http://news.muckety.com/2008/06/23/literary-agent-andrew-wylie-signs-another-big-writer-posthumously/3621
“The Jackal,” as he is known in the world of publishing, has snatched another literary plum from a rival agent’s shop.
A month after Dmitri Nabokov announced he would publish his late father’s unfinished final novel, “The Original of Laura,” he has hired Andrew Wylie to replace longtime agent, Nikki Smith, to represent the estate of Vladimir Nabokov.
Wylie is famous for representing writers posthumously, among them literary giants such as Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Lionel Trilling, Raymond Carver, Italo Calvino and Jorge Luis Borges. His stable of living writers includes Salman Rushdie, Philip Roth and Martin Amis.
What makes the agent an often-reviled figure (other favored epithets are ‘evil madman’ and ‘monster), however, is his prowess at luring high-profile clients away from less-powerful agents, and at extracting huge advances in their behalf. The nickname ‘Jackal’ reportedly stuck after he secured a then-unprecedented $750,000 advance for the British novelist Amis, who retained Wylie several years ago after dumping his longtime agent, the wife of his best friend.
“What is a jackal?” Wylie mused to reporter Emma Brockes from the Sydney Morning Herald, who asked him about the nickname. “A ravenous dog?”
“He considers it,” Brockes wrote. “‘Yuh, I’m a ravenous dog. I have fleas.’ ”
But if Wylie revels in his hustler reputation, he also objects to the notion that he “poaches” clients.
“If we want to represent someone, the fact that they are represented by someone else is not an impediment as far as I’m concerned,” he told Portfolio Magazine last December. “Sometimes it’s an impediment as far as the writer is concerned, but frequently it isn’t. And if - as was the case with Martin Amis - his representation had overlooked a critical flaw in the structure of his business, if that had not happened, we would not be representing him.”
Wylie has said he divides literary agents into two categories: the establishment types, who expect clients to come in search of them, and the go-getters like himself.
Key to his success is flattering an author by “popping over to Bengal”, as he put it, and wooing them in person. Other tactics include employing an author’s family members (he reportedly hired a cousin of Amis’ before signing him), representing authors in whom he has no interest to impress those he does (he acknowledged signing the late Benazir Bhutto in pursuit of Rushdie), and promising huge advances if a prospective client signs with him.
Wylie is an unlikely icon-smasher. His father was a respected book editor in Boston; his mother came from an old Boston family. After studying French literature at Harvard, he went to New York and hung out with the late Andy Warhol for several years before deciding to open The Wylie Agency at age 31.
Today he represents over 600 writers, who count among the biggest literary stars of their times, but few of whom make the biggest money. “The greatest advances [paid by publishers] are paid either to disgraced politicians or to failed novelists,” he told Portolio. “We don’t represent either category.”
He is an unabashed snob, arguing that quality, which grows in value over time, has been undervalued by contemporary publishing, while quantity has been overvalued. He said he chooses to represent only writers of quality - doing so on an international scale, which he contends is the only way to get them, and him, sufficient recompense.
“All our representations are representations made in the belief that the people we represent will last and will be published internationally,” he told Portfolio.
No details about what he has in mind for Nabokov’s final novel are known.
The manuscript of “The Original of Laura,” reportedly is in the form of several dozen index cards, each of which contains about 150 words. Before his death in 1977, Nabokov instructed his wife and only child to destroy the cards because the book was unfinished. Instead, an agonized Dmitri Nabokov placed them in a Swiss bank vault. After publicly wrestling with the decision for several decades, Dmitri Nabokov, now 73, announced in April that he had decided to publish the book after all. He has called “The Original of Laura,” “the most concentrated distillation of [my father’s] creativity.”
The New York Observer reached out last week to Smith, the longtime agent of the Nabokov estate, to find out how Wylie had supplanted her.
“We are not answering any questions,” Smith told reporter Leon Neyfakh before hanging up.
