The Last Samurai (some corrections to Rereading TLS)

 Was looking at Lee Konstantinou's book, Rereading The Last Samurai, and am rather uneasy about inaccuracies. I gave an interview early on but did not see a final draft, so was not able to propose corrections.

In retrospect, it might have been more useful to provide a written account of the history of The Last Samurai, rather than try to describe this in an interview, but I was looking after my mother and did not have energy to spare.

Now I suppose the book will count as the kind of secondary source Wikipedia accepts as an authority, and things that are not true may end up as the official version.  Since Wikipedia is likely to be journalists' first point of call, I'd like to have the facts available for anyone who cares to look.

RTLS says The Last Samurai went out of print after Talk Miramax Books was dissolved in 2005. I'm not sure this is strictly true, since I was still receiving royalties in 2011. In 2012 Miramax Books (which survived as, I believe, a corporate subsidiary of Disney) reverted the rights - so at this point the book was certainly out of print, but it was quite a while after the dissolution of TMB. My guess is that New Directions would have been happy to take it on then, but the agent representing Lightning Rods thought this was a bad idea: if I finished a new book a major publisher would be likelier to offer a handsome deal if it were bundled with The Last Samurai. (It's extremely common for agents to decide it is better not to pursue publication of a book that merely happens to exist, because a much better deal could be made on the strength of some other book that merely happens not to exist.) Unfortunately I couldn't produce the book that did not exist because I got mired down with a stalker in 2012; this dragged on for a long time, so by 2015 I was very short of cash and it seemed better to suggest a reissue to New Directions than hold out for the bundle. 

RTLS says that in 1995, when I started The Last Samurai, I was living in London working for a temp agency as a legal secretary; that I then quit to work on a long, structurally complicated book, The Magnificent Stranger, that I hadn't been able to finish while working; that I then found myself sitting in my flat unable to make progress; that after weeks of growing despair I had the conversation with my father that would inspire The Last Samurai.

It's possible that, in the short time Lee and I had for an interview, I did not go into the dreary details of my work history before The Last Samurai (which unfortunately would have repercussions later on). 

By the spring of 1994, after a few years as a copytaker at the Telegraph, I'd decided an evening job was the only way to clear time to write.  The copytaking section had a graveyard shift (7-2), but an elderly copytaker, Charles, had first claim on it, so I could only have it two days a week - other days I might have to come in anywhere between (I think) 8 am and 5 pm, so it was impossible to have a routine. What I needed was a job that started at 7 pm 5 days a week, leaving a solid block of time first thing every day to write.

I applied for one job as an evening legal secretary and was turned down, because they did not like the sound of someone who would be working on her own project during the day.  So I applied for a job as evening legal secretary and paralegal at Simpson, Thacher & Bartlett, a Wall Street law firm with a London office, and when asked why I wanted an evening job I said I liked to go to museums during the day.  The bait was a shift that would start around 6, which was earlier than I wanted but just manageable. I got the job, and the office manager then pulled a switch, said the starting time was flexible, and to begin with they would have me come in at 4.30 to ease handover from the senior partner's day secretary. This would be a trial and we could discuss the schedule again later. 

This was terrifying, but I was not sure I could find something better. It was presented as a probationary period, so I hoped it would change to the advertised evening shift later on. The 4:30 start meant I had to leave for work by 3:30, so the job did not immediately give me the solid block of time during the day that I'd been counting on.This would have been May or June 1994.

After a few months I was told I had passed my probation. I asked about changing the shift and the office manager said this had only been a possibility and the senior partner was happy with the current arrangement. I said this wasn't what was advertised or what I was looking for and if it could not be changed I would need to look for another job.  The OM was annoyed, but in the end a change was agreed - I think that I would start at 5.30 two days a week and at 7 the other three.  

I think by the time this was agreed I had been there 5 months; I had written many more pages of my book, but was no closer to addressing serious structural problems, and this was supposed to be the job that would finally give me time to pull the book together. The new schedule was better, but the office manager now began bullying me - another member of staff said she had a history of singling out someone to persecute, and now it was me.  This went on for months, so that now it was hard to keep the mind clear of endless petty persecution by the OM.  At some point the senior partner said that he in fact found it inconvenient to have a gap in secretarial support for part of the week, and the OM said it might be necessary to change my shift again - it had only been a trial, and it turned out the arrangement wasn't optimal, something like that.

I realised that the OM would go on playing these games as long as I stayed. She would always be driving me crazy, and I would never be able to give the book the singleminded attention it needed.  I had about £3000 in Premium Bonds; the rent for my bedsit in Victoria Park was £60 a week; I should simply quit and write until the money ran out.

So I did quit. I think it was now June 1995. I cashed in the Premium Bonds. I suppose I had another £1000 left over from work.  But I was exhausted by the months of persecution, and in despair because yet another attempt to find a job that would free time for writing had failed, and I had lost another year, and I was 36.  So instead of immediately rushing to my computer I sat in my room trying to wait out the discouragement. My feeling was that overhauling a book with serious structural problems required some stroke of brilliance; if I were to go back to it at once I would only add to the 300 single-spaced pages, the scattered chapters and stray passages.  It was hard to believe that energy would return, it was hard to believe in the possibility of this stroke of brilliance, but what could I do? It would not help to be despondent about being despondent, I should hope it was something that would pass.

I think it was a week or two after I stopped working that my father called.  To begin with it was not too bad. We talked about this and that, I can't remember what. But at some point I admitted to being discouraged at having lost so much time on yet another job, and he said What? You mean you don't hope things will get better? And I said at this particular point I couldn't feel hope, I just had to wait it out. And he started screaming at me, saying HOW CAN YOU SAY YOU DON'T HAVE HOPE? And on and on and on. I kept trying to get him to stop, explaining that I had just come through a very bad time and it would take a while to get over it, but he kept screaming. Finally I managed to end the phone call.  I felt pretty sick.

So then there was not just the persecution to get past but all this screaming.  The money in the bank would melt away to pay for a room to sit in feeling sick.