“Anne and Neil”
(from my novel "Daddy-o")
(written November 27, 2008)
So yesterday I wrote about him and Ruthie, their relationship. Because the boyfriend you live with during college and after college and who you plan to marry, and who is the one who started your awakening, is a major relationship. For me it came to a natural end. I moved out, he was upset, but we stayed very close till Bill moved in with me, and Tania moved in with him, and have been best friends forever. We lost contact 8 years ago, but I called him last winter and it was a beautiful phone call. We were both lost in the glory of what we each had brought the other back then. I was so appreciative of what he had brought into my life back then at 21, and he was so appreciative of what I had brought into his. And we had helped each other over the years when we were close friends too. We were both writers. Altho Neil was writing his book on Marxism, I was writing short stories. But after Ruthie got me on computer, and I saw what God’s gift that was to writers, I got Neil on the computer and boy he sure appreciated it too. As soon as he finished his book on Marxism and the labor movement, a real book company wanted to publish it. They assumed he was a professor and wrote him a letter, “Dear Dr Cantos.” I couldn’t believe that Neil wrote scholarly text on Marx and Engels and the labor movement and publishers snapped it up. Whereas I was writing all my wonderful short stories and no publisher would go near it with a ten foot pole.
But a peculiar thing happened. Naturally Neil’s book had about a million quotes by Marx, and his publisher insisted he get permission for them before they could publish his book. And it turned out World Publishers, a small outfit on 14th Street of leftists, owned all the rights to those quotes. And when Neil called up Mrs. Appelbaum, as a formality, to ask for permission to use all the quotes, she said no. She said if you want to use the quotes you have to pay us $1000 for each quote, and since there were about a million quotes that was impossible. Neil called his big brother who had a rage, and said “take her to court! take her to court! that is outrageous!” Neil’s big brother was furious at her. But in the story Neil told me about the upsetting phone call with Mrs. Appelbaum, buried way down in the story, as just a minor detail, Mrs. Appelbaum had said “why didn’t you take your book to us first.” And suddenly I understood everything. Mrs. Appelbaum was being recalcitrant and difficult because she was envious Academic Press was going to publish it, she wanted the book, she wanted to publish it, and she was insulted Neil had not brought it to her.
“Neil!” I said, “you bought all those beautiful new clothes and you look so good in them. Just take Mrs. Appelbaum out to lunch. Take her to a beautiful fancy restaurant. You are so good at that, and can be so charming and classy. She is mad because she wants to publish your book and you didn’t offer it to her. All you have to do is take her out to lunch, dress beautifully, be absolutely lovely to her, and promise her your next book you will bring right to her.”
I don’t know if Neil believed me, but it was a solution he was willing to try. He wrote Mrs. Appelbaum a long lovely letter, telling her just how much the books from World Publishers have meant to him. There were enough compliments in that letter to her publishing company and to her, to make her head spin. I don’t know if he ever did take her to lunch. Because when she called Neil back, butter couldn’t melt in her mouth. She insisted she have the rights to the paperback edition of the book, which of course put Neil in 7th heaven. He never dreamed anyone would want to put it out in paperback, he was thrilled. And she graciously let him have all the quotes by Marx and Engels for free. And they are the best of friends. And he promised Mrs. Appelbaum, as soon as he finishes his next book he will bring it right to her. And she was gratified, and so was Neil. He already had a publisher lined up for his next book.
If Neil had held any grievance against me for breaking up with him 20 years before, I bet that made up for it. I had turned that whole situation around for him. Instead of now being impossible to get his book published, that was coming out, he was already preparing the paperback edition with Mrs. Appelbaum, and he had a publisher lined up for his next book.
And I had the gratification of seeing spirituality really did pay off. I had just started to be spiritual at that time, and I knew having a rage and going to war was not the best solution. It was the one Neil’s big brother suggested, but I had learned differently. Instead of seeing Mrs. Appelbaum as a monster, there was another way to look at it, and I was able to find it when I looked for it.
It gratified me and reinforced my belief in spirituality, that it was so practical, that I could use it to help my friend Neil get everything he wanted. Neil had been very insulting when I first started on this path. It had began with me praying, with me believing in God, and reading the Gospel of St John to find words of comfort for the terrible travails I was going thru then. I don’t know how Neil knew I was reading the Gospel of St John. Did I confide it to him? or did he see the open book in my kitchen? All I know is he said, “this is awful Anne, you are like one of the crazy women you see in the subway, who are always reading the Bible and talking to themselves.”
I was so happy to be able to help Neil, that I did not mention to him “I am not a crazy lady on the subway after all.”
Post script, I have read Neil’s book. Because it was written from passion, and Neil is a great writer, and did all the original research, it is a great book.
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