Al Zuckerman, star literary agent who represented Wilson and Shea, has died

 

Dan Brown said this book "changed my life." 

Prominent literary agent Albert Zuckerman has died. He played a big role in the careers of both Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea, although they were  hardly his most famous clients.

As Clay Risen explains in his typically excellent New York Times obituary for Zuckerman, Zuckerman had many big successes, including boosting the career of Ken Follett:

"He had a knack for finding promising writers who, with a few pointers, could become rock stars. His first big score was with Mr. Follett, a Welsh novelist who wrote about the English working class until he hired Mr. Zuckerman, who encouraged him to write a thriller instead.

"The result, Eye of the Needle (1978), won an Edgar Award for best novel, sold briskly in Britain and the United States, and cemented Mr. Follett’s reputation as a bankable writer. His books have since sold nearly 200 million copies, and helped make Mr. Zuckerman, as The Irish Independent described it in a 1994 profile, 'the hero of the blockbuster'.”

Zuckerman also had a hand in A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking (25 million copies sold of a book about physics). Zuckerman wrote Writing the Blockbuster Novel, cited as a big influence by Dan Brown. 

But of course my main interest in Zuckerman was the role in played as Wilson and Shea's agent. He was not involved in selling Illuminatus! to Dell, but after that work's success, he became their agent.

I spoke to Zuckerman briefly in 2012, here is part of that blog post: "Zuckerman told me that he sold all of Wilson and Shea's subsequent novels, but that the two had sold Illuminatus! on their own, without using an agent."

Dell editor Fred Feldman, one of the editors who worked on Illuminatus!, introduced Wilson and Shea to Zuckerman. It was early in Zuckerman's career, as Feldman told me in my 2013 interview with the editor:

"Now, of course today, Al is one of the premiere agents in the business. He had a new client at that time, a young untested British guy by the name of Ken Follett. That seems to have worked out for them. Of course, Al has many other very important clients, a thriving agency, Writer’s House, and I think is a patriarch of the business at this point.

"But at the time, he didn’t have any clients. At the time, believe it or not, I’d sometimes vacate my office for a little time so he could use my phone. It was just a different time. He was just starting out. He got his first office, Writer’s House, and I remember going over to see it, I was so pleased. He’s older than me. He came from an academic background.

"But anyway, I introduced them both. I remember Bob Shea remembered doing a couple of historic Japanese sagas with Al that did very well, and then I kind of lost track of him."

I shared the news about Zuckerman yesterday with Mike Shea, Robert Shea's son. 

"My dad loved him a lot. I worked with Al regularly as well as my dad’s heir," Mike told me. 

"My dad really was in awe of him and changed a *lot* of what he did based on Al’s guidance. Shike was supposed to be a science fiction novel!"

Shike was Shea's first novel. It was written during a tough time in Shea's life. He had been laid off by Playboy magazine, a circumstance which got Shea to finally get serious about a career as a novelist. As Feldman relates, Shike was a big success and allowed Shea to pursue a career as a novelist until his death. 

Here is an anecdote from Dan Brown:

"Not long ago, I had an amusing experience meeting the author of a book I received as a gift nearly two decades ago — a book that in many ways changed my life. Almost 20 years ago, I was halfway through writing my first novel, Digital Fortress, when I was given a copy of Writing the Blockbuster Novel, by the legendary agent Albert Zuckerman. His book helped me complete my manuscript and get it published. Two months ago, by chance, I met Mr. Zuckerman for the first time. I gratefully told him that he had helped me write Digital Fortress. He jokingly replied that he planned to tell everyone that he had helped me write The Da Vinci Code.”

F. Paul Wilson (Repairman Jack novels, The Keep) has a nice piece up about Zuckerman:

"After my third novel, he said I needed to expand my horizons: Send him three ideas I’d like to work on, and we’ll choose. We settled on one set in WWII with a Romanian castle and a strange, malignant occupant.  I wrote it in about six months. Al was impressed, but said it needed work. So he got to work. His notes and edits shed new light on the book and I wrote the second draft with them in mind. The book was transformed. But Al wasn’t through yet. He decided to approach Hollywood before the publishers. It worked: We had a movie deal before he put the book up for auction.  It landed on the NY Times bestseller list.  And that is why The Keep is dedicated to Al Zuckerman."