My Friend Chuck

My Friend Chuck  

 Chuck  was hired as the new slush reader for the Viking Press. I was the old slush reader, so it was my job to train him. It was 1979. On paper, we had nothing in common. He was twenty-nine and I was ten years older. He was married with no children yet, and I was twice divorced and had four. He had gone to graduate school and I had been asked to leave college my freshman year and never went back. He was very good looking, and terribly nervous, an odd combination, and all I wanted to do was make him laugh.    

       Slush was the lowliest of jobs, but it took place in a tiny office with a door that closed and a window that opened, and we sat and we smoked and we opened every manuscript that came without an agent, and all letters addressed to Editor in Chief, took a look at everything and then and sent it back. If something was especially funny or awful we’d read it aloud to the other. It was a good way to get to know someone.  I remember he opened a manuscript that was entirely anti-semitic. He sent it back with a note that read, “You can shove this up your ass from whence, no doubt, it issued.”

     God knows there was a lot to laugh at in the slush pile, but there was also a certain poignancy to much of what we looked at. People desperate to tell their stories, but oh so badly. Some of those letters stuck with us. We never forgot one in particular. It was a query letter from a guy who had managed the produce department of some big supermarket on Long Island who wanted to write a novel about his experiences, “ I have seen so much, “ he said. He had addressed the letter to the Editor in Chief and of course, it came to us in slush. He didn’t know how to write a novel and wanted  advice. The letter ended, “I’ll do anything you say.” And although just uttering those words at odd moments over the next forty years could still make us laugh, it wasn’t a mean laugh, we laughed because it was all so hopeless.   

He died in 2022 and I miss him every day.