Tuesday, July 23, 2024. Sunny and cloudy most of yesterday, and warm, but not too. You could convince me that a lot of New Yorkers are out of town, on vacation, resting, traveling. We’re just days away to the last months of this season. Because of the quiet calendar, I’ve been spending a lot of my time collecting my thoughts. One fortunate reminder is my own calendar, not the published daily.
News. On a Thursday 40 years ago (1984), I got a manila envelope in the mail from California Magazine. It was a manuscript I had written about Truman Capote who had just died, being returned to me from its editor, Harold Hayes. Uh. There was a cover letter from Frederick Iseman, the Executive Editor, apologizing for the delay in the return but explaining that he had asked to see the piece because he was “an admirer of (my) writing” and didn’t know it was to be returned to me. Nice. But.
Also included was a two-page handwritten (in pencil on yellow paper) criticism of the piece, ending with the word: Sorry.
Oddly, for me, I found the criticism more interesting than the Rejection. All that time from a man who was famous for his brevity and his efficient conversations — to write out what he didn’t like and why — I felt deserved my careful consideration.
After reading it a couple of times I realized the difference between my original submission (which they liked and had caused them to ask for another kind of piece) and the one I had done on request, the one you read. I realized that my strongest cards were my personal experiences with the writer (Capote), either through observation, presence or conversation; and that in my second re-write was too much journalism — life story, etcetera.
It annoyed me that he liked the first and turned down the second. It also annoyed me because it meant the work went all for naught. I was embarrassed in a way. After all, these men had all praised me and lauded me and then when given an assignment, I failed them. It felt like that.
I couldn’t leave it there. So I spent Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and Monday morning re-working the whole thing — incorporating Harold Hayes’ criticisms and different parts of my first piece and the second one.
Harold Hayes had the reputation in the business of being from the Old School, the AP, UPI kind of editor who is very clear about what he wants and what he likes. His notes to me were very incisive and he wasted no word patronizing my ego. He is probably the first writing teacher I ever had. I had one in college who I always felt found me particularly uninteresting. I’d also felt something competitive from him although he was older and more enthusiastic about “writing” than I was.
So I did what I was supposed to do and the results were Very Good, then Good, then Fair, then Ahhh. Sitting in creative writing classes listening to people play writers always bored me. They always seemed more interested in the context than the content. And of course I was probably rebelling: I tended to regard creative writing classes for people who were playing at it, or in life who always act as if they are very serious but in fact they’re just big Phoneys (Ronald Reagan there you are you devil you).
I learned years after from a former fraternity brother who had flunked out and gone back and had taken the creative writing class with that professor whom he once asked in a general conversation if he’d ever had a student that he thought really had Talent. The professor said: “Yes, David Columbia, but he was lazy.”
So anyway, to get back to Harold Hayes. I know this sort of thing isn’t really done, but as I said, it annoyed me that they liked me and then didn’t like me. I knew I couldn’t leave it there. At least for my own self-respect. So I re-wrote the thing, and mailed it off to Harold Hayes on a Monday afternoon, a harassed Monday afternoon with my typewriter not working right and people calling me up on the phone bugging the shit out of me if you’ll pardon my French.
I included a note to Harold explaining that after re-reading his notes, I felt compelled to do something; and so I continued, I was sending it to him with no expectations but that I would like him to read it when he had time. Such courtesy but honest and to the point. Goodbye dear Manuscript in the U.S. Mail.
Wednesday about one in the afternoon the phone rang and I almost didn’t answer because I was afraid it was my friend Sarah bugging me. But I did answer it and on the other line was an unfamiliar voice of a woman asking for me, telling me that Harold Hayes was calling.
“Hello, Harold.”
“David,” he says, “I’ve never had a writer do this before in my entire career but I got your piece and I want you to know that we’re delighted with it, we loved it and we want to buy it (for $1000) for the December issue. Hello …!”
I said, “Well, Harold I have to tell you that it was your concise and totally objective criticism that allowed me to re-write it in the fashion that I did.” “Well, that’s a first for me too,” he replied.
He congratulated me, asked me for some biographical information, my Social Security number, and told me that “I hope you will work for us again;” and good-bye.
