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April 1, 2004
TT: Adventures of an author
I went to Harcourt yesterday afternoon to drop off the manuscript of All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine, the book whose fitful progress I've been chronicling on this blog for the past three months. Oddly enough, I'd never seen the headquarters of my new publisher, with whom I signed a two-book contract a little less than a year ago (the contract was delivered and collected by messenger), so I thought it would be both courteous and fun to bring in the manuscript myself.I showed up a few minutes early and waited briefly in a lobby decorated with photographs of noted Harcourt authors past and present, wondering whether the day might come when I would be deemed worthy of display cheek by jowl with T.S. Eliot and Alice Walker. Then André Bernard, my editor, escorted me to his fifteenth-floor office, which has a panoramic view of the Flatiron Building, Edith Wharton's birthplace, and the golden-domed rooftop eyrie where Stanford White cavorted with his ladyfriends. That's a view.
I gave André the box containing the manuscript. He saw me and raised me by clicking away at his computer for a moment and retrieving the design for the dust jacket of All in the Dances, which had just been e-mailed from San Diego earlier that day. "What do you think?" he asked tentatively. I stammered out wildly enthusiastic noises in reply. To have one beautifully designed book published in a single year is quite nice enough. To know that you're going to be two for two is...well, a whole lot nicer.
It was drizzling as I left Harcourt, and I'd never felt so tired in my life. Or so happy.
Posted April 1, 2004 10:17 AM
