McNally Jackson Panelists Make City Scribes "An Offer We Can't Refuse"

"You Can't Send a Dead Fish as an Attachment"



Date: February 29, 2014
Author: "Behind the Curtain" event with editors Deborah Treisman, James Marcus, Ellah Allfrey, moderated by John Freeman
Venue: McNally Jackson
Neighborhood: Soho
Free Drinks -- no
Q & A -- yes
Book signed -- no
UE Check Number -- benefits expired

Like much of the art that thrills its auteur, "In The Front Row, On the Dole," is not constrained by time. Heck, the previous item is from two years ago. That's why I'm writing an account of this evening's "Behind the Curtain" event a few hours before it happens. If you know the actors, and you know the likely script, why wait?
The truth is that the literary world makes the clubby, insidery art world look like open admissions. Still, you can't just go up to somebody in the Mafia and say, "So, you're in vending machines and garbage collection, that's Sopranos stuff, you're in it right?"
I went to a private, Catholic high school school in New Jersey. Senior year our class president was Frank Genovese (vending machines) so it was doubly stupid of me to ask Radhika Jones (Paris Review, Time magazine) a gentler version of this question after another one of these panels.
At tonight's event, there won't be anyone from the Paris Review, but if one of the Steins were here I would ask them, unless I chickened out, a question supplied by this blog's spiritual advisor, the writer Brando Skyhorse. Brando got a blurb for his exquisite first book, "The Madonnas of Echo Park," from Paris Review co-founder Peter Matthiessen. But since, according to my fellow B.S.'er, the magazine is a closed shop unless you are an FSG author, he couldn't place an excerpt. And this, with Susan Golub (vending machines, Frantzen) as his agent. I guess I could ask that question of tonight's panelists though they could easily say, "I'm here to talk about my magazine."
So what will happen at McNally Jackson tonight is the panelists and the moderator will talk to a hungry audience of writers about how to get into their table of contents, but they won't say how things really work.
Civilian audience members should make a point of not getting between the panelists and the hungry writers the moment after the event ends. There will be a stampede like the running of the bulls. There might be red wine. There might be blood.
I'm an outsider myself, but here are a few guesses paired with my groupie-like and possibly inane, observations about the panelists based on their previous public appearances or in James Marcus' case, this other really cool thing he did.
Deborah Treisman, the New Yorker's fiction editor, will talk about how fiction writers can place their stories in her magazine. I don't have any interesting guesses about what she will say or not say, although a good question would be, "when was the last time your magazine ran a story that arrived unagented? Or "is unagented the same as slush pile?"
My inane observation about Treisman is that when she hosted the New Yorker's "20 under 40" reading last year at the Tribeca 92nd St. "Y," my friend Aditi from my writing class fell in love with her red, leather boots. Often Aditi's take on these things is deeper than mine.
The cool thing about panelist No. 2, James Marcus from Harper's is that he made this angry, old, Jewish man shouting recording with Philip Roth doing the shouting. If I could work a cell phone, I'd love to have that as my ring tone.
Panelist No. 3 is Granta editor Ellah Allfrey. I don't know anything about her and since her colleague John Freeman will be the moderator, let's move on to Freeman.
I'm always bothering John Freeman at these public events and he has been a good sport about it. I hope this post doesn't ruin our amicable non-relationship.
Here is the question I hope to ask John at tonight's event. I'll preface the question with a "I have a friend who," or "Just as a hypothetical, John, if there was a editor of a London-based magazine whose partner was a prominent agent with an address in the west 20's, would it be a faux pas to try to get a manuscript in his hands by sending it to his partner's west 20s address?
Now, it might help if this hypothetical writer knew whether the Chelsea address was a business or an office. But being a literary agent isn't like working for Morgan Stanley, perhaps his partner works out of their home. Most people with residential addresses in Chelsea live further west, but that doesn't prove anything. If the hypothetical writer were to try and get his manuscript in the editor's hands, is sending it to his domestic partner's address a big mistake?
Would such a mailing met with contempt upon arrival at the partner's office regardless of whether it is a home office or a commercial space? It might, but on the other hand, London is in a foreign country and God knows how much postage it takes to send the hypothetical writer's manuscript across the ocean.
If, hypothetically, instead of the couple consisting of two publishing professionals, they were a doctor and a lawyer, if you only had a European address (Ok, debatable whether the UK is Europe), would it be proper to send your medical forms to the lawyer's office in the eastern, west 20s of New York, well, you get the idea.
Recently at a public gathering, Freeman said his and his colleagues’s email were on the Granta site. I couldn't find them. But this is probably only because I’m inept.
At a recent reading, Granta editor Patrick Last Name made a brilliant, off the cuff remark at the end of the reading about how people should now mingle and make remarks they’ll regret.
Anyway, regardless of how available Freeman's email is, it would a good question to just ask the panelists, I mean, since we're opening the curtain supposedly, what their emails are in the public questions and answers session that will occur tonight at McNally Jackson and watch them react.
What's the worst thing that could happen? You can't send a dead fish as an attachment.