by Gail Godwin
Now Paul is driving us home from the party. My editor, Nancy Miller, and my agent, Moses Cardona, are with me in the backseat; Frances Halsband, who came down on an afternoon train, is in the front seat. We are pooling our impressions of the party.
Suddenly something out of the Arabian Nights—or fin de siècle France—blazes up ahead of us on Massachusetts Avenue.
“Look at that!” I cry. “What is it? An exotic embassy?”
“No,” says Frances. “It’s just the Cosmos Club, where I’m spending the night. It’s much dowdier inside.”
Nancy and I say good night in the lobby of the Hotel Washington (now known as the W), where the rest of us are staying, including my brother and sister-in-law. Nancy and I will leave early in the morning for North Carolina. It’s a good thing we can’t see into the future, so we are spared the canceled flight in Charlotte, the perfect thunderstorm while she is driving us from Memphis to Oxford, Mississippi, the eight-hour delay going home.
Moses, always the gent, accompanies me to my room. Earlier he sent flowers, which we took on to the Lehrers’ party. “If you’re not too tired,” I say, “come in and let’s have a postmortem. The hotel left me a nice looking bottle of red wine and I’d be happy to see you drink it.”
He opens the wine and takes the chair by the window, and I curl up on the bed. Of course we talk about John Hawkins first, and the last time the three of us were here in Washington, in the fall of 2001, September 8 and 9, to be exact, two days before the unimaginable events of 9/11. I had been invited to read at Laura Bush’s inaugural National Book Festival, and had asked John to go with me to the reading and dinner at the Library of Congress and the White House breakfast the next morning. It was my first outing since Robert’s death back in April. Moses made all the arrangements, including our reservations at the Willard, and announced at the last minute that he was coming with us, “not to the events, but to take care of you both.”
We haven’t quite swung into our party postmortem when there is a knock and in come Rebel and Caroline.
“Aha!” cries Caroline to Moses. “Now you have someone to share your wine with. I had my eye on that bottle earlier.”
Rebel has his own libation in a paper cup and he has brought me a Meyer lemon for my future bottled waters and a small plastic knife, that item most precious to fliers. ‘This lemon should last you the rest of your trip if you’re careful,” he says.
They snuggle up on either side of me in the bed, my baby brother, born when I was a senior in college, and his Lady Caroline, whom our mother would have thoroughly appreciated, had they been able to know each other.
“I asked Jim if you kept to the forty-eight seconds,” Rebel reports. “He said you actually came in at forty-seven.”
The lamps are lit and the party begins all over again.
Chronology
1902
Mrs. Craddock by the doctor Somerset Maugham, age twenty-eight, published in England by Heinemann after author agrees to remove shocking passages.
1912
Kathleen Krahenbuhl born in Selma, Alabama.
1918
“Proff” Frederick H. Koch arrives at UNC, Chapel Hill, to teach playwriting; Thomas Wolfe is in his class.
1929
Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe, age twenty-nine, of Asheville, N.C., published by Scribner.
1934
Kathleen Krahenbuhl writes and performs in her Carolina Playmakers plays at Chapel Hill.
1937
Gail Godwin born in Bessemer, Alabama.
1942–1945
Kathleen Godwin works as general assignment reporter at the Asheville Citizen-Times and publishes under pen names in love story pulps.
1954
Confessions of Felix Krull: Confidence Man (The Early Years) by Thomas Mann, age seventy-nine, published by Knopf.
1957
Gail waits tables during summer at Mayview Manor, Blowing Rock, N.C.
1957–1959
Gail earns B.A. in journalism at UNC, Chapel Hill.
1959–1961
Gail works as general assignment reporter for the Miami Herald.
1961
Adrift in Soho, by Colin Wilson, age thirty, published by Gollancz.
1962–1966
Gail works for United States Travel Service in London.
1967–1971
Gail at University of Iowa; attends Iowa Writers’ Workshop, earns M.A. and Ph.D. in English literature.
1968
John Hawkins sells The Perfectionists to David Segal at Harper & Row.
1970
The Perfectionists published when Gail is thirty-three. David Segal moves to Knopf as a senior editor, dies. Robert Gottlieb becomes Gail’s editor.
1972
Gail on postdoctoral fellowship at University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Knopf publishes Glass People. Gail begins The Odd Woman. Gail has summer residence at Yaddo artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, N.Y.; meets composer Robert Starer.
1973
Gail and Robert move to Stone Ridge, N.Y.
1974
Knopf publishes The Odd Woman (finalist for National Book Award).
1976
Knopf publishes Dream Children (stories); Gail and Robert move to Woodstock, N.Y.
1978
Knopf publishes Violet Clay (1979 finalist for National Book Award).
1982
A Mother and Two Daughters published by Viking (finalist for National Book Award).
1983
Viking publishes Mr. Bedford and the Muses (a novella and stories).
1985
Viking publishes The Finishing School.
1987
Morrow publishes A Southern Family (wins Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award).
1989
Kathleen Cole dies in automobile crash.
1991
Morrow publishes Father Melancholy’s Daughter.
1994
Random House–Ballantine publishes The Good Husband.
1999
Random House–Ballantine publishes Evensong.
2001
Morrow publishes Heart; Robert dies.
2003
Random House–Ballantine publishes Evenings at Five.
2006
Random House publishes Queen of the Underworld and The Making of a Writer, Volume One, edited by Rob Neufeld.
2009
Random House publishes Unfinished Desires.
2011
Random House publishes The Making of a Writer, Volume Two. John Hawkins dies.
2013
Bloomsbury USA and Bloomsbury UK publish Flora.
List of Illustrations
Frontispiece
Louis Round Wilson Library, formerly the university library, now the home of the Southern Collection and Gail Godwin’s archives.
Looking toward Bynum from the porch of Playmakers Theater
“I walked in my mother’s own footsteps, until she would have turned left toward the Playmakers sunny temple, and continued on alone to gloomy Bynum.”
Kathleen Krahenbuhl’s set for Manhattan Twilight
“Proff said it looked very professional.”
Anglo-Saxon banqueting hall
“Whether I was the warrior with the gold cup or Bede’s little sparrow darting through the banqueting hall, we were all going to vanish.”
A scholar’s reading room inside Wilson Library
Where Gail’s papers are archived today.
Robert’s Yamaha Grand
“When Robert’s health worsened . . . and he felt too sad to compose music, he decided to write a novel about an Austrian-born piano teacher.”
Villa Godstar
Gail and Robert’s Woodstock house.
Kathleen’s journals
“Would you consider letting me put these in my Wilson Library archives at Chapel Hill?”
Auction Day, 1990
“It was raining, so we sat
under the eaves of a little church on top of a mountain.”
Packing for book tour
Silver jacket, Victorian brooch, and “silver eminence” beads.
Grand Masonic Hall
“I love it that the setting for this freemasonry among people of the book was the Grand Masonic Hall in New York on the night we were celebrating the life of my agent and confidant of forty-three years.”
St. Genevieve-of-the-Pines
“I photocopied a picture of the old Victorian building on a piece of red paper, put the title, The Red Nun: A Tale of Unfinished Desires, at the top, and taped this paper to the wall above my computer screen.”
Three-wheeled motorcycle
On which Finn rides in and becomes “the third wheel” of their fate.
The empty desk
“I discovered I liked the view from the armchair: my empty computer screen on its desk and a lineup of all my American hardcovers on the shelf above.”
The Lehrers’ library
“The lamps are lit and the party has begun.”
The Lehrers’ library and porch
“I do a little dance step back and forth over the threshold, to emphasize that I am dividing my sentences fairly between the two audiences.”
Acknowledgments
Moses Cardona, Nancy Miller, and Evie Preston contributed immensely to Publishing: A Writer’s Memoir. I am so glad to have them in my corner.
A Note on the Author
Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and bestselling author of fourteen critically acclaimed novels, including Flora, Queen of the Underworld, The Good Husband, A Mother and Two Daughters, Father Melancholy’s Daughter, and Evensong; two story collections, Dream Children and Mr. Bedford and the Muses; and a nonfiction work, Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings. She is the author of The Making of a Writer, volumes one and two, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, the Janet Heidinger Kafka prize, the Thomas Wolfe Award, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
She lives in Woodstock, New York. Visit her website at www.gailgodwin.com.
A Note on the Illustrator
Frances Halsband is a founding partner of Kliment Halsband Architects in New York City. The firm does master planning and design for schools and universities. They have received the Medal of Honor and the Architecture Firm Award from the American Institute of Architects. Frances has served as a commissioner of the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission and as dean of the School of Architecture at Pratt Institute. She did the drawings for Gail Godwin’s Evenings at Five. Her website is www.kliment-halsband.com.
By the Same Author
NOVELS
Flora
Unfinished Desires
Queen of the Underworld
Evenings at Five
Evensong
The Good Husband
Father Melancholy’s Daughter
A Southern Family
The Finishing School
A Mother and Two Daughters
Violet Clay
The Odd Woman
Glass People
The Perfectionists
STORY COLLECTIONS
Mr. Bedford and the Muses
Dream Children
NON-FICTION
The Making of a Writer: Journals, vols. 1 and 2
Heart: A Personal Journey Through Its Myths and Meanings
Also Available from Gail Godwin
Grief Cottage
The haunting tale of a desolate cottage, and the hair-thin junction between this life and the next, from three-time National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Gail Godwin.
The islanders call it “Grief Cottage,” because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before. Their bodies were never found and the cottage has stood empty ever since. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that—an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us.
“Grief Cottage further confirms that Gail Godwin is one of our country’s very finest novelists.”
—Ron Rash, author of The Risen and Above the Waterfall
Copyright © 2015 by Gail Godwin
Illustrations copyright © 2015 by Frances Halsband
All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce, or otherwise make
available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including
without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing,
recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. For information,
write to Bloomsbury USA, 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Bloomsbury is a trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Godwin, Gail.
Publishing : a Writer’s Memoir / Gail Godwin; illustrations
by Frances Halsband. —First U.S. Edition.
pages cm
eISBN 978-1-62040-826-1
1. Godwin, Gail. 2. Women authors, American—20th century—
Biography. 3. Publishers and publishing—United States—Biography.
4. Authorship. I. Halsband, Frances, illustrator. II. Title.
PS3557.O315Z46 2015
813’.54—dc23
[B]
2014014696
First published in the United States in 2015
This electronic edition published in January 2015
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