Introduction
Usually, when a writer proposes an idea for a novel in which the basic background is to be the publishing industry itself, we throw up our hands in despair. The reason is not that we have any special secrets we wish to conceal from the reading public. More realistically, it is our strong feeling that there is nothing particularly glamorous about the business we are in, any more than there is in the manufacture of ships or shoes or Chevrolets. A writer using publishing as his theme may be relying on his own experience to avoid the work of doing research, and his own experience is usually duller than he thinks it is. Worse, he will probably tend to write about the difficulties and frustrations of finishing the great American novel, and the result is usually a terrible bore to read.
There are exceptions, of course. Thomas Wolfe, in such novels as You Can't Go Home Again and The Web and the Rock, was obviously writing about himself, and his books are "must" reading, even though somewhat long-winded and pompous by today's standards of criticism. View from the Fortieth floor by Theodore H. White is a gripping, compelling novel, encompassing contemporary history as well as writing and publishing. Asleep in the Afternoon by the English author E. C. Large is a completely fascinating story, although not as well-known as it deserves to be. We have probably not seen the end of the spate of books, both fiction and non-fiction, about the death of The Saturday Evening Post. We could go on citing such examples, but each has special qualities that makes it an exception to the general rule.
That general rule, unfortunately, seems to be that when writers write about writers and writing they are taking the easiest way out. The supreme example, perhaps, is Clifford Irving, who sold McGraw-Hill a plagiarized biography of Howard Hughes and is now writing a book about how he did it. Even honest writers, however, can be lazy, and laziness results in bad books. It is the job of publishers and their editors to keep writers on their toes. As Nancy Mifford has said, "I want every bit of critical acumen an editor possesses leveled at the text; I am not looking for friendly persuasion."
This quotation was printed in the centennial issue of Publishers Weekly, the invaluable trade magazine of the industry. It was included in a forum on the editor-publisher relationship along with many other pithy thoughts by those in the business. Arthur Hailey said: "No matter how skilled the editor and how talented the author, unless they can understand and appreciate each other mentally, their relationship must fail. Luck and chance are involved.... The two people who would form an ideal combination may never have the good fortune to meet."
Ann Birstein put it this way: "A good editor doesn't have to agree with what you're doing, only agree that you know what you're doing.... A good editor is your fight manager, your intercessor in that big outside world, but without making a great issue of letting you know that. (A bad editor is somebody with a lot of silly temperament and no talent of his own.)"
Such insights are interesting, but we think it can readily be seen that more than a few of them would become a bore to the average reader. At any rate, when Jack Angleman originally proposed the idea for Girl in a Cage to us, we were not particularly enthusiastic. It sounded at first like just another novel with a publishing background. However, Mr. Angleman is definitely one of our more talented writers, and he usually does know what he is doing. So we listened as he went into more detail, and when he described his proposed leading characters to us, we were convinced that he was going to produce another winner.
The protagonist is Karen MacLean, a girl who has just turned nineteen as the story opens and, since she is a product of a real backwash of society, is extremely inexperienced even for that tender age. She has obtained a degree from a small private college some two years earlier than most students graduate, but of practical matters she has virtually no knowledge at all. A major in English literature, the one thing she knows is that she has a deep desire to get into the publishing world, and eventually to become a writer herself. She is naive, but she is intelligent enough to know that she needs experience in many areas. She is far from prepared, however, for the kind of experience she actually gets as the story unfolds.
Karen is fortunate enough to obtain a job as first reader in a substantial Madison Avenue publishing house, but she soon begins to wonder if her fortune is good after all. Roger DeWilde, her new boss, turns out to be a very strange man indeed. In the office, he praises her work; but outside the office, he expects and demands other services from her-services that to Karen's bewildered mind seem perverted in the extreme. Her first impulse is to flee, but she finds that there is no escape for her; truly she is a girl in a cage...
This new novel will provide some behind-the-scenes looks at the publishing industry, but that is not its purpose and these scenes certainly do not get in the way of the vivid, entertaining, and enlightening story. We are sure our readers will welcome the book and remember it long after they have finished it. And we are convinced that they are intelligent and objective enough to be aware that not all publishers are monsters like Roger DeWilde!
The Publishers