All That Is Read Online Free Page B

were occasional soft voices in the kitchen. He drank the coffee and went to get another cup. The garden windows were vanishing in the light.
    At nine-fifteen, Kindrigen came into the room. Bowman said good morning. Kindrigen did not reply or even appear to notice him. He was in shirtsleeves, an expensive shirt with wide French cuffs. The butler brought coffee and a plate with some toast. Kindrigen stirred the coffee, opened the newspaper, and began reading it, sitting sideways to the table. Bowman had seen villains in Westerns sit this way. He said nothing and waited. Finally Kindrigen said,
    “You are …?”
    “Philip Bowman,” Bowman said. “Kevin may have mentioned me …”
    “Are you a friend of Kevin’s?”
    “Yes. From school.”
    Kindrigen still had not looked up.
    “You’re from …?”
    “New Jersey, I live in Summit.”
    “What is it you want?” Kindrigen said.
    “I’d like to work for the
New York Times
,” Bowman said, matching the directness.
    Kindrigen glanced at him for a brief moment.
    “Go home,” he said.
    He found a job with a small company that published a theater magazine and began by selling advertising. It was not difficult, but it was dull. The world of the theater was thriving. There were scores of theaters in the West Forties, one after another, and crowds strolled along deciding which to buy tickets to. Would you like to see a musical or this thing by Noël Coward?
    Before long he heard of another job, reading manuscripts at a publishing house. The salary, it turned out, was less than he’d been making, but publishing was a different kind of business, it was a gentleman’s occupation, the origin of the silence and elegance of bookstores and the freshness of new pages although this was not evident from the offices, which were off Fifth Avenue in the rear of an upper floor. It was an old building with an elevator that ascended slowly past open grillwork and hallways of worn white tile uneven from the years. In the publisher’s office they were drinking champagne—one of the editors had just had a son. Robert Baum, the publisher, who owned the company together with a financing partner, was in shirtsleeves, a man of about thirty, of medium height with a friendly face, a face that was alert and somewhat homely with the beginnings of pouches beneath the eyes. He talked amiably with Bowman for a couple of minutes and, having learned enough, hired him on the spot.
    “The salary is modest,” he explained. “You’re not married?”
    “No. What is the salary?”
    “One sixty,” Baum said. “A hundred and sixty dollars a month. What do you think?”
    “Well, less than needed, more than expected,” Bowman replied.
    “More than expected? I made a mistake.”
    Baum had confidence and charm, neither of them false. Publishing salaries were traditionally low and the salary he offered was only slightly below that. It was necessary to keep overhead low in a business that was uncertain in itself as well as being in competition with larger well-established houses. They were a literary house, Baum liked to say, but only through necessity. They were not going to turn down a best-seller as a matter of principle. The idea, he said, was to pay little and sell a truckful. On the wall of his office was a framed letter from a colleague and friend, an older editor who’d been asked to read a manuscript. The letter was on a sheet of paper that had two fold marks and was very to the point.
This is a very obvious book with shallow characters described in a style that grates on one’s nerves. The love affair is tawdry and of little interest, and in fact one is repelled by it. Nothing but the completely obscene is left to the imagination. It is utterly worthless
.
    “It sold two hundred thousand copies,” Baum said, “and they’re making a movie of it. The biggest book we’ve ever had. I keep it there as a reminder.”
    He did not add that he himself had disliked the book and had only been