Word: transom
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...hoax chosen by Chuck Ross, a Los Angeles freelance writer out to prove what thousands of aspiring first novelists already know: it is virtually impossible for an unknown author to break into print through the U.S. mails with what is known in the trade as an "over the transom" manuscript. One of the extremely rare exceptions to the rule was Judith Guest's Ordinary People...
...before publication, this journal had assumed a near legendary character. John Janovy Jr., a University of Nebraska parasitologist, was a literary unknown. His manuscript, which deals with such unprepossessing subjects as snails and the parasites that reside in their innards, arrived at the office unsolicited. Usually, such "over-the-transom" offerings are ignored. But something persuaded an editor to take a quick look at this one "just in case." The decision was the literary equivalent of finding a diamond in a stream...
...sold 1,268,000 copies, and Joyce Verrette, a former NBC secretary whose 475-page Dawn of Desire has sold 150,000 more than that. But the biggest discovery was made late in 1973 when a rough diamond as big as the Ritz dropped through Avon's transom...
...minor miracle that began when Viking bought an agentless, over-the-transom novel called Ordinary People did not stop there. Sales to Redbook, Ballantine Paperbacks, Reader's Digest Condensed Books and the Book-of-the-Month Club soon followed. Robert Redford's company has just bought the film rights. Judith Guest still does not have an agent, but with any luck she stands to collect something like half a million dollars. Will the resulting cash and carrying-on spoil things in the big, elm-shrouded house in the Minneapolis suburb where the author lives with her husband, three...
...competition. First the Australian land promoter and mining tycoon uncrated 20,000 cans of Aussie Courage beer in a resort that prefers champagne or gin-and-tonics. Then he gave in to his crassly commercial instincts, briefly sporting the name of his own 20,000-acre development on the transom of his yacht. Finally, Southern Cross's tender rudely ran an opposition boat off its practice course. As if all that were not enough, later this month the brash Bond could well upset the oldest racing tradition in Newport: the U.S.'s unbroken, 123-year grip...