The Golden Willow by Harry Bernstein

Author:Harry Bernstein [BERNSTEIN, HARRY]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-51526-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

I DON'T REALLY KNOW HOW LONG IT TOOK ME TO WRITE THE INVISIBLE Wall. It must have been about a year, but it was finally done, and the next thing was to try to get it published. But did I really want to go into that sort of thing again? I hesitated before sending it out to a publisher. I'd done this hundreds of times before and always met with failure, a polite rejection note, or nothing at all. Was there any reason to think that things had changed?

For quite some time I kept the manuscript on my desk, satisfied with what I'd done, thinking I should leave well enough alone. The writing had done its job. I had been functioning normally. The grief was still there, but it was no longer as acute as it had been before. I could look at one of the photographs of Ruby on a wall or a table without crying. The loneliness and the terrible emptiness would always be there. I knew that would never pass. But why let myself in for the disappointments that I knew would inevitably come with submitting my manuscript to some editor who would have little interest in my life as a young boy in a Lancashire mill town?

I could never forget those disappointments. They were like wounds inflicted on my body, leaving scars. I think the worst of them all was the time Clifton Fadiman, the editor of Simon and Schuster, had shown some interest in my work after reading one of my short stories in a little magazine and had written me a letter inviting me to submit a novel.

Ruby and I had just been married, and writing and becoming a famous author were matters of life or death with me. I was thrilled by the letter, and I sat down immediately to write a novel that was doomed to failure because I didn't know how to write a novel. Nevertheless, I dashed one off in a few weeks, sent it off to Fadiman, and waited impatiently for the reply, rushing downstairs every time the mailman came to see if there was a letter for me from the publisher. Well, there was one day, and it was from Fadiman, and it asked me briefly to come in and see him about my novel.

I was in seventh heaven that day, absolutely certain that he would not have asked to see me unless it was to tell me that he was going to publish my novel. If it had been turned down, I reasoned, it would have come back to me with the usual polite rejection slip. It was on that positive note I went out and bought a bottle of wine to celebrate the occasion. When Ruby came home and heard the news she was as delighted as I was, and when we sat down to dinner—a meatloaf I had thrown together at the last moment from her written instructions—we toasted my success.

The following day I went to the office of Simon and Schuster filled with confidence.

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