The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald (12 page)

Hoag:
Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.

Noyes:
Talked his way into Wilhelmina as a gofer for the summer after our freshman year — watched and listened, fetched coffee. That was his apprenticeship as an agent. He went right from it into publishing.

Hoag:
Because you did?

Noyes:
Because I did. … That was a great summer for us. He’d wangled us an illegal sublet of a great faculty apartment on Riverside. I modeled when I felt like it, wrote when I didn’t. That was when I wrote
Bang
. Scribbled the entire first draft longhand in five days and nights on a coke binge. It was unvarnished stream of consciousness. I just let myself go, like cutting the ropes on a hot-air balloon. Who knows where it came from. I sure don’t. When I was done, I passed out for twenty-four hours. Then I spent a couple of weeks polishing it and typing it up. The original manuscript came to a little under a hundred pages. I submitted it to Tanner in the fall, hoping once again to get into his class. This time he sent me a note summoning me up to his office. … He really is scary the first time you meet him — the antique rolltop desk, the framed correspondence on the wall from John Cheever and Bernard Malamud, the pipe, and the way he looks down his nose at you. I mean, the man can make you feel so incredibly insignificant without even trying.

Hoag:
Oh, he’s trying.

Noyes:
He told me to take a seat. Then he sat down and very deliberately got his rucking pipe going and stared at me. And kept staring at me, not saying a word. Finally, he declared, in that voice of his, “Young Master Noyes, I am not impressed by your little manuscript.” Just as I started shriveling in my chair he said, “I am …
awed.
” And with that Tanner Marsh fell to his knees before me and kissed my shoes. He really kissed them. And then he clutched me by the ankles and said, “From this day forward, I am your humble servant. Use me.”

(end tape)

(Tape #4 with Cam Noyes recorded May 10 in his study. Sips iced herbal tea
,
fiddles with bowie knife
.
)

Hoag:
You look well rested today.

Noyes:
Couldn’t help that. Vic insisted on coming to dinner with Boyd and me last night, like some kind of chaperon. I half expected him to cut my meat for me.

Hoag:
He would have, if you’d asked him nice.

Noyes:
At the stroke of midnight he said to me, “Let’s go.” I said, go where? He said, “Home.” When I refused, he dragged me out of the restaurant like I was some kind of dog. I was still so wide-awake I started reading
The Great Gatsby
. I’m really enjoying it. Thanks for getting it for me.

Hoag:
My pleasure.

Noyes:
Fitzgerald wrote so gracefully and beautifully. I’m actually kind of surprised he’s compared to me.

Hoag:
He’s not. You’re compared to him.

Noyes:
You’re right. Sorry.

Hoag:
Just a meaningless label, anyway. The new F. Scott Fitzgerald. The new Willie Mays. That’s the only way the press knows how to deal with someone who’s entirely special.

Noyes:
I promised Boyd I’d talk to you about … Well, he’s concerned over what I have to say about Tanner and Skitsy. He thinks some of it might not be so great for my image. You know, not flattering.

Hoag:
Candor is always flattering.

Noyes:
I know, but he said Tanner and Skitsy could just deny it anyway.

Hoag:
Absolutely. I intend to give them that chance.

Noyes:
You do?

Hoag:
I do. A memoir that acknowledges the other side of the story is always richer and more intelligent for it.

Noyes:
I see …

Hoag:
Look, Cameron. You’re an author, not a talk show host. Forget about image. That’s how you got blocked up.

Noyes:
I know, coach, but what would happen if I … if I didn’t go along with you on this one?

Hoag:
Same thing that would happen if you fired Vic.

Noyes:
You’re a hard man to please.

Hoag:
It’s true. Don’t ever go to a movie with me.

Noyes:
I don’t know what to do.
(pause)
I want to please Boyd …

Hoag:
It’s not Boyd’s book. It’s yours.

Noyes:
I know, I know. It’s just that I also want you to respect me, and it seems I can’t win either way. I lose your respect if I don’t tell you what really went on … and I lose it if I
do
.

Hoag:
As long as you tell the truth, you’ll have my respect.

Noyes:
You mean it?

Hoag:
I mean it.

Noyes: (silence)
Okay, coach. We’ll try it your way.

Hoag:
Good man. When we left off, Tanner Marsh was on his knees.

Noyes:
Yes, telling me I was a genius. So I said, “You’re accepting me for your class?” And he said, “Absolutely not. The last thing a talent such as yours needs is to be polluted by sitting around a table with a dozen pimply kids ranting on about their creative cores. What you need is a great editor. You need me!” He said he wanted us to work together on the manuscript. Focus it, broaden it, take out some of the self-indulgence. And then submit it to a certain publisher who he knew would share his enthusiasm — actually publish it.

Hoag:
How did this make you feel?

Noyes:
I was flattered, naturally.

Hoag:
Not good enough. Dig deeper.

Noyes: (silence)
As if all of it — the pain, the loneliness, the apartness — had been worth enduring. Because they had forged me. Made me into
someone
. I remember thinking I’d like to send a copy to Kirsten’s mother when it came out, inscribed with the words “Fuck you.” Is that better?

Hoag:
Somewhat.

Noyes:
Tanner worked with me every evening in his office for the next couple of weeks, talking over the manuscript page by page. He was incredibly helpful. He knew exactly where I needed to go, even though I didn’t know myself. For all of his bullying and grossness, the man really does know a manuscript. The murder-suicide thing at the end was actually his idea. I’d originally left it very vague as to what happens with the gun. He convinced me I was wrong. When we finished going over it, he asked me how long it would take me to rewrite it. I told him modeling was basically how I paid my way, and between it and the occasional class I didn’t think I could finish until maybe Christmas. He said that was no good, we had to strike at once because my age was such a plus. He puffed away on his pipe a minute and said, “Young Master Noyes, you’ve just been named a New Age writing fellow.” I was
stunned
. Some of the major authors of the past twenty years had won New Age fellowships. It meant stupendous prestige. More to the point, it meant ten thousand dollars. He said he could arrange immediate residency for me at the Stony Creek Writers Colony in Vermont. He encouraged me to take a leave from school, go up there, and finish the book as soon as possible. So I did. He drove me up there. It was a lovely autumn day. The leaves were just starting to turn. An editor who happened to be visiting one of her authors up there rode along with us.

Hoag:
Her name would be Skitsy Held?

Noyes:
That’s right. Tanner arranged it, of course. Skitsy was the editor he thought would share his enthusiasm for me.

Hoag:
What did you think of her?

Noyes:
She seemed hard-shell, but nice enough. The two of them spent most of the ride gossiping about people I’d never heard of. I nodded off. Of course, I had no idea then at the extent of their relationship, or how they operated.

Hoag:
Let’s talk about that.

Noyes: (silence)
Tanner and Skitsy go back twenty-five years, back to when she was a blushing Barnard coed and he was an associate English professor. This was long before she had tits. Or at least the same exact pair we know today.
(laughs)
He was still married to his first wife at the time. Skitsy broke up the marriage, actually. His
New Age Fiction Quarterly
was in its infancy. When she graduated, he made her his teaching assistant and put her to work on it. She helped him start the New Age Writers Conference, which he still does for a week every summer in the Catskills. Ever go?

Hoag:
Once, a few centuries ago.

Noyes:
There are a number of writers’ conferences now, but his was the first, and is still the biggest. The idea, as I’m sure you know, is to offer would-be writers from around the country a chance to rub shoulders with genuine New York publishers and hopefully sell them that Great American Novel they’ve been toiling on in their basement since 1946. He takes over a resort hotel in the Catskills for a week, and for a fee of what is now a thousand dollars, several hundred of these housewives and carpeting salesmen flock to it, manuscript in tow. He invites a dozen or so editors, literary agents, and big-name authors to come, and they do come. It’s an excellent opportunity for them to promote their own books, and they usually get laid up there. There are cocktail mixers, seminars, panel discussions. Editors talk about what they look for in a manuscript. Authors say how they made it. The whole thing is a scam — not one new writer has ever been discovered at a New Age Writers Conference. But they keep flocking to it, and Tanner keeps getting rich off of it. He’s really quite shrewd. By awarding fellowships to people like me, he’s allowed to say the
Quarterly
is published by a nonprofit foundation. That’s entirely legitimate, since the magazine never makes any money. But the conference does. Lots of it. He claims that the profits from it underwrite the fellowships. They don’t. He pockets them. Keeps an entirely bogus set of books. Walks away with about fifty thousand dollars a year from the foundation, tax free.

Hoag:
Which he stands to lose when this is published.

Noyes:
Yes. I suppose he will.

Hoag:
How do you know all of this?

Noyes:
I’ll get to that. Eventually, Skitsy became a very successful editor. She and Tanner married and divorced. Though the divorce was ugly, their greed still cements them together. Thanks to the
Quarterly
and to his own horn-blowing, Tanner enjoys an enviable reputation for discovering new writers. He steers a lot of them her way. It’s a good deal for her because she knows he’ll excerpt them in the
Quarterly
, which is the Good Housekeeping Seal of Hype for a first novel. Guarantees a review in the
New York Times
. If the
Times
review is good — and how can it not be if Tanner’s writing it — then the other newspapers and the newsmagazines and the book clubs will fall into line. Then Skitsy can start taking out ads. For another ten grand she can buy her way onto the Walden’s Recommended List, which gets her chain shelf-space, and from there it isn’t far to the best-seller list. As a payback, she throws a nice finders fee Tanner’s way. See, Skitsy has her own little scam, and it’s quite a beauty. She takes kickbacks. In the case of
Bang
, for instance, she offered $35,000. That’s good money for a first novel by an unknown. I only saw $25,000 of it. Boyd had to give ten of it back to her, and she split that with Tanner. Not huge stakes, but they can be. In the case of Delilah’s book, she offered Boyd $250,000 with the understanding that $50,000 came back to her. She’s put away a couple of million tax free through the years that way.

Hoag:
Doesn’t her company get suspicious?

Noyes:
Murray Hill Press is one of the last of the small independent houses, and she’s the boss. As far as anyone there knows, the only thing she’s guilty of is overpaying, which is no problem since her titles almost always make money. Other publishers hate her because she’s inflated prices across the board to accommodate her kickback, though most of them don’t really know why she’s inflated them. The agents do. Some of them won’t stand for it — the older ones in particular. She steers around them, does business with the ones who will, like Boyd, and steers clients their way. She
is
worth it. She makes authors a lot of money. And it’s not like they’re getting ripped off. Her company is the one that is.

Hoag:
I think I understand now how Boyd pried you away from her — he threatened to tell the Internal Revenue Service, didn’t he?

Noyes:
No, he was much more creative than that. Boyd’s an artist, coach. Want to know how he did it?

Hoag:
Do tell.

Noyes:
Skitsy signed me up for a second book before
Bang
came out. A smart investment on her part. She was able to get me for a modest $50,000. I was able to get an advance. Who knew the book would go through the roof? When it did, I was worth ten times what she’d paid. Naturally, Boyd was dying to get me out of it. But how? She had a signed contract. So what he did was tell her I was suffering from acute anxiety brought on by the sudden success of
Bang
, and couldn’t write. He told her I felt incredibly pressured by a signed contract, that I needed to work just like I had before — on spec, no pressure. He proposed that we return the advance to her and that she tear up the contract — all of this strictly for the benefit of my delicate artist’s psyche, mind you — and then when I had written a few chapters we’d submit it to her and sign a new deal on the same exact terms. Word of honor. She agreed to it. We gave her back the advance. She tore up the contract. Boyd sold my second book to another house for a million and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. Strictly legal.

Hoag:
I wouldn’t have expected her to fall for that.

Noyes:
Let’s say she was somewhat blinded by personal considerations.

Hoag:
What kind of personal considerations?

Noyes: (silence)
Skitsy Held has … she has this itch for young writers. And I was scratching her itch, okay?

(end tape)

(Tape #5 with Cam Noyes recorded May 12 in his study.)