| | Today, I thought I'd tell a story that gave me goosebumps when one of my oldest friends, Chris, shared it with me.
I met Chris when we were both very young. Now he lives a thousand miles
away, but for about 20 years we were close and did many things
together, including running a business as partners for over a decade.
He is a great friend – intelligent, thoughtful, warm-hearted and
generous, dry sense of humour, killer smile – unforgettable.
A few years ago, Chris was sharing a rented house with a few friends,
while I lived with my partner of the time a couple of blocks away. His
grandfather, a southern-Ontario teacher, had died, and he received a
box of his old papers. I think he enjoyed going through them and
learning more about this interesting man.
He discovered that his grandfather had hoped to publish some of his
writing, particularly some poetry. After he retired, back in the 1960s,
he had investigated this possibility, but he was unsure how to go about
it. Naively, he responded to a magazine ad from a "literary agent" in
Toronto who, for a price, would seek publication for his clients. Chris
found a bundle of correspondence between his grandfather and this
agent. Despite many letters over a period of years, Chris’s grandfather
was eventually frustrated to realize that the unscrupulous agent was
taking money without providing any useful services. It seems that he
was never able to get his money back, either.
Leafing through these decades-old letters, Chris was naturally angry
about this agent who took advantage of his grandfather's longing to be
a published author. He took a closer look at the man's contact
information, and noticed the address from which the agent did his
business.
At that moment, Chris was sitting in the very house the agent had been writing from, over 30 years before.
Did you shiver? I did, all over again!
Later edit: Some
of you asked about the poetry, whether it could be published now. As I
recall, Chris said that it was very old-fashioned verse, the kind of
thing you might expect to read in a volume from the 50s or 60s entitled
"Boy's Own Annual" or something like that. So it could certainly be
published privately for the family, but there might not be a public
market for it.
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| | Posted 8/9/2006 12:36 PM - 5 views - 29 comments
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