Undo, Joe Hutsko [e reading malayalam books .TXT] 📗
- Author: Joe Hutsko
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My friend Gloria Nagy, a splendid novelist with seven novels under her belt (one of which, “Looking for Leo,” is on its way to becoming a CBS miniseries), put me in touch with her then-agent, Ed Victor, who is based in London, and enjoys a long client list of acclaimed literary and mainstream authors. After Gloria’s introduction, I sent my novel to Ed Victor, and although he’d rejected the novel six years ago, suggesting it needed a lot of work (advise I took to heart), this time he responded positively, saying he had enjoyed it.
Yet, because his client list was so full and active, he was at the time not taking on new fiction writers. He did however direct me to an agent named Juliet Nicolson, with whom he had begun a working alliance, and to whom he would be happy to send my novel for consideration. A spirited British woman, Juliet had lived and worked in publishing in the United States for many years, and had decided to return to London to start her own agency. Several weeks later she faxed me to say that she thoroughly enjoyed the novel, and that Ed Victor lends his full support to her should I decide to have her represent me. I called her back thirty seconds later and shouted “Yes,” and, another long and short of it, despite their combined efforts, their long careers of landing huge book deals, the novel “Double Click” still found no publishing house.
After sending the novel to a long list of hardback publishers, then trying, as before, to secure a paperback original deal, Juliet felt it was time to put the book away and concentrate on my next novel, which I had in fits and starts tried to get off the ground for the last however many years. She stressed that someday we would sell “Double Click,” possibly after my next novel or the one after that, and assured me that this was how first novels sometimes turned out (after all, although John Grisham’s blockbuster “The Firm” made him a household name, his first novel was the small-press-published “A Time to Kill,” which Doubleday/Dell then rereleased to astonishing success). So I put “Double Click” away once more and went back to writing the video game strategy guides I’d found my way into to pay the rent, and that was the end of that…
For about six months, anyway.
Then I was struck by an idea: To rewrite “Double Click” just one more time, but this time around, fix the number one complaint that editors had voiced: That the story was too dated. So instead of playing out the trials and tribulations of my characters on a stage set in the by-now commonplace (and therefore, predictable) personal and mainframe computer market, I decided to shift the backdrop to a more modern setting: advanced handheld computers and pocket communicators, also known as PDAs, or personal digital assistants.
I told my agent none of this, and quietly set to reworking the plot and backdrop to accommodate my change of heart. To make the story feel fresh to me I changed most of the characters names, but other than that each of their stories and struggles remained the same. To ensure that I didn’t date the story before I even finished it, I wove in a number of not quite ready for prime time technologies, including practical speech synthesis and voice recognition. The final rewrite in effect put the novel ever so slightly into the future, and as far as I could tell squashed the criticism that the story was too stale.
Taking my agent by complete surprise, I sent her the new manuscript, which I had retitled “Undo” (a contemporary term, recognizable to readers, that represents the novel’s premise and the underlying theme at play in each of the primary characters’ lives - and, a little closer to home, sums up my own story in trying to turn around the mysterious forces that have stood in the way of getting this novel published). Well, she was shocked, to say the least, and complimented me on my patience and perseverance.
While my agent was busy reading and considering what to do with the new and improved “Undo,” I’d begun, and have since completed, my second novel, “r.g.b.” The book’s first chapter, which I’d written a few years ago, was excerpted in a small literary journal called “Puck,” and represents for me my “other” style of writing, which, for lack of a better word, I can only describe as more…intricate and challenging to read, less mainstream.
Which brings us to the present. Because “r.g.b.” is not what my agent - make that, former agent - considers commercially viable, she has decided to drop me as a client, suggesting with a wish of good luck that I find myself an agent who wants to represent both of my “voices” - the mainstream style of “Undo,” and the less mainstream style of “r.g.b.”
So, here we are. My old friend John Michel has offered to help me find a new literary agent, and I’m about to begin writing a screenplay called “Misguided Angel” that I’ve wanted to write for years. Plus, I’m already thinking about the second screenplay I’ll write after that, and the next mainstream novel, and the next less mainstream novel too. So I’m anything but down for the final count.
Have I learned anything in all these years? Tons. For one thing, my first two agents weren’t so unfit after all - each did the best job she could in trying to sell the novel, and in the end even my third, highly esteemed agent met with the same resistance that the previous two encountered. Second, the publishing business is more a mystery to me than ever. That this book has not found a home has somehow turned in my heart from a troubling fact of life, to something of a testament to optimism, a proud eccentricity, a character-building battle scar of sorts. I suppose that’s just how we fragile beings adapt to unrealized expectations, dashed hopes. Still, having just completed my new novel, I’m all juiced up and feeling groovy, raring to give it another go - after all, it’s all anyone who decides to try to make a living telling stories can do…try, try again.
Will “Undo” ever find its way between the sheets of pulpy paper and glossy covers? Will it ever find its way onto the big screen, or, if I had my choice, the little screen? And, perhaps most important of all, does this novel really matter to anyone besides me? The first two questions I have no way of knowing the outcomes of - both are in Fate’s all-knowing hands and only time will tell.
As for that last question, whether this novel matters to anyone besides me, I can only answer by saying I hope so.
What you’re about to read is a novel I have labored over for a very long time. It gives me great pleasure to hand it over, once and for all, to you, gentle reader, whoever, and wherever you are. I hope you like it.
Joe Hutsko 76703.4030@compuserve.com January, 1996
It was once a sprawling flatland, dominated by fruit tree orchards and nestled safely between protective hills.
This tranquil scene slowly vanished as trees were felled, concrete poured, and new seeds planted, each the size of a large beetle and filled with thousands of microscopic circuits, sown by a new breed of farmer, with dreams of growing the future.
The new electronic produce, capable of performing millions of calculations in the blink of an eye, was harvested.
The new technology farmland: Silicon Valley.
Viewed from high above, the Valley looks like a schematic drawing of the very seeds from which it has grown, thousands of technology orchards, connected by the roads and highways etched into the golden surface of the land.
As he guided the black BMW coupe onto Highway 280, Matthew Locke felt as though his mind was spinning as quickly as the wheels propelling him onward. Whether the one functioned as precisely as the other did not occur to him.
Appraising his position, he wondered why there were so few cars to contend with this afternoon. Having lived in Northern California for more than two years, he had never headed home on 280 without confronting ricocheting tail lights, jockeying for position in the fast lane. Bright sunlight and warm air rushed through the sunroof and windows as he gained speed and activated the cruise control upon reaching sixty-five miles per hour.
Then Matthew noticed the clock, and he remembered he was two hours ahead of the commuter traffic that congested the highway every day. He also remembered why.
He took a few deep breaths to relax his nerves. He had tried one last time, to no avail, to compromise with Peter Jones, the stubborn young founder of Wallaby Computer, Incorporated.
Matthew Locke did not want things to end like this. Not exactly. But there was no alternative. The confrontation that had just taken place was more like a vicious counseling session between a distressed married couple than a meeting between two senior executives of the decade’s most important and innovative high technology company.
Matthew had informed his secretary Eileen that he was walking over to Peter Jones’s office to try to talk with him one last time about the upcoming board of directors meeting. As Matthew neared Peter’s building, his anxiety sharpened. He paused for a moment and thought about his place at that very instant, standing at the very center of the Peter Jones legacy. Surrounding Matthew were a number of Spanish-style, single-story buildings, each painted white and topped with a red tile roof. What began as a seedling idea in a garage nearly a decade ago had blossomed into the cluster of buildings stretching a quarter-mile in either direction from where he stood, and even farther, to a number of locations throughout the world. And now he was on his way to the epicenter of this campus-like complex that was Wallaby Computer. Matthew arrived from his journey west with the feeling that he had entered a fairy tale, so full of wonder was this place. But now, as he resumed his step along the gently curving sidewalk that ran up either side of the block, he felt as though the set were changing. Full of dread, he approached the end, and the beginning, of the rainbow, where he would confront the man “Time” magazine called the “Computer Wizard.”
Peter’s secretary cut short her phone conversation the moment she saw Matthew.
“Peggy, is Peter in?”
Before she could respond, Peter’s own voice answered from behind him. “No!”
Matthew turned just in time to see Peter’s office door slam shut. He knocked gently.
“Nobody’s home,” said Peter Jones in a calm voice from behind the closed door. “Please leave a message at the tone. Beep.”
Matthew Locke was not amused. Like a father exercising his right to open any door in his own home, he entered the office.
He was met with the sound of continuous clicking from Peter’s keyboard. The office was small and sparsely furnished, with simple overstuffed furniture and gray carpeting. Peter was sitting before his computer at a black lacquered desk against the wall, his back turned to Matthew. He closed the door behind him and waited for Peter to turn around.
“Nobody’s home,” Peter repeated over the sound of his staccato typing.
Matthew eased himself into the chair beside the couch, remembering the first time he had sat in this very office, more than
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