Original Love. J.J. Murray

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      After a harrowing trip from JFK around roadblocks, under flag-draped windows, and past closed-off streets in my rented Nova, I show the synopsis to my old editor, Henry L. Milton, at Olympus Publishing in midtown Manhattan. Light streams into Henry’s forty-third floor office, sooty clouds obscuring the street below. Aside from some classical harp music, nothing seems to move in Henry’s office, not even the air, as he reads.

      Henry shakes his head, his gray ponytail swishing behind him, flashes of light reflecting off a tiny lightning bolt earring. Henry still thinks he’s a child of the sixties, even though he wears a blue Armani suit.

      “Pete, this sounds far too depressing for a romantic comedy,” he says from his lavender leather swivel chair, stacks of red-lined manuscripts littering his desk, a smiley face screen saver dancing on his computer screen.

      “I know it sounds depressing at first, but—”

      “Unless this is an attempt at literary nonfiction.”

      “It can be, but—”

      “Literary nonfiction is played out, Pete. The market was simply glutted after Angela’s Ashes. Every dysfunctional European immigrant was writing his or her horrid memoirs. You aren’t Irish, are you?”

      “English and Dutch, mostly.” That makes me Dunglish or Englutch, an American mutt.

      “Did your Da leave you?”

      No, and that in itself is a tragedy. “No.”

      “Then you’re not dysfunctional enough.”

      “My mother did.” And that was a miracle.

      “Yeah? When?”

      “Back in seventy-five.”

      “Hmm. Liberated herself before the Bicentennial.” He shakes his head and sighs, cutting the air with my synopsis. “I get the ‘seasons of my life’ thing, Pete, and I’m sure there will be a flood of seventies books coming out, but this just isn’t something Desiree Holland would write and you know it.”

      The fact is, Desiree Holland—my pen name—hasn’t published a book in more than five years. The hands behind her career have been playing solitaire, hearts, spades, and gin rummy on his computer while living on whiskey sours instead of writing anything of substance.

      “Desiree Holland won’t be writing it, Henry.”

      “She won’t?”

      “I don’t want to be Desiree Holland anymore. In fact, I never wanted to be Desiree Holland in the first place.”

      “You know why we had to do it that way.”

      I know, but it still pisses me off. Ten years ago, the marketing department thought my novels, each with an African-American female narrator, would be taken more seriously if they were “written” by a woman with an ethnic-sounding name.

      “You’re still one of America’s best-kept secrets.”

      I’m not a secret—I’m nonexistent and unrecognizable. I’m tired of being a puppet and a plaything of the publishing gods at Olympus. “I want to write as Peter Rudolph Underhill from now on.”

      “Too many letters, won’t fit on the cover,” he says with a laugh. “P. R. Underhill maybe. Peter R. Underhill? No, makes you sound too much like the author of a textbook. P. Rudolph Underhill? Too literary. What does Eliot say about all this?”

      Eliot Eckleburg was my agent back in the halcyon days. “Nothing. We parted ways.” About five years ago. Henry is completely out of touch.

      Henry frowns. “Eliot didn’t tell me about this. He’s looking great, you know. Got that laser eye surgery done—no more Coke-bottle glasses. We just had lunch last week.”

      That’s one of the problems with using a pseudonym or pen name. No one knows if you’re living or dead, everyone knows little or nothing about you, the marketing department creates this monstrous lie, and you’re left outside the spotlight in the silence while your agent and editor plan your pseudonym’s career. My original contract with Olympus stated that I was Desiree Holland, writer of multicultural women’s fiction. My real name appeared nowhere on the contract until my signature at the end. No picture on the book flap, no bio, no interviews, no signings, no appearances. Yet “Desiree” has a Web site, complete with a female model posing as Desiree, and Desiree even “answers” fan mail. I am a secret with a Web site. I am the white guy writing African-American fiction using a false name the marketing department thought up over a few margaritas.

      “You can’t just drop Desiree like a bad habit, Pete. Desiree has a following.”

      “Five years ago maybe.”

      “No, no. Her books are still selling steadily on our backlist.”

      Her books. Imagine you’re a writer who can tell no one that you’re published. “What do you do for a living?” I teach high school English, and I write. “Have you ever been published?” Yes. “What have you written?” I use a pen name, so I can’t tell you. “Oh.” Then I get raised eyebrows, and the subject changes. People don’t believe you’re a published author when you tell them you have a pen name.

      “We get letters all the time from people who are wondering when her next book is coming out.” He stares again at the synopsis, his red pencil dancing above the paper. “You have to write this new one from Ebony’s point of view. You’re so good at that.”

      Both my narrators so far have been Ebony, and I could probably use her voice for many more years. It’s not that I hear voices when I write; they just won’t leave once I’ve let them into the conversation I’m having with the reader.

      I sigh. “But, Henry, I’d really rather use my own voice this time.”

      Henry blinks. “You would?”

      That’s what I said, Henry. Get the ponytail out of your ears. He probably has ear wax stuck inside him older than me. “Yes.”

      “You want to write a piece of African-American fiction…from a white man’s point of view.”

      “In essence, yes.”

      “That СКАЧАТЬ