fruit a terrific book and that book was even better i think all the passion now jeanette stage an american agent called me up and describe this book the passion and he said well it's about napoleon chicken shack and that and the other main characters is warm and the daughter of a venetian boat when that when told phil if she can walk on water now i admit that that might not sound like a great book written by the deli agent didn't much like it when i read it i said this is fabulous

so if i had to based my decision on what i was told about the war i would have probably said no thanks a little like chicken or whatnot the teammate wore and that's what a writer does elaine and it's it's very hard to do so therefore you keep looking for manuscripts who will compel you to keep turning the pages if a manuscript comes in to the mouth and i didn't have an agent who's going to speak for your anonymous writer anointed you to come in i guess is not any chance that manifest in an interview that it will be reduced what will we have all the editorial assistants give the other and they divvy up all these hundreds of submissions so you get we did that and we look at them first published her work for almost thirty years ago would look at something and rest clearly of that sort

and one ride on that big letters refused to every week of december they would even open a monotonous but we look at him and i found in about thirty year in two or three books that way but his heart is not the route i would suggest but they do that look that now that they do there's one asian vases experience and more credibility we use animal it's absolutely i mean i think probably the best known agent for literary things in my time has been a mentor whom everybody called me the end i sort of knew her when she got engaged in saying that and i gave her various clients jay mcinerney being one of them and says she's represented a great many writers are published and is sort of the it's a commonality of taste for i mean it's if i if

she's proven herself to like things i can do like myself well i'm never meant as syria to give her a first book before somebody who represents writers i don't care for already sent me a lot of things that are worth reading so it's a kind of a friendship and connection so now you have the manuscript in india we do that well if the miraculous thing happened and actually liked it and he keep turning the pages and sometimes you can tell i do with some manuscripts about a book by canadian writer five snow maybe seven years ago called dennis box call the ash garden i read the first page and i was reading in a harmful way friendly was driving and said if this keeps up at this level and for sure buying this book you can really tell that quickly and you can tell when you don't like it that quickly too but if you

if you find something like that you really want and not want and the level and to the degree that well if american publishing this book wards the level of after published book orders i think i could do a better job publishing this book and somebody else could then you start thinking what what's the book or because of that good leader knows pretty good and there's a lot a publisher that youre always looking for good stuff then you have to essentially turn into a businessman and when you have the tidal wasn't as well us and then i gather that that whole thing about that of their money out all of wannabe also the other thing about the advanced sure right away and end and you know they read about multimillion dollar advances for celebrities and political values and so is involved

in the scandal now want to tell all young and really not interested in most of those books i guess know enough about him to and really be a suitable publisher for them that the process across over from time to time but chiefly where know as literary stuff might wear and most literary books don't sell lots and lots of copies and certain wife came into the business in the late seventies those riders could legally published because they sold so poorly in hardcover and everyone when in the paper bag and there was a backlog of very good writers who work wildly under publish for a period of years really good time for a kid to come into it because you had a lot of very accomplished writers to choose from a one claimed then watched a publishing with them but subsequently the market changed i think partly because some of the things we did a vintage books where

were publishing books straight into paperback could i just as lebanon you come out of the great north were raised on a mink farm in the work on inc formerly nixon goes do you ever sense a skilled and one of the williams and i guess at williams maybe you bum bum bum bum to an american army for the first time and yet you and jay so now says french from investment then bounce up and then you'd been you get in to that first semester long something called the right to have an abortion procedure of courts which now colombia right in appalachia and and then an evolving more than improving there morgan a growing native of my fill and j they sometimes has done

as it fascinated me that that they're coming from there that you have a home here in nashville and that you work in new york that you commute but anyway at that sort of how you get into an annual income into it will mcinerney and you and have been undone on at all of an offer and all the un and all the the notes about partying in our life voting lose your commitment to create back then we can do both on the one hand your random house and then you decide to talk a little bit about why you've decided that he would go into this new venture that focused on paperback publishing is well i come into a business as i say where the

kinds of writers i valued most dearly were not particularly well regarded by the people running publishing companies because these are charities and on foundations that commercial enterprises so i kept looking at and publishing a number of variables in hardcover that would sell and there's more eight hundred and twelve hundred copies nobody wants in paperback and it seemed to me that oh way to break this logjam because i didn't i never believe that people didn't care about what writers i never will believe that but they weren't being given much of a chance to get to know about them so i was while i was publishing hardcover books at random house i was also the managing editor vintage books and i was told in no uncertain terms there that we do not publish and contemporary fiction that's one is that it's what we tried it

once more and if we tried with the wrong people and you tried wrong way so i kept badgering away at the moment finally was given a chance to develop this line coleridge contemporaries where from the start i wanted to do the strongest new book as a paperback original not not the weakest the very best new books and at the same time have the reprints of the best recent publications in hardcover and also go back and is back on the books it had never gone into paperback at all or had fallen out of print paperbacks so that i think there are people on the first list jay mcinerney bright lights big city was the only original and it's a book that i loved this book that everybody a random house was when it hits and it says because of the same thing then and is a smash yeah it's you know it's a smash it does

the biggest new book published for ten or fifteen years that time that episode ended do people inside the industry safety vest and john what are you thinking about what i could've the same one not go well as the monarch around iran announced they were telling me at the sales conference when the final publication planters that i had people coming up and saying you know these respective secure making a terrible mistake by not doing that book in hardcover and i said well i'm glad that they've focused on a serious book if they would focus them or come back to me with a list of writers who didn't have a readership his books first novels were certain novels never had a readership whatever and show me one case where that will work in a hardcover

will reconsider lottery what is very clearly there wasn't a book that they could hold up as a shining example so i held my god i think if that book had come out in hardcover it would've been a much smaller chance of catching up to the problem of a new promotion yale book tour for some authors don't have to do anything with somebody that nobody ever heard of and i sold the idea of j and ashley's has had war caches of my book had left the hardcover like and they were publishing in hardcover and i said i'm selling eight hundred copies are not going to pay back that said that's a nice hard for the better value that hardcover very much because you're getting nothing else out of this deal but i said look you're being published analyst with people who were you know we had he and i shared a literary idol ray carver and tom mcguane two of them they both had books on that first letter peter matthiessen book american heiress where i said you're being published in a very select

company here as opposed to just another book a less acid those people we'll give you a boost if they were really critical standing right out of the gate and i think that that was true but it's also true that jay did as much or more from everybody else on that list and they did for him because everybody said well gosh i loved bright lights big city i should reduce carb or die or matheson never heard of him but he must be good to do so would work both ways subsequently of course and every publisher and have wanted to try a similar two feet and it was a it wasn't a magic bullet solution really do you have to have i guess you really have to have the gift fifty gifted author you're an end and the book that works for those of you just joining us and i'm talking with characters jon

who is a veteran vice president going off another said earlier deadline in the debt limit in the premier editor in this country works in new york lived a natural commutes an added symbol places on ct happens when an adult day produces then what brightness falls is that next year you know that book after was a i think a much underrated local rainstorms that's right man then he followed i'm like i think i have an ear for renton and i thought that was a fabulous it was a good book but even though he already was running into the buzz saw of success which is you're harold would one minute and then the next minute the next book comes out and people say oh what was that first book that good is he needed and how can he got so successful that he paid he started paying for

the city's success with the second book and doing re still is paying for it but he's done on the end of his last novel the good life was his most successful novel in hardcover ever ended the first book and has begun near times bestseller less so if their patients well and given thirty years to take that read things can happen at the end of that it seems to me the critics sometimes make judgments not on the content of the book the family and on the character of the reviews i think that there are there are people who this is certainly the case with with jay and i also was bret easton ellis center would agree with donna tartt people review community are withdrawn critics because are not leaving after that then they have an idea what these people are like well i don't care what people are

like really i mean if i read a book when i tried to speculate on the nature of the first wrote it so huber you get reviews that aren't really reviews of the books the reviews of what the reviewer thinks about their soccer or sings about the sort of books that offer will write without even reading annie see it time and time again when it published a fabulous book by tobias wolff called our story began finance his new and selected stories that span of a thirty year career is anything getting phenomenal reviews in the los angeles times book review was on the cover and there was a line these as these stories can save your life which seemed like overstatement but i don't really think we also knew that me choke up the time he was going to be reviewing the daily mirror time and her research you always hated i was so put your helmet on paper and get ready for it and

she too had some begrudgingly nice things to say but more often we'll farm only condescending kind of you know very condescending she had some wine that toby approaches his characters with a weary condescension of everything he's written several times over i never noticed it but i see it you've got a tiny trees all the time but i read that when you invest it was disappointing but not a surprise that happened to look in at times site might you go back and see previous review and they had there are certain phrases that were lifted out wholesale and it's a backyard the governors of plagiarism and so i thought that was a good point because it's still valid is about a classic story editing it has been the history

of modern fiction must be maxwell perkins and thomas wolfe not are more valuable than the local dollar when there were you just lie his life is let's just let some people say fifty fifty jimmy fallon where they know that i don't know and i don't even notice a true story that is part of the legend of perkins how invasive are you as an editor i've never what you do well what if what would any editor should do is pretty simple read the books more carefully more closely than any sane person should never even think about drilling and while you're reading it that way you do that in the first place and that's how you really understand how it will work if you look at it and almost a dna level not reoccur humor quickly and three making big sweeping generalizations and they're ego see how the book actually work for that can of

flesh and blood see how the author of sets the standard really of what he or she is doing and then look and look very carefully for world where when the author is meeting his or her own standard and then being maybe not brutally frank but certainly frank interesting that sentences and the disease of other sections or this character i don't understand why he or she would see this doesn't sound like his characters the dialogue on he was looking for anything that might be wrong because with any kind of the book whether it's fiction or nonfiction the writer of that book is having to make no exaggeration billions a decision millions of them and what are the odds that every decision will be to correct one for the best one so you're

trying to give the writer as an emmy you're trying to give a writer anagram glasses to put on a new look at it and say whoa that wasn't so hot i can do better written about writing and you can either do over you give yourselves do over of your honor to give you do overs you have many chances to do it over i'm sure that you know professional golfers would like to have some due over which are they don't like that they only had a funny friday i guess sort of do get month absolutely the news they want because it you know and the and that's what that's what america should do is give them a chance to revisit something that maybe hasn't quite done or quite as good as the rights to make it but having it it's like he is having a conversation i did i go through with it it's crawling green bank and a pace of about five pages in our silly

season six eight hundred page manuscript to see whole week sometimes disappearing in front of you but i sort of make all the observations that i could possibly match goes after the offer and said if you don't understand what i'm getting out or if you can't read my hand writing or if i spoke up poppy on it i'll talk about it but i don't have a big conversation because this is a bible picture book look at what i'm proposing and then you dispose of it however you see fit if you think this is just perfect way to do it i don't care if i have a solution gives you an idea as to how to improve that that's that's the best of all possible worlds because elders' after an aunt trying to help people finish

books i'm trying to help them be able to finish the book you know him or herself it's very rewarding i think that but certainly once i was at at the last page and send it off i never look back on with an offer begley to chocolate and yet we grow our company believe that while that you all love very best jonathan to be back with us next week thanks so much for coming to light for coming that night so unusual activity of it doesn't you know our word on words the premier