Beginning “One Summer of Lightning”

I had come to love and admire the short novel, such as those by Graham Greene and Andre Gide, therefore decided to write a novel with two main characters set within a brief time frame. I wanted to write about the end of World War II, to encapsulate in my main character some of the experiences that I had had, growing up in a town that was first a basic training center for young men shipped off to fight, then a rehabilitation center for returning veterans. I wanted to show how a young girl felt, excluded from participating in the war, merely because of an accident of birth. I had seen young men returning from the battle fields, some of them missing legs and hands and arms, some of them returning from prison camps, scarred mentally and spiritually, as well as physically. No longer the editor of the school paper, I could only register my protest in the form of the novel. That was why I embarked upon writing “One Summer of Lightning.”

After submitting a collection of my short stories to a publisher, I received a letter from the senior editor in which he wrote, “When you have finished ‘One Summer of Lightning’ we would like to see it.” And with that I found myself unable to complete the book. Over the years I started eight more novels, none of which I finished. It seemed I had come down with roman interruptum.

Sans Literary Agent

In 1988 without the help of a literary agent, I sold the manuscript of a children’s picture book to Scribner’s. For 1,000 words I received an advance of three thousand dollars. Ironic, I thought. The millions of words I had poured into two long novels had been discarded, as though without merit. Two and a half years later “Another Celebrated Dancing Bear” danced upon the literary stage, earned excellent reviews from every major publication, was chosen one of the ten best illustrated books of 1991 by the New York TIMES, then as the USA nominee in the Ezra Jack Keats-UNICEF competition won a second award. In 1998 the book was featured in an international exhibit that started in Sarmede, Italy, then toured through Europe in 1999. But the children’s department of Scribner’s was closed forever, when Viacom swallowed up the old publishing firm.

I had thought that there would be more about Max and Boris in other cities of Russia and Europe. More irony. Now that the book is out of print, used copies are being sold on the Internet for over one hundred dollars a copy. And the illustrator has found that she has a gold mine in her closet, whereas I, the author, have but two copies lacking the gold seal the TIMES had awarded the book. The life of a writer seems replete with irony. At least, my roman interruptum has been banished. I have completed a second novel, not about Atlantic City nor the war, but about a couple who meet via a computer dating service, the disaster that destroys the family, and the resurrection of John Lepardi, the main character.

And I am almost at the end of a third novel that still wears its working title: “Writer, Editor, Scholar, Murderer.”