Tough Talk How I Fought for Writers, Comics, Bigots, and the American Way

Chapter 11 In 1988, after a quarter of a century spent fighting court actions aimed at stopping books from being published, I found myself for the first time on the other side of the issue. I was trying to prevent the publication of a book of short stories by John Cheever, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer who had died six years earlier. It was a complex and bitterly fought case, involving the thorny questions of ownership that often arise after an author's death. Before it was resolved I appeared in four courtrooms in New York and Illinois before twelve state and federal judges in a litigation that spanned three years. It all began innocently enough, in 1987, when Academy Chicago, a small, specialty publishing house, entered into an agreement with John Cheever's estate to publish some of his uncollected short stories. The deal was the brainchild of Academy's East Coast representative, Franklin Dennis, a young man who had long admired Cheever's work. Over the years, Academy had earned a reputation as a quality small press chiefly by publishing out-of-print classics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century English language literature. Dennis believed that a volume of Cheever's early stories, previously published in magazines but never given life in a Cheever anthology, would be a coup of no small magnitude. He knew that The Stories of John Cheever, an omnibus collection published in 1978 by Alfred A. Knopf, had won a Pulitzer Prize and sold more than 100,000 copies. He reasoned that a subsequent volume held the promise of both financial success and critical acclaim. Dennis took his idea to Anita and Jordan Miller, the couple who owned Academy. The Millers, who had operated without pretension and in relative anonymity since 1975, were understandably captivated by the prospect of a John Cheever book carrying their imprint. Through a mutual friend, Dennis obtained an introduction to Benjamin Cheever, the author's son, and proposed a joint venture. Dennis would gather some of the Cheever stories, published as early as 1930, and Academy would produce The Uncollected Stories of John Cheever. Those selected for the book, Ben was told, would be approved by the Cheevers, particularly John's widow, Mary, the executor of the estate. A contract was soon drafted, calling for a small advance of $1,500 with all subsequent royalties to be split evenly between Mary Cheever, designated as the author of the book, and Dennis as editor. Upon signing, Mrs. Cheever received half of her $750 share of the advance, less her agent's 10 percent commission, for a total of $337.50. By contrast, the initial advance for Cheever's previous book of stories brought the author $40,000. By all indications, given the size of the advance and Academy's history of publishing books of modest length for a limited audience, both the Cheevers and Millers envisioned a slim volume that would appeal mainly to students and scholars. When the search for the stories began, in August of 1987, neither Dennis nor the Millers could have foreseen the mother lode of material that awaited them. Within a few months, they uncovered sixty-eight stories that had not been included in Cheever's seven previous collections, and they were better than expected. Anita Miller, who held a doctorate in English literature from Northwestern University, had originally been skeptical about the quality to be found in Cheever's earliest work, but as she read some of the obscure stories from the 1930s, she "began to get excited," she said. "It's interesting, because it's political, it's the Depression, it's people, it's stuff you don't associate with Cheever, and some of them were awfully good. . . . I realized I was wrong when I thought we'd get second-string, leftover Cheever." It was at this point that the lights started flashing and the bells began to chime. Dennis and the Millers decided that the book should contain all the stories they had lGarbus, Martin W. is the author of 'Tough Talk How I Fought for Writers, Comics, Bigots, and the American Way' with ISBN 9780812991055 and ISBN 0812991052.