Literary Agency

This essay is one part documentation and one part provocation, with a simple goal: to acknowledge the agency of the literary agent. There is no figure more significant to contemporary literary production and less studied by scholars than the agent. Drawing on ethnographic interviews conducted with 28 literary agents over the course of four years, I argue that agents shape the form and content of contemporary fiction by acting as administrators of the logic of the marketplace, conditioning their clients to write in and for the international multimedia conglomerates known as the Big Four. I take the agent’s list to be one of the central organizing heuristics of the contemporary literary field and read the list of one agent, Nicole Aragi, to examine what I call “corporate taste”: personal aesthetic judgments carefully calibrated to anticipate and respond to the demands of publishing conglomerates.Agents calibrate their aesthetic judgments to anticipate and respond to the demands of publishers and the market, becoming administrators of the logic of the corporation, thus shaping the form and content of contemporary fiction.

Thinking in Straight Lines

“Thinking in Straight Lines:” Roth in the 1980s was knocked about by health, and his strained relationship with Bloom, became restless with England and began to question his identity, which found expression in The Counterlife, as experimental in form as in its story. Collectively, these events prevented any “straight thinking.” The chapter also narrates the growing role of Nathan Zuckerman in his writing, plus Roth’s friendships (and then nonfriendships) with James Atlas and Ross Miller, his first official biographer (later fired), and his longtime friend Theodore Solotaroff. The centrality of The Anatomy Lesson from 1983, focusing on pain and healing, receives extended discussion. Three years later Roth, with his friend David Plante, visit Israel, an experience that reappears in Operation Shylock. During this time, Roth signs with the ambitious literary agent Andrew Wylie and through him renews several mega literary deals reestablishing Roth’s financial clout. Other topics include Roth’s meaningful friendship with Primo Levi, interviewed in 1986 (and dead the following year) and the increasing role of mortality in his writing, intensified by the death of his father in 1989 and then the publication of Patrimony in 1991.

Paratext Analysis of Patronage Factors

Drawing on André Lefevere's rewriting theory, this paper endeavours to explore how Howard Goldblatt translates Mo Yan's novel Life and Death Are Wearing Me Out (hereafter referred to as L&D) with regard to patronage control by way of paratext analysis. Seven categories of patronage factors, including original author, translator, literary cooperative, publisher and editor, market expectancy, literary agent, and target reader, are identified as the objective of paratext analysis. Paratext analysis of these patronage factors provides greater insights into the unique attributes of Goldblatt's translation. The results show that apart from adhering to the target ideological and poetological currents in his translation, Goldblatt also excels in mediating between various patronage factors, striving to seek a balance among external power constraints, and finally producing a translation geared to the reader's expectation.

Dream Collaborations: From the History of Eugene O’Neill’s Failed Projects

This article is focused on Eugene O’Neill’s failed artistic collaborations with outstanding directors, actors and singers. It is the first attempt, in the Russian theatre studies, to get to the truth behind the playwright’s unrealized tandem with the legendary opera singer Feodor Chaliapin. The creative destiny of O’Neill’s play Lazarus Laughed (1927) is tracked from the attempts to stage it in New York, Chicago, Berlin and Moscow, all the way to the long-anticipated premiere at the Pasadena Playhouse in Pasadena, California. Special attention is paid to the Kamerny Theatre shows in Paris and Buenos Aires. Also under scrutiny is the American playwright’s private correspondence — in particular, with literary agent Richard Madden, translator Alexander Berkman and theatre producer Kenneth Macgowan. Particular emphasis is put on the playwright’s work behind the scenes and his active contribution to the translation of his ideas to the stage. The article reflects O’Neill’s approach to picking actors for lead roles in the stage productions of his plays, and also gives a logical conclusion to his failed meeting with two-time Academy Award winner Spencer Tracy at the Tao House in Danville, California. The paper provides a review of Ingrid Bergman’s acting performance in the Anna Christie production (Lobero Theatre, Santa Barbara, 1941) and in Jose Quintero’s Broadway production More Stately Mansions (Broadhurst Theatre, New York, 1967) based on Eugene O’Neill’s late unfinished play.

Representation

‘Representation’ is one of the most difficult and contentious terms in literary studies. The word refers both to the process by which an artwork depicts the world, and to the dynamic by which people obtain recognition within political systems. Closely related to the second of these definitions is yet a third that is much less commonly examined—namely, the process by which authors first catch the attention of powerful publishing consortia. In this chapter, the literary agent and publisher Sridhar Aghalaya outlines his primary mission, which is not the representation of his clients to publishing houses in the Western world, but rather the demolition of a conservative and caste-bound literary system within India itself.

Nathalie Abroad, 1959–64

This chapter describes the widespread foreign interest in Nathalie Sarraute's work after “The Planetarium” was published, including contracts for translation and invitations to give talks and lectures. It highlights Nathalie's distinctive profile on the English language and to Maria Jolas's links with publishers in the United States and the United Kingdom. It also mentions Nathalie's acquisition of a literary agent in the United States, Renée Spodheim, who reported that enquiries about a translation of “Portrait of an Unknown Man” had come from the London publisher, Peter Owen, and from George Braziller in the United States. The chapter details Nathalie's tour of the United States, where she was treated like royalty and taken to the best restaurants. It discloses Nathalie's enthusiasm for the United States, in which she made thirteen further visits over the course of the next thirty years.

Besant, Chatto, and Watt

Walter Besant was a very successful novelist in the late nineteenth century but his income never quite matched his popularity, which rose in the 1880s and slowly fell thereafter. He did not use the royalty system in his contracts but instead sold his copyrights either outright or for a limited term to book, magazine, and newspaper publishers. This was probably an expression of his doubts about the longer-term success of his work. He was one of the earliest significant novelists to use the services of A. P. Watt, the first formal literary agent in the UK. Watt was able to farm Besant’s literary property by splitting it into UK book rights (usually sold to Chatto and Windus), foreign book rights, first serialisation rights, second serialisation rights, and syndication in various newspaper and magazine markets in the USA, Europe, and British Empire. In the 1890s Besant earned an average of £1,750 for each of his major novels. Besant claimed that Watt had increased his income significantly. There is evidence that Watt did have an effect, but that Besant becoming a solo writer after 1881 – and gaining securer income in the USA from the Chace Act (1891) – were the more important factors.