Storytellersunplugged

by Janet Berliner

During a variety of moves, I’ve given away more than 6,000 books, but not to worry. Between what I kept and what I’ve accumulated, I still have a few thousand more. Every now and then, I wander around my personal library and allow myself to be carried away by the memories of the books: where I bought them; why I bought them; what made them special enough to keep. My shelving system would, upon examination by a stranger, seem entirely haphazard, but to me there is an internal order to it. In my bedroom, I have three small racks. Two of them hold the books I must always have close enough to touch, like “Tale of Two Cities,” “The Idiot,” and “Madame Bovary.” The third is jammed with the next books I intend to read after Vonnegut’s “Timequake” and Adichie’s “Half a Yellow Sun.”

The last time I sallied forth into library lane, I stopped at a particular cluster of books that had no reason to be shelved together except for this. Stepping backwards in time. . .

Some years before his suicide, on a blustery November Saturday, I interviewed writer Jerzy Kosinski at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. The C.P.A. is usually a gathering place for balletomanes, opera buffs, chamber music enthusiasts and soft shoe fans. The auditorium holds close to three thousand people. I thought there would be seats to spare, but almost the full three thousand showed up to pay homage to books and authors during a free “creative encounter” between contemporary authors and their reading public. I had been to one of these happenings before and had been fortunate enough to meet Louis L’Amour, a man with a grand sense of humor, Jessica Mitford, a proper lady, and Wallace Stegner whose literary reputation scared me half to death.

My second time around, I stood in line at eight in the morning, twisting my body to grab the rays of the sun as it struggled to break through the early fog. There was a line of people a mile long behind me, made up of the very young and the very old, and those who, like me, fell somewhere in-between. I looked at them and rejoiced at the victory of books over Saturday morning cartoons and electric blankets.

Perhaps, I thought, library shelves would continue to hold paper visions of Man after all.

The day’s motivation was to sell books, with the promise of being able to get them autographed. Kosinski was by no means the only scheduled author. Irving Stone was there, too, and, among others, Sydney Sheldon, and Melvin Belli, attorney turned author. I was determined to meet all of them–Irving Stone because the only book I had taken with me to read on my journey from South Africa was The Agony and the Ecstasy, Sydney Sheldon because of his extraordinary sales numbers, and Jerzy Kosinski because his writing seemed to speak directly to me.

Walking into the first autographing session, it was impossible to overlook the fact that the line for Belli was a steady five people, while the one for Mr. Stone went twice around the room. As I stood there, wondering whether or not to return later, it was impossible not to notice Belli’s strident response to the people in his line. Mr. Stone, on the other hand, though almost blind, was ever the gracious, soft-spoken gentleman.

My ornery streak burst forth.

I stood in line, waiting to see Melvin Belli. In my hand, I held Irving Stone’s book. Reaching Belli’s table, I put the Stone novel in front of him, held out my hand, and said, “Nice to meet you Mr. Stone.”

He half rose from his seat. “I’m Melvin Belli,” he roared.

Everyone turned to look and listen.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, as sweetly as I could. “I should have known the long line was for Irving Stone.”

An hour or so later, I met the real Mr. Stone. He graciously signed his book and talked to me about his longstanding writing and marriage partnership with his wife, who sat protectively close at his side. He told me that she was, at the very least, his personal editor, his partner, and–now that his eyesight was failing–his eyes as well.

Sydney Sheldon said to me, “I lie on the sofa in semi-darkness and wait for the voices to come down from the ceiling. When they do, I snap my fingers and the first of four secretaries with empty notebooks files into the room. When I have finished dictating, they type up my words, clean them up, and send out the next best seller.” I had recently read one of his books and had commented in a review that it felt as if it had been written by five people. Hearing what Sheldon said, I understood my reaction and felt vindicated.

Neither Sheldon nor Stone were particularly exciting speakers. Kosinski, however, was a painted bird of another color. Everything about him was, if not distorted, then deliberately larger than life. In fact even his signature included an exaggerated profile of his prominent proboscis. Much of his time on stage was spent in an effort to clear himself of the accusation of seeking out or manufacturing horrors in his life for the purposes of sensational writing. He did so by stringing together a series of true-to-life anachronisms: edible panties; colored contraceptives; a listening device sold to children over eight for the express purpose of eavesdropping at a distance of up to 200 yards; and another device, this time for children over twelve, claiming to allow them to see through walls.

“If Kosinski had written these things into his books,” the author said, talking about himself in the third person, his tone of voice was surprisingly lacking in bitterness, “his critics would throw up their hands and declare him a fiend.”

Finally, this Technicolor man told the following story against himself. One time, he said, he stood in a Manhattan bookstore and watched a woman choose one of his books and hand it to the salesman to be rung up.

“I’m the author,” he said, walking up to the woman. “She took the book back, flipped it over, compared me with my photograph and decided against it. Pity,” he went on. “She was a handsome woman.”

Later, I asked Kosinski why he hadn’t asked the woman what had changed her mind. His answer was to shrug and repeat, “Pity. She was a handsome woman.”

With the exception of “Being There,” Kosinski resisted allowing his books to be translated into movies. I asked him why. “Because my characters are too deep and complex to be transferred correctly to the screen,” he said. His work would not translate to the screen, he insisted, until he decided to write about “A character without character.”

He reached out for the book I held in my hand, drew the familiar caricature, signed the book, and closed it. Before handing it to me, he pulled a card out of his pocket and slipped it into the signature page. “My private number,” he said. “If you’re ever in New York, call me.” He looked up at me intently. “You won’t call, will you?”

I shook my head.

“Who are you anyway?” he asked.

I handed him my card. It had a book in the top, left hand corner and read, Professional Media Services: Editing, consulting, teaching, ghostwriting. Under my actual name it read, writer.

“Yes,” he said, placing the card on the table. “But who are you?”

I took the card back, turned it over, and wrote the letters WFA-AJI. Beneath that I added, White female African-American Jewish Immigrant. As I handed it to him I said, “I’m a writer, an immigrant, and one of your greatest admirers.”

“Me, too,” he quipped.

It would be unfair to him not to add that he laughed and corrected himself, though I think he really is one of his own greatest admirers.

Either way, I found his discussions, both on stage and off, witty, intellectual, and indicative of a man whose ego insisted he expose his own and humanity’s weaknesses to the world.

So there it is, the reason behind that cluster of books by those particular authors. Now that I’ve written this, maybe I’ll shelve the blog and give away those books.

Or not.