The other day, I got a phone call from my agent, Josh “Finagler” Finkle. He sounded apoplectic; but, although I don’t speak to him all that often, I have gathered that this is his normal state, so I didn’t pay any attention to it. “Hi,” I said. “How are things?”
“Not bad,” Josh said, guardedly. “The Johnny Laframboise Junior Detective League is all set to role. We’ve produced the decoder home computer programme and liquor dispensing wristwatches…”
Josh kills me. “Decoder home computer programme?” I giggled.
“We have to keep up with the times,” Josh explained. “I know that you are quite amused by my efforts, but do try to remember that you get 30 per cent of the before tax profits on all products based on your characters or concepts.”
I stopped giggling. “Oh,” was all I could think to say.
“What have you been up to?” Josh innocently asked me.
“Oh, a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” I told him. “I’ve been working on some stories for a second book, and looking for a job to make some money to tide me ov -“
Josh cut me off. “That’s nice, but I was talking about your first book, Zen and the Art of International Politics? You remember it, of course. What have you been doing to promote it?”
“Well, not much, I guess…”
“I thought not. I have a few ideas along those lines, if you’d consider them without feeling like I’m taking you away from your precious writing…”
I don’t like sarcasm…at least, not when it’s directed towards me. But, I guess I must have felt guilty for not doing more self-promotion, so I told Josh to give me his ideas.
“Great,” he said, booming with enthusiasm that seemed, over the phone, anyway, to be tinged with hysteria. “How would you like to do a promotional tour of the United States?”
“I’d love it!” I exclaimed.
“Well, we can’t afford it. What I suggest we do, therefore, is announce an American tour, set up dates, then have the American government not allow you to enter the country. You…you’ve never written anything nasty about American environmental policy, have you?”
“Umm…no…”
“I don’t suppose…for the sake of some publicity, you understand…that you might consider…”
“Definitely not!” I blurted when I realized where Josh was heading. He seemed to take my refusal in stride.
“No, of course not,” he agreed. “You are, after all, the artist, and I suppose you have the right to write about whatever subject you choose. Still…I don’t suppose there is anything in your past…possibly a pot shot at an army plane carrying a nuclear device…?”
“I stole some gumballs, once.”
“It would be a sorry world, indeed, if a man couldn’t cross a border because he had stolen some chewing gum.”
“Okay, okay…there may be something more serious. But, who knows what the American Immigration Department will or will not take offense at?”
“Good point,” Josh quietly agreed. “We don’t want to commit ourselves to a major American tour only to have the Immigration Department let you go through with it at the last moment. Do you have any idea how much a fiasco like that could set us back? Let’s consider our alternatives…”
“Which are?”
“I have connections with Elspeth Cameron. How would you like to have your biography written?”
“What’s the catch?”
“Well, you have to disavow the biography six months later, and then write your own autobiography. My goodness, the row that that would cause could give us free publicity for two, three, who knows how many months!”
I thought this proposal over for a moment. “I don’t know,” I demurred. “I mean, I’m only 25. That’s not very old to have a biography. Who would take it seriously?”
“Adrian Mole wrote his first book when he was 12 and a half!” Josh argued, angrily. “Look, do you want immortality, or do you want to be stuck in the for four a quarter bins all your life?”
Not wishing to seem inflammatory, I phrased my response very carefully. “Look, Josh,” I said, “sure, I want to be successful. And, I’m willing to spend time working on publicity – although I wish a book could be successful on the quality of its writing alone. But, your schemes have to have a reasonable chance of success when applied to my career. I don’t want something like this to blow up in our faces.”
I must have said something right, because I could hear Josh stop fuming at the other end. “Fair enough,” he finally said. “I have one other idea: would it be possible to turn a house you have lived in – not necessarily the one you are living in now, mind – into a cultural centre, a sort of shrine to your writing?”
I stifled the giggle. “Why don’t you suggest that to a more established writer…maybe Margaret Laurence?” I asked Josh. He bristled.
“Where do you think I got the idea in the first place?”