Richard Lawrence Cohen on NYC's Third Avenue Bombing

From Richard Lawrence Cohen:

845 Third Avenue

Maybe there'll be something I can write about in the Times today? I thought as I headed for the computer, and there it was on the front page of the online edition: a building where I used to work, its lobby windows shattered by a bomb. 845 Third Avenue, between 51st and 52nd Streets, is a high-rise office building that houses the British consulate, so the attack must be connected to today's election. It was jolly decent of that Brit, though, to set it off at 3:50 am when no one would be hurt. The bomb consisted of two toy grenades -- one of them the size of a pineapple -- filled with gunpowder.

I worked there from September 1977 to September 1979, reading manuscripts for a literary agency. It was a schizoid agency -- on one hand its clients included Norman Mailer and Garry Wills and a mob of successful genre writers, and on the other hand it charged reading fees to amateurs. I've calculated that I read 3,500 manuscripts there in five years (there had been an earlier stretch at a different address), typing a million words a year. The outside world did not know that the reading fees paid the agency's overhead; the legitimate stuff was all gravy.

I was one of the half-dozen 'fee men' who read who skimmed two or three full?length books each working day and, for each book, pounded out a 2,000-word rejection letter containing various proportions of formulaic advice, sarcastic or sincere consolation, genuine craftsmanly evaluation, and false encouragement. We sat in a white room the size of a smallish bedroom, divided into six cubicles, each with a heavy battleship-gray IBM Selectric that, under our abuse, needed a new ribbon every week or two and frequent oilings and alignments. That was where I learned to pour out copy. I had got the job straight out of college by taking a test consisting of reading a Western short story -- cunningly crafted to include every possible literary and marketing flaw -- and writing a letter to the author. I got the job despite the fact that I couldn't type, and by necessity I got my speed up to 100 words a minute with four fingers . . .