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It was the day Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated.
My dad woke me that morning, she recalls, and said, Bobby Kennedys been shot.
I said, I dont want to sit here and watch television all day.
I went immediately to the University Club, where I put my stuff in the ladies locker room.
I said, Mrs. Geffael!
Shed gotten divorced and said, Im great!
Im living in New York.
I bought a personnel agency.
She said, Dont you want a job?
I said, I dont know.
Do I want a job?
She said, Yes, come with me.
They offered me a job.
It was $100 a week.
At dinner that night, Dad said, So what happened today?
I said, I got a job.
He was like, What?
Which even then was what … girls … did.
I was so confused by it!
I unapplied for that job.
I wanted to take my job.
Then the best thing in life happened to me: My dad just cut me off.
I got an apartment I could afford on $100 a week.
What I couldnt actually afford was a sleep sofa.
I called my dad and I said, Can you buy me a sleep sofa?
And then youll have a credit rating.
It was he who suggested that she become an agent.
Binky Urban:Lynn Nesbit hired me at ICM.
One day, she threw a letter on my desk and said, You might want to follow up.
Signed, Cormac McCarthy.
I dont think anybody reads Suttree and doesnt think its an amazing book.
So I called him up and said, Im not Lynn Nesbit and Im just starting out.
But Ill work really hard for you.
He said, in his gravelly voice, Well, that sounds fine to me.
Sonny Mehta, who had published him in the U.K., had just taken over at Alfred A. Knopf.
I called him and said, Do you want to publish Cormac McCarthy?
It seems to me that Random House isnt doing a really great job by him.
Sonny said, Id love that.
I called Random House and said, Is it okay if I move Cormac McCarthy over to Knopf?
Of course you’re able to move him over to Knopf.
And the next book wasAll the Pretty Horses…. Its such a great story.
When it was stringy, it meant you were at the height of your ovulation.
When it got cloudy and lumpy, the moment had passed.
I was in my early 30s, and there were women who were having trouble getting pregnant.
I called up Jason Epstein, the head of Random House.
Howd the book do?It just sold for years.
Is it correct to think of agenting as a female-dominated profession?Totally.
When I started there was a lot of that female nurturing quality attributed to agenting.
I had a formative experience with Toni Morrison.
When Lynn left ICM to go into partnership with Mort Janklow, Toni invited me to lunch.
She said, I love Lynn.
Shes been my agent for a long time.
And shes also become a really good friend.
I just want somebody who can pay attention to my business.
Can you do that?
And I said, Yes, I can do that.
That was a great life lesson.
Do you have any hard-and-fast rules?My big rule is, Dont lie.
Straightforward?Straightforward is the nice word for it.
You know,poweris such a male word.
Being dominant is not anything I care about.
What I care about is being effective, being respected.
The only way that could mean power is that Ive got a lot of great authors.
And publishers are maybe less apt to screw around with me than someone starting out.
They need to get along with me because Ive got the talent.
The head of Gulf & Western, Simon and Schusters thenparent company, was just appalled at the book.
And that Bret Ellis could keep 100 percent of the advance.
The book was literally about to be published!
Its a funny book.
Everywhere else in the world, people immediately read it for what it was.
Only in America did we have problems, do you know?
My own boss came in and said to me, Why are you fooling around with this guy?
I mean, no ones going to care about Bret Ellis in five years.
I called Sonny Mehta and I said, I dont care what you pay for this book.
But I think it should be published right away because its going to get a lot of press.
Your imprimatur will help people understand what this is.
And published it like a week later.
It was really fun pulling that off.
TheTimesDavid Carr wanted to write his memoir about his life as a drug addict.
Memoir is really hard to do.
I know kind of a lot about it.
I shouldnt have doubted him.
I liked him so much.
I should have just said, Okay, do it.
However: two Nobels for Literature and two for Peace.
Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Malala Yousafzai, and Nadia Murad.
