The atmosphere was amiable and we were all telling our stories, adding examples from our own experience on this topic or that, in the non-linear way our life stories usually unfolds. When the conversation turned to the risks involved in doing business with friends or friend of friends, he told us this story:
Overwhelmed by the impending publishing of his first poetry book, he was invited to a cocktail party at his publisher’s house. He met there a Chinese illustrator that expressed his sheer enthusiasm with the poems, and asked to illustrate them for the book. Having no intentions whatsoever to use lustrations in the book, my friend felt compelled to agree, knowing that the illustrator was the publisher’s friend, and fearing to jeopardize his relationship with him. It turned out that the illustrator’s command of the English language was far from perfect and he either failed to understand the meaning of the poems or attached totally new and unintended meaning to them in his illustrations; For a very serious and sad poem my friend wrote about his father, for example, he illustrated a man sitting on a toilet sit.
My friend had to work very hard in order to select the few illustrations that could be presented alongside the poems, and that’s how the book was published.
business with friends: that's another way of seeing the thin line between love/friendship and hate. btw, so unplayfull on the behalve of the poet: couldn't he write something nice for the man on the toilet thing?
Posted by: j! | June 06, 2005 at 03:54 PM