The Editor Calls Me to Lunch
Part I of a Four Part Bore-a-thon
Over the winter I got a letter from the lawyers in charge of the blind pool in Panama that owns the Mill. The Gray sisters have renewed Sam Hughes’s contract as our Editor-in-Chief for another year. This is good news for us. Sam Hughes was the EIC last year and we didn’t get in any trouble for not turning a profit during the 2015 season. He and I were supposed to have a meeting where I had to explain the bottom line, but he cancelled it to go sailing. There aren’t many good sailing days in September. You have to take them when you can.
This morning I was reviewing the Mill ledgers with a crayon, making the red “ink” even redder, when the room was filled with a persistent and bothersome buzzing. At first I thought that maybe some of Brother Basil’s bees had made their way into the office, but there was no activity in the air. Then I thought it might be in my head, because the ledgers are quite clear that we don’t have any money for the May Convocation, Augustfest, or the 2016 Midenema Awards. Exasperated, I shouted, “Good Heavens! What is that buzzing?”
Pee Wee, my flunky, isn’t here yet. He is still in South Korea with his family, and the lawyers want to review whether he is a racist trope before we have him back this summer. He would have told me that it was my phone buzzing. He sets my phone to vibrate because he gets sick of listening to ‘The Girl From Ipanema,’ which is my default ringtone. I missed the the call, but I soon received the following text:
The Tavern Club! Noon at the Tavern Club! “I’m going to get shouted to lunch at the Tavern Club,” I thought. “This is going to be great.” He had sent a second message. It read.
My excitement waned. It was, after all, going to be a meeting with an editor.
I had one of the painters drive me down to the Tavern Club in the van. When I asked him what his name was, he said “Dank.”
I said, “I thought the head of the crew’s name was ‘Dank’”.
He said, “We all call each other ‘Dank’. It’s part of the dankest of dank memes.” He pronounced “meme” as “mem — may.”
When I walked in the door of the Tavern Club there were only three men in the bar, and one of them, a great big six-foot fellow in a tweed jacket, stepped over and offered me his hand. “Good to see you Gutbloom,” he said, “Come, let me get you a drink.”
Sam Hughes is everything one would hope for in an editor. He is a giant of a man, with a pumpkin-sized head sprouting undisciplined brown and grey hair. His skin is all-too-white, craggy, and spotted with age and sun. He was wearing, as I said, a tweed jacket, because, really, what else could he have worn? He had on flannel pants and great scuffed-up hard shoes. His feet were enormous, as were his hands, one of which pointed to a bar that was no more than a card table with bottles of scotch, gin, vodka, and bourbon. In the center of the table was a great silver bowl of ice, and a barman stood behind it.
“What will you have?” He asked.
“I’ll have a scotch,” I said.
“Excellent.” He said, “I’ll have two.”
The barman asked, “You’ll have one too, sir?”
“No”, said Samuel, “I’ll have two. What’s the afternoon for except to sober up from lunch?” Then he slapped me on the back. It was as organic a gesture as any in the universe. The second his hand met my shoulder I knew he had done it a million times in his life. It’s remarkable how rewarding a slap on the back can be when it comes from someone like Samuel Hughes.
He found a bowl of mixed nuts somewhere, picked it up with the same hand holding his double scotch, and then pointed to a pair of leather chairs with his free hand. “Let’s sit there and talk about the upcoming season,” he said.
“I have a few ideas for 2016,” He said, popping nuts into his mouth and chewing as he spoke, “But I want to hear what you have in mind first. You’ve had the winter to plan. What’s this year’s money maker?”
“Well,” I said, “Given the troubles with book publishing…”
“I’ll let you continue, but remember that the Omnimedia still floats because of our backlist. We translated “The Gay Pirates of Dionysus” into Arabic and Mandarin and it’s selling like hot cakes. If it wasn’t for the “Space Nurse” series and “Cat Obsession” we wouldn’t be able to afford these nuts.”
“Well,” I said, “given the trouble we been having with English language books lately, I thought that this year we might build what is called an ‘open-source prose comic.’”
“Explain that to me,” he said.
“Well, a prose-comic is the opposite of a graphic novel. A graphic novel is a comic book with the thematic complexity and merit of a literary work. A prose-comic, on the other hand, is a piece of prose that has the emotional immaturity and meager literary value of most comic books.”
“Many comic books are quite literary,” said Hughes. “Some fine works of literature can be found in comics.”
“Well,” I said, “This is a prose-comic where the ‘comic’ is like a Richie Rich comic, or maybe Sad Sack.”
“Hah,” he laughed, and pieces of nuts flew out of his mouth. “… or maybe ‘Hot Stuff the Little Devil’ and all those other Harvey Comic titles. What were they, ‘Casper the Friendly Ghost’ and ‘Wendy Witch’… go on”
“But this is an open-source prose comic,” I said, “meaning that we just write the foundation…”
“You mean ‘platform’ don’t you?” He asked, “In open-source models you usually call whatever crap you’re trying to trick other people into developing a ‘platform’.”
“Yes,” I said, “We provide the ‘platform… some setting, main characters, perhaps a plot line or two…”
“And then you have worker bees of the Internet hive start writing. They write fan, slash, and crack fiction until you have a story.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“There’s a problem,” he said, “If other people are writing it, you’ve already given away the publishing rights, the control of the characters, and any hope of not getting sued if you put any of it on paper and try to charge even a farthing for it. So, how do you plan to make money?”
“I thought we could make it up on volume.” I said.
“Hah,” and here he laughed a great billowing laugh. “I like it. Volume! Of course, we’ll make it up on volume.”
…continued in Meeting With Sam Hughes: First and Second Courses.
