It’s not necessarily that Barbara didn’t work out, but she came on a bit strong, especially since the end result was that I needed a novel, that the collection could be part of a package deal, but that the novel was the thing. Everybody wants a novel. No one goes to the bookstore to buy short story collections, and I actually agree with that somewhat. I mean, I’ve bought just about every modern short story collection, and I only did so because I was getting a feel for the market. Maybe the only people who buy short story collections are people like me…and fans of Alice Munro.
I met Britta Steiner during my graduate studies at Vermont College, and I knew she was a good editor the first day I sat across from her during workshop. Ten of us were situated at long tables, set up in a rectangular formation like we were at a board meeting. We hid behind the manuscripts we evaluated the night before and were to comment on at the workshop. While some of the participants, including me, sloshed through the obligatory positive comments before the inevitable attack on some poor aspiring author’s short story, Britta, a first-semester student at the time, scowled openly, in full view of all of us. She didn’t want anything to do with formality. She may have thought the short story in question had good points, but she was in no mood to stroke the writer like the rest of us, when there was real work to be done with the piece. She impressed and humbled me immediately.
Britta emailed me after reading the McSweeney’s piece and asked if I was represented. Britta was actually the second agent to email me after reading the piece online, so despite some of the negativity that goes with online publishing, or used to go with online publishing, it’s been the medium that’s attracted the most responses and has been read the most. Agents read McSweeney’s.
I told Britta I was represented, because I felt a loyalty to Barbara. What I didn’t realize is while agents are kind, considerate people, they’re after the bottom line. It’s what hangs the curtains on their windows. Also, not all agents are editors, and to Barbara’s credit, she told me this up front. Britta was (is) a remarkable editor, so I approached Barbara with the prospect of my leaving her to pursue other things. I wanted to break it to her easy, you see, so she wouldn’t be too heartbroken (”I appreciate everything you’ve done for me…I’ll still keep you in mind…etc.”) Barbara was gracious and most likely planning her next trip to China to talk with her next superstar writer, or England to have lunch with her foreign rights person, or Germany to an International Book Fair. In any case, she wasn’t worried about me. I got the feeling she dealt with ten just like me every month.
I skipped like a kindergartener, though, over to Britta. She became my agent, and for the next few months, she pounded on my manuscript with me. She spent hundreds of hours, I’m thinking, at the agency and at her apartment in Brooklyn, sifting through my work, making sure each word was meaningful, each word pushed the stories forward. We emailed almost daily and spoke on the phone at least once a week. When the manuscript was at the point she and I felt comfortable, she had a list of publishers ready. Absolute Gentleman was about to be launched.
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