l . F I .E R S T MUrray Hill 2·5427

545 FIFTH AVENUE · NEW YORK 17, N. Y.

Mar . 5, 1965

Dear Admiral Ryan:

That was a whale of a book you sent along. It contains just about everything including, as we have a habit of saying in the publishing business, the kitchen sink. In nautical terms, this scripts has everything, including the galley.

I could understand your feeling that you have more freedom in a novel, but good heaven's--how much freedom do you need? I feel , of course, that much of what you have is autobiographical; there is no doubt about that; but the conclusion is obviously not, and you gave us a very nice Nelson touch . The death of t he Commodore ·was pretty much like the death of Nelson on the deck of the Victory.

You went to sea as a young boy in square rigged sail­ing ships , and so , by a strange coincidence, does your hero. There is a great deal of resemblance; I don 't have to go into details; you know them better than I do; so all I can do is to comment on your script as a novel--since you insisted on turning it out as a novel . And as a novel it is pretty much handicapped, I'm sorry to say. I told you before that your personal experiences were useful, even though you weren 't l·vell known; it is not so much the name, unless the name is very big, that matters , as what the person has done .

This book is actually or rather obviously fictionized non-fiction. For example, the chapter titles would be better in a book of non-fiction. And in a book of 600 pages you give us only thirteen chapters! This may seem strange to you, but I ought to point out that in a book of 60,000 words , a book of average length, generally has about twenty chapters. For some reason or other readers seem to find chapters of about 3000 words just right ; there is not enough to enervate them, there is not too little; and while there is no set rule, of course, a good average of 2500 or 3000 words or 4000 words at a maximum would be useful. That is something for you to keep in mind .

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Generally, we do not need chapter titles, at least these days; but if you're going to give us chapter titles, give us lively ones rather than titles that look like newspaper headlines. Chapters are useful; they enable you to start off with a narrative hook, which means a dramatic situation; they enable you to end with a cliff hanger--and I am sure you are -0ld enough to remember that old serial PERILS \:!ITH PAULINE which generally ended with what we call a cliff hanger. The heroine or the hero was always hanging on a cliff as the scene ended. And then the audience had to bite its nails until the next week.

There is another difficulty--you try to tell us every­thing you know in one book. You have enough here for three books. The professional method , of course, is to milk a subject for all it is worth , but here you want to throw everything into one script, after which you probably vwn 1 t have too much left to write about.

There is no point in my repeating what I told you about the market for nostalgia; I still think you ought to consider that carefully. Right now we have a good deal more to concern us.

In the first place your length of 600 pages is a tremendous handicap. Remember, this is meant to be a first novel; I should say it runs to about 150,000 words or close to 200,000 words--at times you even used both sides of the paper, which is an almost un­forgivable sin in editorial circles. That is because printers work in standardized ways and are not accus­tomed to looking at the back of sheets. So, if the book ever reached print, part of it might be omitted. But retyping is not our problem right now. The basic problem is length. As soon as a book goes over 100,000 words it has to be regarded as extraordinary; in other words, publishers will take big books, but the book has to be far, far above average. Yours is far above average in one respect--the obvious knowledge of the maritime matters; but it is not above average as far as novels go, as far as story telling is concerned. The right sort of reader is likely to be overwhelmed by the mass of knowledge thrown at him, but other readers will duck. And this is not my opinion alone; I have kept the script around in order to get off the record opinions from editors, and I don't mind telling you that I practically had to hold these boys by the ears to get them to go through your script. I would not for the world submit the script formally for sale; that would do you far more harm than good, since it would have you listed as the author of an oversized book, and would put rejections on your record. The opinions I am giving you, by the way, are a sort of consensus, so I imagine you won't go

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far wrong if you follow what I suggest.

To get back to the matter of length: When a book is as long as yours, the prodmction man has as much to say about the eventual disposition of the script as the editor. More, sometimes. Every agent can tell stories of this kind; I recall one deal with Macmillan, with the contracts all ready to sign; the book--a non-fiction book--was supposed to sell for $5.00. And then the production man popped up and informed us that according to the Macmillan formula, which is roughly equivalent to one of the more racondite formulas of Einstein, the book could not be published for less than $10. Well, that took care of that sale. I wouldn't want that to happen in the case of your book.

Of course, what you have is a hard cover book; no soft cover publisher would take a chance with an original as long as yours unless that original were by the author of THE CARPETBAGGERS or something equally notorious. But I prefer hard cover; it gives you far more prestige than the other type of publi­cation and certainly a far better chance at the now very lucrative foreign rights. There is a lot of pictorial _value here; if you had more story line, and if this ever got into print, you might have a sort of outside chance at a motion picture sale--let us say about 999 to one. But you can forget about a motion picture sale or a TV adaptation until the book does appear in hard cover form.

By the way, I wish you would remember, for future reference, not to use binders, looseleaf books, or anything of that sort. When you have a book, simply ship the pages loose in the sort of box that contains a ream of typewriter paper.

The basic idea, the story of the transformation from sail to steam, is very good; you carry your character Willie Ross through those exciting years, and, of course, you parallel your own career. And that is one difficulty. Is this meant to be a novel, or is it meant to be a fictionized version of the evolution of ships from one form of locomotion to another? I guess you overlooked Somerset Maugham's rather well known remark that the function of a novel is to en­tertain, rather than to instruct. I think when it comes to instruction versus entertainment, you have a proportion of about sixty forty in favor of instruc­tion or, probably more. Of course, you don't actually stand off and lecture at us--that is something in favor of the book--but it is obvious that it is still your purpose to give us a great deal of information, and you do.

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There is no question about it; this is the real stuff, and no one on earth can doubt its authenticity for a moment. I'm not going to compare you with Conrad who was a story teller and a master of languages; what you have to recommend you is a tremendous amount of gusto, probably a different expression of the energy which has driven you into a variety of careers.

In your original correspondence you said that the book was fiction and not autobiography; nevertheless, in presenting material of this sort you can't very well get away from the autobiographical angle, no matter how much you try. And, for that matter, you shouldn't even try; you can always write best when you are writing about what you know, and here you are of course in your element. The trouble is that you are so much in your element that the reader is likely to find himself in deep water--and this is not meant to be a pun. You take a good deal for granted, because to you a lot of this is abc stuff; to a great many readers matters that are elementary to you would be quite complex.

Your first job, as I see it, is to cut and condense; that is going to be tough. I know through experience that an author can as easily cut off a toe as cut a good section out of a book. It is not one section; you will have to trim wherever possible--in other words , you didn't display any particular selectivity. You will have to trim and prune and cut and condense and that is going to be painful. Of course, you may not care to follow my suggestions; you may insist that you are right and I am wrong, in which case I will have nothing more to say about the matter; But I want you to remember that I must consider this book not primarily as literature, but as a product that is to be sold, and all the advice I give you is along commercial lines--in spite of the fact that I have a rather fancy education which includes a Master 's Degree I took under John Erskine.

I don't know whether you want the book back; I won 't mind keeping this big script on hand, since I assume you have a carbon and I will be in a position to com­pare the revision with the original. Of course I'll look at the revision at no charge. But whether you can get the thing done in time for the deadline I have in mind remains to be seen. We are now in the biggest of all buying seasons, but buying might slacken off around July. If it is humanly possible I would like to have the book by the middle of April or the end of April at the latest so that we will have at least a few months for a strong push. Of course, that won 't be the end of buying by any means, but we do try to take advantage of favorable condi­tions. It is like sailing at high tide instead of