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began offering ridiculous sums for which they are now paying the piper.

Irwin Shaw's agent is a very slick fellow named Irving Lazar, probably the best-known agent in Hollywood. He is wonderful to his clients, but left to himself could end up ruining all the movie companies--he gets so much more money for properties than they are usually worth. He has barged into the literary field lately, much to my disgust, because I don't think that the book business can stand fellows like this who come in and, by getting people bidding against each other very cleverly, very adroitly, get terms that mean that the author is going to make a lot of money but the publisher or the producer is going to be reamed. For instance, he sold Lucy Crown, which was one of Irwin's novels, to Hollywood for about a quarter of a million dollars although it's a story that obviously could hardly be screened. Indeed, it has never been made. He got $250,000 for Irwin, so he's a great agent for the author and boasts about it. He seldom reads a book. He has no office staff, in contrast to the William Morris office and all of these other top agencies. He's a loner. He works out of his hat. Last week I think that he sold two or three properties totaling a couple of million dollars. In other words--he gets ten per cent of that--in one week he made probably a quarter of a million dollars. He spends it like crazy, gives great dinner parties and whatnot. He handled Truman Capote's In Cold Blood.