The Purple Decades (2011)
“Everybody, save one, namely, Robert Harrison himself, the publisher. Jay Breen’s liver had gone into its last necrotic, cirrhotic foliation. Jay Breen used to write half the magazine, but it had gotten to the point where Breen couldn’t stand to listen to the Reader anymore. Breen and his wife would come in and sit in the next room while the Reader read the stories for the next issue out loud. The Reader, whatever his name was, had a truly great voice, like Sir Ralph Richardson reading Lear soliloquies at a Bauhaus Modern lectern under a spotlight. Great diction, great resonance, etc. Harrison hired him just to read out loud. Harrison had a theory that if you read the stories out loud, every weak spot in a story would stand out. So there would be the Reader with a voice like Sir Ralph Richardson enunciating such works as “Errol Flynn and His Two-Way Mirror,” “White Women Broke Up My Marriage” [to a Negro entertainer], and “How Mike Todd Made a Chump of a Movie Mogul.” One of the writer...s would be in there muttering away because he claimed that the Reader had it in for him and was blundering over his best-turned phrases on purpose, thereby causing Harrison to throw whole stories out.MoreLess
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