The Jackie Susann Syndrome

...But at the 11-minute mark, the film suddenly came to life...

...3. " 'Stop, Ralph,' said Gloria, 'not in front of Ned.' " 4. "Ralph grabbed Ned by the bedpost and kissed him repeatedly along the neck...

...The fledgling writers, in the order of their seats, added: 1. " 'Ralph, what are you doing in one of Gloria's dresses?' " 2. "Without answering, Ralph grabbed Gloria by the bedpost and kissed her repeatedly down the neck...

...Some people can write a bad novel in a week...

...So he fell back on his imagination and invented the 25-men-and-a-girl story, a beautiful gimmick...

...In real life good-looking rich women don't cook meals for anyone...

...It's not as easy as those 25 guys make it sound," I cried out to the unthinking tv audience swallowing all this nonsense as I had swallowed Herman Wouk's...

...Here at last was the first real conflict to emerge from the novel...

...Within the next 10 minutes Hawke had moved into a rent-free garret in the artists-and-writers quarter of New York, Sutton Place...

...The book, if you recall the 1962 reviews, is Herman Wouk's powerful and lengthy (783 pages) statement about the mechanics of novel writing—or the story of a Kentucky truck driver whose gifts enable him to rocket to literary success overnight...

...Let's have a hand for a many-sided authoress," Frost said, as the 25 co-authors from Newsday, each of whom wrote a chapter, walked out on stage and took their bows...

...The movie dragged a little in its first 10 minutes...

...Miss Susann...

...Bishop, Frost...

...In fact, it took that long for the hero to finish his first 1,000-page novel, quit his job back home, fly to New York by jet at the order of a top publisher, sign a contract in a plush skyscraper, agree to accept the the help of a beautiful editor (Suzanne Pleshette) for his second book, and find a picturesque $60-a-month apartment in Brooklyn Heights with a view of the Manhattan skyline...

...He supplied these novices with a paragraph-long premise, and asked each one to add a line to keep the plot moving...

...It was 1 a.m...

...Don't listen to her," Aronson broke in sharply...

...As soon as he enters the mansion, the truth strikes...

...I don't want to get involved in a fictional dispute...

...But we have now lived to see the triumph of the common man and woman in the literary arts...

...A sportswriter at Newsday, a partner in the project whose chapter was too good to be included, told me Penelope Ashe really believes in the novel...

...This sequence of events in the life of the average American author was so commonplace as to be painfully boring...

...She only wanted Hawke in the house because of his ability as a novelist...

...She doesn't know what she's talking about...

...She stifled a scream as Ned drew open the closet door and said...

...If you contact me, I can assure you a healthy advance, plus solid royalties, with a possible three-picture deal thrown in...

...Frost did nothing to cool off the boom in new novelists by inviting a row of people in the theater audience to write their own novel...

...Some can't...

...Few people, however, have examined the role of the medium in the area of vocational guidance...

...I had to find a typewriter and begin my first novel...

...I would be standing there minding my own business, but then I'd accidentally mention something about my novel—a transition problem, say, on page 43—and they would get a wild look in their eyes...

...I thought of all those young fellows in the audience rushing off to slave over a novel, which at this point in the history of fiction could be disastrous...

...Radiologists are attempting to measure the impact of loose X-rays...

...Jackie Susann Month on national television—now in its eighth week —will have even greater impact this year because of another recent event, the presentation of Youngblood Hawke on cbs Friday Night Movies...

...Penelope Ashe insisted Naked Came the Stranger was not so awful...

...But as Youngblood himself put it, "The words they just came a-pourin' out...

...She considers it "a great parody of American marriage," to use her own words...

...Still in rustic garb, Hawke is dragged by the editor to an eggnog party at his publisher's house...

...But it still makes me nervous to recall how I almost walked out of Youngblood Hawke before it had a chance to work its magic...

...The emergence of Penelope Ashe, the authoress of record of Naked Came the Stranger, is more painful evidence of how hard work no longer pays off...

...This is a terrible book...

...In fact, she is busy on her second work, to be called Naked Came the Stranger Again...

...A gorgeous blonde millionairess with three kids home somewhere in Connecticut (Genevieve Page) confesses that the moment she saw the writer walk through the door she was seized by an uncontrollable desire to cook sausages and eggs for him at her lower Fifth Avenue pied-a-terre...

...Unlike most of the Carson, Griffin...

...She was worried about my health...

...6. " 'Stop, Ralph,' said Ned, 'Not in front of the chair.' " 7. "Suddenly a shot rang out and a naked form came crashing through the window...

...The average person watching the guests on the talk shows says to himself, "If she could do it, by God with a little time I could do it...

...5. "Ralph grabbed the bed by the bedpost and kissed it repeatedly along the headboard...

...This is in marked contrast to the prevailing belief in the old days-say 1965...

...as John By Marvin Kitman The Jackie Susann Syndrome Simon will testify, is a good sport and does not seem to mind going over the same old ground with her harshest critics so long as they mention the name of her latest work...

...So you can understand why watching Young-blood Hawke on cbs started an old wound twitching...

...Frost asked Harvey Aronson, who with Neiman Fellow Mike McGrady is the acknowledged co-ringleader of this shameless hoax perpetrated on the American people...

...Even this poor woman has fallen under the influence of the Jackie Susann syndrome from watching too much television...

...Frost began: "A glorious pulse was pounding in her throat as Ned moved toward the closet where Ralph was hiding...

...Billie Young) followed, eating up the applause...

...They knock it," Miss Ashe said of the author-critics...

...8. " 'It's supernude,' said Gloria...

...That I identified with good-looking, articulate, dynamic James Franciscus, who played the title role in the Warner Brothers production, was not surprising...

...Cavett crowd, she is always being asked to discuss her credentials as a writer rather than her work...

...This kind of thinking, which began with the plugging of Valley of the Dolls, is reinforced every time Jacqueline Susann writes a book...

...they send out to Max's Kansas City or the Dover Delicatessen...

...The problem with my novel was that the best sellers of 1965 were all unadulterated rot...

...During her most recent appearance, on the David Frost Show (September 1), the English host introduced television's writing fool as "the most extraordinary authoress in America...

...The unmarried ones were really impossible...

...While the hassle must have struck many viewers as pure fiction—something like this could keep the novel before the public eye for as much as an extra week—I learned from an informed source that it resulted from a sincere difference of opinion...

...But in my opinion the truth about the Naked chapter of our literary history is that one of those Long Island reporters wrote a first novel which no publisher would touch because it was too promising, and therefore doomed to fail...

...Watching the film version on television, I was reminded of how I had been unduly influenced by the movie's content when it first appeared in 1964...

...Well, I know enough about the art of the novel to realize this scene is metaphorical...

...But I think it's a beautiful book...

...It can't miss...

...Then it was widely assumed you had to be particularly brilliant to earn your million spinning yarns...

...Television has taught me that my real vocation is as a literary agent...

...Given the time—a week," Aronson answered, "we felt we could write a truly bad book...

...Drugged by the way she moves around the gas range and kitchen sink, he accidentally seduces the lady, then quickly apologizes and pledges he will never do anything like that again...

...Although the picture was only half over, I couldn't resist the urge to rush out of the theater...

...The spotlight hit the curtain...

...In front of millions of potential aspiring authors, the team of 25 writers and their front woman fought like a pack of thieves over the literary merits of Naked...

...My message to all those balcony novelists is this: I have a publisher for your novel...

...Miss Ashe (played by a Mrs...

...Lawyers, doctors and detectives have had their day on the tube...

...Nothing much happened subsequently, except that women started chasing me at cocktail parties...

...and my wife tried to discourage me from writing all 1,000 pages at a single sitting...

...Where did all of this amazing editorial project start...

...I suspect the in-vocation among the young this year will be novel writing, especially since television is spreading the word that you don't need talent to succeed...

...Every time I mentioned my troubles constructing a simple sentence, some girl would ask me for my phone number...