How Precious Was That While, page 14
First the more subdued one:
DADDY SAYS SO SO IT’S SO
Oenone
Mother isn’t home so Daddy’s cooking
eggs he always cooks eggs & gives
us cereal he can’t cook but he
wants us to have something hot
so he cooks eggs & makes cereal
& we eat in the den & drink coke
from a straw as a treat
The game is over for the night
& now he’s cooking eggs
I hate the smell of eggs
bland meaty rot of jungle reek
I never eat them unless he makes me
& then I puke & have to clean it up
Daddy says I did it so it’s my job
& I’m lucky he doesn’t
make me eat it but
he wouldn’t do that he’s
my daddy & he loves me very much
he says so when we play our game
and Daddy says so so it’s so.
Almost time to eat so
I take off my clothes & put
my pj’s on the yellow ones with
blue flowers & floppy feet
my clothes are damp
with the slick sticky sheen of
(spunk jizzum jungle juice cum)
sweat my father sweats
when we play his game
I stuff my clothes into a pillowcase
(my Snoopy pillowcase that says
“Happiness is a warm puppy”)
& go to my brother’s room
he lies in a tangle of curled
legs & arms & head burrowed
into the pillow I cannot see
his face but I hear low cries
& breathy sobs & moans
a quiet knotted agony
& all alone
because I have my job to do
(it’s the first time Daddy ever
played his game with you
I’m sorry, I guess, but now you know
that Daddy loves you too)
I do what Daddy told me to
I pick up Timmy’s pair of shorts
lying crumpled by the door
they are white with red wet
stains & I take them to the bathroom sink
and use cold water like my mother
taught me to wash the blood away
it’s my job Daddy says five is
plenty old enough to be
responsible Timmy’s older
but I’m the girl it’s my job
& someday I’ll be a good wife
Daddy says
and if Daddy says it’s so it’s so
I take the pillowcase to Daddy
& he kisses me says thank you
Timmy’s sick, I think. I say
& Daddy says no he’s sulking just
sulking, can’t get his way, don’t worry
we’ll eat alone tonight, angel,
you and me, okay? & I say sure, Daddy
& I hope he doesn’t
make me eat the eggs
Even so, it wasn’t always safe. When she was seven or eight he tried to kill her. He had her down under the table, choking her. Her brother threw a ketchup bottle, hitting their father and getting ketchup all over him. “I will remember that stipple of ketchup in my father’s black bushy left eyebrow all my life.” It distracted him long enough for her to scramble out from under the table, and gave him time to gain control of himself. “I don’t think my dad ever meant for it to go that far—he just loses it sometimes. My brother probably saved my life that day, & at great risk to himself.” Indeed, her brother, two years older, supported her throughout a childhood that involved sex and drugs; he held her hand throughout an eighteen-hour ordeal of a bad LSD trip. “He is my big brother. And I love him.”
She was in and out of mental institutions as she grew older, and required speech therapy to ease her stuttering. She read my books, and appreciated Wielding a Red Sword because of its stuttering protagonist. Then, half a year later, she sent this, written at age twenty-two, in an institution. The subtlety is gone; the gloves are off. I regard this as the most telling statement of its type I have encountered, and a fine, if horrible, poem. It’s all there: the instruction, the rationalization, the sex, the ignorant mother, the threats, the secrecy, the pain, the flair of artistic revelation. This is terrible beauty:
I KNEW TO BE A WOMAN
Oenone
I knew to be a woman
I learned at seven
How to read a clock
I learned at seven
How to suck a cock
I knew to be a woman
He said to me he said
Your mother she doesn’t
She doesn’t understand
She doesn’t satisfy me, doesn’t
Make me happy, not
The way you do, show me, show me.
Won’t you show me how,
Show me how much you love me?
I knew to be a woman
Eight times seven
Is fifty six
Eight years old
And turning tricks
My father, my lover
In the whispering night
He enters my room
He enters me
Comes when he will
Takes what he wants
Leaving me
With the moon in my window
Our sweat on the pillow
And the bed slick against my skin
I knew to be a woman
Mother screams
Why don’t you smile?
What’s wrong with you?
I say nothing
Why won’t you eat?
Why won’t you sleep?
What’s wrong with you?
I say nothing
(‘Cause if you tell
I’ll take you away
To a far-away place
A place in the city
A place I know
And you’ll probably die
And you’ll never come home.
You’ll never come home
‘Cause if you tell
I won’t love you anymore
Mommy won’t love you anymore
We’ll send you off
To a far-off place
And you’ll never come home,
You’ll never come home
’Cause if you tell
I won’t love you anymore
I’ll know you don’t love me
And I won’t love you anymore)
I knew to be a woman
Don’t you understand
I’m doing this for you
So you’ll be, oh so you’ll be
You’ll be a good wife
See don’t you see don’t you
See I love you
So won’t you show me
Won’t you show me how
Show me how much you love me?
My father, my lover
Taught me to tie my shoes
To ride a bike
And to be a woman
To love to hate to shame
To hurt and to be silent
I knew to be a woman.
And so some go from child to woman without passing through adolescence. Therein, it seems, they lose something vital. I do not know how such lives can be repaired.
Let’s conclude with one that at this point should need no discussion:
WATCHES
Kaaiohelo Jensen
Sometimes
On the lonely
Hours of the evening
I sit & watch the sun go down
And cry.
Six
BETRAYALS
I made a comment once in a weekly letter to Jenny that bears repeating here: it was a formula I invented for explaining the ways of publishers. TPB = SOD. What does it mean? Typical Publisher Behavior is Shitting On Dreams. I think it’s a shame that something as creative and vital to the nature of the human species as storytelling is largely controlled by the soulless cretins known as publishers. Perhaps every person has his dream, and many of those dreams are expressed in writing, but they will never be promulgated because the means of doing so are in the cynical hands of those whose only dreams are money and power. In this chapter I’ll give examples of my ongoing battle with those whose avarice seemed exceeded only by their incompetence. In other words, typical publishers.
I worried that I would not be able to write fantasy well without Lester del Rey’s editing. But instead it was like a burden lifting from my shoulders. Suddenly I was free of the incubus of oppressive editing. No longer would Xanth be pruned of both its puns and its realistic references. The first novel I wrote for Avon, Vale of the Vole, proceeded at a record pace, and was complete in six and a half weeks. Characters it introduced, such as the Demoness Metria and Chex the winged centaur filly, have endured to be strong regulars in following Xanth novels. I was free to experiment, and to have realistic references, such as the way Chex was completely free of concern about natural functions, as outdoor animals are. I could have any puns I wanted. I believe that the novels following my separation from Del Rey are stronger than those preceding it. Lester may have thought I would self-destruct, but if he read any of those novels, I think he would have seen that their standard had not suffered. He had claimed that my writing had deteriorated after I computerized. My writing had declined, but not for that reason. It had suffered because of Lester’s editing, and the preventive measures I had had to take to prevent him from doing even more damage. All that had changed. I was now dealing with editors who didn’t understand my fantasy, so left it alone. And it did well, continuing to make the national best-seller lists despite underprintings that required publishers to return immediately to press to fill reorders.
In fact, that was an annoyance from the start. Avon printed 370,000 copies of Vole instead of the 400,000 or more Del Rey had before. I figured Avon would learn, and correct its error next time, but it never did; the fifth Xanth novel it had, Question Quest, had an initial printing of 365,000, and so had to be reprinted immediately. So what difference did it make, if they were ready to reprint so readily? It’s hard to tell, but in my judgment, every sale gained from a quick reorder represents two sales lost because of the buyers who hadn’t had a chance to buy at the outset. When stocks at stores run out, they reorder, but there is delay; if they have more copies two weeks later, many readers have gone on to other novels that have arrived in the interim. Some readers are dedicated and seek out what they want, and I have many such dedicated ones. But more are impulse buyers who will grab a book when they see it new, but won’t look for it two weeks later. It’s vital that the initial exposure be there, especially since many stores will put new books up front, then move them back as other new books come in. And of course for every store that reorders, there may be another that doesn’t. One of the things the big chain stores did was computerize, so they could keep constant track of all titles, and they made sure to have enough of what was moving well. But the old-fashioned stores didn’t necessarily have that philosophy; they marketed what was there, and didn’t go to any trouble to seek what ran out. Some seemed not to know how well a book would do, so if they started with ten copies, they sold ten and forgot about it, though they might have sold thirty copies if they had had them. It’s too late, after the first flush has passed, just as it’s too late to catch the plane after it has taken off.
So why did publishers do it? I have taken years—decades!—trying to get a line on the obscure thought processes of publishers, and have some tentative answers. I refer to publishers, but actually they are composed of individual people. They would not express it this way, of course, but essentially each little person in that big organization is intent on covering his own ass. If too many copies are printed, there will be too many returns, and that’s lost money. So it’s safer to print too few copies, and go back to press when reorders come. Sure, there are less total sales, but no provable losses are incurred. In fact, suppose a brash editor doubled the print order, and sold 50 percent more copies? That novel has done much better than it would have—but what of all those extra unsold copies? That looks bad. He should have printed only 50 percent more, the reasoning goes, and taken no losses. Meanwhile, other editors who underprint have the “success” of selling even better than anticipated. So some, in rare moments of candor, will say it openly: they would rather print conservatively and have fewer returns, than print more and sell more. I was told that Stephen King, then a promising writer on his way up, ran up against a publisher that absolutely refused to print more than 75,000 hardcover copies. But he could sell twice that many, the agent protested. It made no matter; the publisher had a policy, and the limit was the limit. So, as with me in a different respect, King finally had to leave that publisher. And the new publisher printed and sold 175,000 copies. Sometimes changing publishers is the only way. Where would King have been, if he had stayed with that limited editor? Not where he is now, for sure!
Berkley was worse. Its first Adept novel, Out of Phaze, was reported by Publishers Weekly to have an initial paperback printing of 450,000. That novel spent three consecutive weeks as #7 on the New York Times best-seller list, a very strong showing. So what did they do for the following novel? They cut the print order! They printed 350,000 copies. And of course that novel’s sales were lower. It made the NYT best-seller list, but around #14. What had they expected? Indeed, they continued to underprint, and finally succeeded in taking that series off the national best-seller lists. Sure, they had fewer returns—at the expense of my career.
Did I regret leaving Del Rey? I watched David Eddings fantasy series at Del Rey rise up and pass mine in sales, his income advancing accordingly, and yes, I was sorry to be gone. But I wouldn’t pay the price Eddings may have paid, sacrificing the integrity of my text. I surely would have had better sales at Del Rey, but my fiction would not have had the same quality. That’s why I would do the same again: I care more about quality than money. Yes, even with such seemingly frivolous fantasy as Xanth. There are elements there the critics know nothing of.
It was to get worse. Whatever Berkley did, Avon did also; the two publishers became in my mind like gasoline companies, whose prices rise and fall in perfect tandem. Avon finally did make an effort with the hardcover edition of the final Incarnations novel, And Eternity, printing 47,500 copies, of which all but 500 went out to the stores—and it made the Publishers Weekly hardcover best-seller list, the first of my novels to do so. I was a best-seller in paperback, but not in hardcover. That novel was obviously ready to take off in paperback. So what did Avon do? Right; it cut the print order, and sales dropped from those of the prior novel in that series. In fact that series, whose first six novels had all been paperback national best-sellers, didn’t make the list with the seventh. No, it wasn’t because the novel was inferior; the consensus of my fan mail was that it was second best after On a Pale Horse, the first novel in that series. It simply had a publisher that wouldn’t address its market.
It gets still worse. At times my mind boggled at what was happening. It was as if these publishers had a death wish, and wanted each novel to sell fewer copies than the prior one. Indeed, this is built into the philosophies of many publishers, to the amazement and chagrin of their writers. The explanation for this becomes complicated, so is separated into its own chapter, “Dynamics.” For now we’ll continue with my own more limited view.
At one point, with what may be the genre record for paperback bestsellers—it totaled twenty-one novels before the string broke—I looked ahead to a likely breakthrough into hardcover bestsellerdom too. I had resolved before I ever became a best-seller that I would not be one of those who were lifted and lowered like chips floating on the tide, and would act intelligently to preserve my fortune. I tried to do that, with good writing, good agenting, and a general comprehension of contracts and markets. There are writers who write well enough, but who seem to have little financial sense; I can handle numbers as well as notions, and make it a point to understand royalty statements. But I had reckoned without the duplicity and sometimes idiocy of publishers.
A good sample case history is Total Recall, my novelization of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. One day I received a call from Avon: would I be interested in novelizing a movie based on a Philip K. Dick story? I have admired Dick’s work; it has a special, peculiar, halfway-crazy quality that appeals to many of us who aren’t as crazy as he was. So I asked to see the script, so that I could judge whether this was for me. Tri-Star promptly sent me a copy of their revised script. I read it and liked it, though there were some hilarious science errors. But I could fix those. So I agreed to do it. I took only a token advance, $1,000, but asked for half the royalties. That is, 5 percent, with the movie folk getting the other 5 percent. Actually they probably had a different financial arrangement; they owned the movie, and the publisher had to pay them for the right to novelize it. But ordinarily writers receive only 2 percent royalties for such projects, so it was a good enough deal for me. I thought.
Working from the script, as if it were a collaboration, I completed the novel in a month. Writing is much faster when you don’t have to stop to figure out where you’re going or how to end it. I fixed the problems, such as Arnold dispatching thirteen of the twelve uglies who attacked him, and the science, such as talking by phone between Earth and Mars with no time delay. Well, in a fashion; I had to spot invent an instantaneous transmitter, so that the poky speed of light wouldn’t make for ten minute or more travel times. I’ve never taken a chemistry course, but I knew it wouldn’t be possible to make breathable air on Planet Mars simply by evaporating a glacier. So I made up some chemistry to make it possible. And I filled in the aliens who had built the nuclear power plant, eons ago. I didn’t touch the settings or dialogue, because they were in the original material, but I did fill in around them so as to provide more clarity and impact. I regretted having to use the four-letter expletives, which I normally don’t use in my fiction, but didn’t feel free to change them. It was my first novelization, but I believe I did the job. Indeed, later fan mail informed me that the book was better than the movie.
