« dustjacket jones | Main | bookpedia vs. library thing »
Leona Nevler
Leona Nevler died this weekend, quite suddenly. She was my editor at Putnam, the person who acquired Tied to the Tracks.
In spite of many long phone conversations, the only time I actually spent with Leona was this past summer when I was in Manhattan, when she took me to lunch. Leona reminded me of a particular type of grand older woman of my mother's generation, very elegant, very polite, with a million stories to tell. She made me comfortable, she made me laugh, and she made me envy her kids, who she talked about with obvious love and affection.
She was eighty, and still working pretty much full time. When I met her I had to ask about the one thing I knew about her work history -- that she had acquired Peyton Place for Julian Messner in 1956, a process that involved not only taking Grace Metalious out to lunch numerous times but also having her over for a whole day to listen to her problems and, where she could, sneak in some talk about the book. Leona didn't actually edit Peyton Place, but she was instrumental in its acquisition.
While she was telling this story I was thinking about the life she had led. Imagine her as a young woman pursuing a career in Manhattan of the mid fifties, through the sixties and seventies and eighties and nineties right up to last week, in December of 2005. Women like Leona really did pave the path for the rest of us.
The publisher called my agent today to give her this news, and she called me. I suppose it wasn't exactly a huge surprise, given Leona's age, but I am very sad. Because I liked her tremendously, and because she loved Tied to the Tracks. It was the last book she acquired, and I'm honored.
I'll be talking to my new editor this week. I have every faith that things will work out well, but I will miss Leona.
December 12, 2005 10:38 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.tiedtothetracks.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/650
Comments
Sara,
So sorry to hear of the loss of a business associate and a friend. Life is long but alas we are reminded ....life is short too.
Posted by: Cynthia at December 13, 2005 04:36 AM
A good friend of mine lost her grandfather a couple of years ago. He was around 90 years old and, to be perfectly honest, he was a hostile manipulative old fuck. So, nothing like your friend in that regard. But he had also been a surveyor and engineer for Shell and various other big oil companies through the 40s, 50s, and 60s. He had hundreds of photographs he'd taken himself of Saudi Arabian men armed with muskets and swords and carrying bandoliers of small single-shot pistols, and scenes of life in the Middle East in the middle of the 20th Century that looked like they were right out of Lawrence of Arabia. He had dried iguana eggs he'd picked up in South America while he was exploring the Amazon in a flat-bottomed boat. And his geopolitical analyses were remarkably clear-headed and concise. He was a rabid conservative, but at least he wasn't one of these neoconservatives who's only got a 10 year memory. He was more of the Goldwater conservative camp. His views on Iran now were informed by everything from Mohammad Mosaddeq to the Battle of Seattle. I'll always look back on my failure to get recordings of his stories as a tragically missed opportunity. As far as that goes I'm totally jealous you got to know this lady as well as you did.
The weird thing is, we're already almost that old, in terms of relative history and technology, just by virtue of the fact that we remember a time before computers, cell phones and flat-screen monitors. I have a friend who'll be 24 years old in January. She was 8 when the Soviet Union collapsed. The movie War Games is as socially obscure to her as The Manchurian Candidate would be to you or me.
Someday we'll be the grand old whatevers of whenever. That's the thing that always seems weirdest to me about the slow attrition of the past.
Posted by: Joshua at December 13, 2005 06:44 AM
crickey, Joshua. You sure know how to cheer a gal up. And just a month before her fiftieth birthday, too...
but okay. I see your point. Maybe I better buy a camera.
Posted by: Sara Donati at December 13, 2005 08:11 AM
I'm sorry--I heard yesterday, but I didn't know she was your editor. I'm glad you got to meet her.
Posted by: Diana at December 13, 2005 01:39 PM