With Night, I wrote to publishers that this was very important, and they needed to publish it. I didn’t say it would sell [laughs].
In the end the agents purpose is to be the middle man and senior advisor for the author and convince publishing houses that The authors work is viable and only that.
If I go to a firm and say: “This book isn’t going to sell that well in the next two or three years, but it has backlist sales written all over it. Twenty years from now: clear sailing—all you have to do is push a button and print 5,000.” The reply is: “What good does that do us? The CEO’s contract is up in three years. He needs to renegotiate his terms. He needs us to bring in things that sell between now and three years from now. He doesn’t care what is happening in 10 or 12 years. It’s not his firm.”
Firms are becoming more and more about money and sales and statistics.
As I think Donald Trump may find out one day, there is no such thing as the art of negotiating that applies to every negotiation. Each one is new, each one needs flexibility and an understanding of the circumstances and the value of what you are trying to sell. It’s very, very complicated, to put a value on a manuscript. I mean, you have this manuscript, and it’s typed on 300 pieces of paper. The paper was bought, let’s say, for $6. But now that you’ve put marks on it, it’s no longer worth $6, it’s worth zero. And now I am supposed to get thousands and thousands of dollars for it [laughs]. How do I know what it is worth?
An agent negotiating for a writer for Blouchardt is like writers and their art, In a constant need to reinvention.
This is what I love and have always found fascinating: Writers know they’re writers. It takes something inside you to continue doing your work, despite the fact that no one wants you
Writers seem to be so consumed in their own perspective that it becomes a way of life for them no matter what others say about it.
If it’s on the page, it’s the actual writing. The way things are expressed differently. To most people there’s only one way of saying something: “The vase is over there.” So what can you add? But in fact there are millions of ways of saying it, sometimes without even mentioning the vase. You know, anybody can go to China, most people can learn Chinese, but they don’t necessarily see what you’ve seen, even though it’s right there. Not everyone who goes to China can write about China and be interesting.
For Bouchardt is seems that what makes writers interesting is their own personal perspective and they see things that makes that perspective particular.
It is a ridiculous profession, but so is writing. Your son will look at you working and think, “What do you do? You sit in front of a computer, alone, writing thousands of words. What’s the sense of this? We could be outside on the swing.”
Writers take pleasure in commenting on humanity rather than living in it. The same goes for agents according to Bouchardt.
This was the case when I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had already been sent to the gas chamber immediately after his arrival at the Auschwitz railway station. Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in a pocket of the newly acquired coat one single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, containing the most important Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael. How should I have interpreted such a "coincidence" other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?A bit later, I remember, it seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, "Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning." The question which beset me was, "Has all this suffering, this dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival; for a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance—as whether one escapes or not —ultimately would not be worth living at all."
The prayer Shema Yisrael, the is the most important prayer in the Jewish Prayer, meaning “Hear O Israel, The Lord our God, The Lord is One”. To lose everything, thinking to yourself that all this must be pointless if you’re going to die, that there is no hope in surviving, Yet that prayer remains. That one prayer, that there is still meaning. That there is a way to live through the suffering, not only survival. That this little inscription, this particular, the one that the Nazis were trying rip away from the world, the single most particular thing of the Jews out of all particular things, this prayer it would remain. This is perhaps an element that this Love for Meaning to show one that there is still a life to live.
We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation— just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer —we are challenged to change ourselves.
I think this is the question that logotherapy answers the best, there are other ways of understanding Love, there are other ways of understanding your own individual life, but suffering is by far the hardest as we constantly reject suffering. I think what Frankl is trying to say here is that for our individual situations where we are faced with the worst moments in our lives, that only we can determine how we deal with it, And in doing so find an understanding of life through that Hell, in which we must compel ourselves to suffer through and triumph.
The next night when she mounted her steps Tea Cake was there before her, sitting on the porch in the dark. He had a string of fresh-caught trout for a present. “Ah’ll clean ’em, you fry ’em and let’s eat,” he said with the assurance of not being refused. They went out into the kitchen and fixed up the hot fish and corn muffins and ate.
This quote really butters the biscuit of my brain. There’s a lot of emphasis on food in this book, it may not push the book forward, but it’s always there. Now what does this represent? Well I think Food in the context of this book is vey much a way of bringing people together, especially in these communities of African-Americans in the Deep South, as well as communities in general. But going back to the main part of this quote, besides food, what makes this qoute great is how Tea Cake so quickly comes into Janies Life, but instead of it being out of naitivity, it is out of total consent, and two souls coming together from hardship.
Six months of wearing black passed and not one suitor had ever gained the house porch. Janie talked and laughed in the store at times, but never seemed to want to go further. She was happy except for the store. She knew by her head that she was absolute owner, but it always seemed to her that she was still clerking for Joe and that soon he would come in and find something wrong that she had done. She almost apologized to the tenants the first time she collected the rents. Felt like a usurper.
I feel this is a very important piece in the story, because his is the moment that Janie has official control of her life, totally aware. For years she was silenced by Joe, even to a psychological point, but despite her mourning of Joe she is free, and won’t be so misguided by her past choices, or put her grandmothers words of a healthy marriage In vain.
There was something about Joe Starks that cowed the town. It was not because of physical fear. He was no fist fighter. His bulk was not even imposing as men go. Neither was it because he was more literate than the rest. Something else made men give way before him. He had a bow-down command in his face, and every step he took made the thing more tangible.
Joe Starks in my opinion is the perfect example of a Trump-like character (I don't mean to insult the president) Joe is an ambitious soul, who will go through anything to get what he wants, money and power are of most importance, and manipulation and desire is how he plays the game of life. Especially his manipulatation of Janie, and his governership over Eatonville, which although prosperous, is all just to make himself feel more important to the self centered aoristicrat he is.