I AM GLAD I DON'T HAVE TO SPEND ANOTHER SECOND WITH YOUR NOVEL

She was one of the most important writers in my pantheon but then she offered to read my manuscript

“Only for the Wicked" by Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg

For a while we were friends — of a sort. She was one of the most important writers in my pantheon. We met at a literary event during the awful 11-year doldrums between my first short-story collection and my first novel. You’d think we would have had nothing in common — I was an afrodominican immigrant in my thirties and she was a sixty-plus white woman — but we did hit it off like you almost never do with anyone, and because of that we stayed in touch. I was not one to bother someone at her level for casual chitchat, but whenever she was in my neck of the woods or I was in hers we would have coffee or a meal. They say don’t meet your heroes — well, she was my hero and was well worth meeting. I found her as extraordinary as her fiction. And man did she have stories like you wouldn’t believe. Some people are suckers for the rich friend with the beach house. I’m a sucker for a raconteur who lived in Europe during the time of rationing.

For a while it was cool.

We were cool.

She, of course, knew I was struggling with my first novel and asked me how it was going every time we sat down, but as it was never “going” I didn’t say much about it. Couldn’t say much about it.

Until the day we were having lunch at Union Station (DC) and she asked how the fiction was going and I said that I finally had a manuscript — not just a manuscript but an accepted manuscript.

Congratulations, she said. I’d love to read it.

This is perhaps where I should have shown restraint. She was a sayajin-class writer — why the fuck did she need to waste her time reading my shit?

But I sent it.

I guess I was excited at having finished the novel.

Did I hope that maybe she would offer a blurb — which would have been a big deal?

Maybe I did.

But I also expected her not to read It. She had her own extraordinary work to worry about.

Anyway, after giving her the manuscript I sent no follow-up emails of any kind. I went dark. Figured next time I wrote to her would be when I was again in her town.

But about a month later I received an email from her.

I finished your novel and I am glad that I don’t have to spend another second with it.

(I have the exact wording in storage but this is pretty damn accurate.)

Not exactly the reaction I was expecting.

Maybe if I hadn’t spent eleven years hating the shit out of this book. Maybe if I hadn’t grown up in a family that liked to hit its kids with a full fist in the face, I would have reacted differently. But I immediately apologized. Very sorry to have troubled you. The book is obviously not for everyone, etc.

Oh man.

Later when my editor asked if I had any suggestions for possible blurbs I was like Nope. Told no one but my partner about what happened, either. Not because I was ashamed or proud, but because I didn’t want to talk shit about her.

Because here’s the funny part: even after that epic gutting I still wanted us to be friends. I figured just because someone dislikes your fiction, doesn’t mean they dislike you.

But after that, she never had time again to meet up.

Was she upset that I had sent the book in the first place? Or, having stabbed the novel in the spine, maybe she just assumed that I would be a dick to her from now on, and wanted no part of it? Or was it just her way of ending the friendship?

Some of the above? All of the above? None?

Anyway, the next time I heard from her was years after the novel had done its thing. I’d lost feeling in my limbs and ended up at the hospital and she must have heard about it from someone and sent an email through a mutual connection.

Please send him my love & wishes for speedy recovery.

I thanked her for her kindness through the intermediary, and that was it. Didn’t reach out to her directly; figured if she had wanted that she would written me directly. After all, she could have gotten my email from our mutual in a heartbeat. Not like anyone on the planet would have denied her my deets.

I kept hoping we’d run into each other again, but we never did.

A few years after, she passed.

I still have all her books prominently on my shelf, still recommend her to everybody.

I like to believe had she lived longer there would have been a future where she would have reread the novel and found it okay.