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That's the way that publishing is.

Yes, but this was particularly annoying because we had started with Irwin when he was a kid, when he had written this Bury the Dead. We had published everything that he did and made a great fuss even over his last two books, which were third-rate.

I cite him as an example of the fine young author who can be ruined by success and easy money in Hollywood.

This is another thing. Doesn't success often ruin...?

Well, if you're the kind of person that Irwin is-- fun loving, irresponsible. He goes off to Rome and leaves his wife in Paris and has a wonderful time on his own. As I say, girls fall for him by the dozen. He's very rich, and whenever he needs money, Lazar gets him a big job out in Hollywood. He is one of these fellows who can just say, “I think that I'll do a picture,” and Lazar will get him a $100,000 advance right away from somebody. I think that all that is beginning to crumble a little bit in the movie world now. Some of the once-mighty studios are having to pull in their horns.

To show you how childish I am, I made Nan Talese, our editor, go through Shaw's manuscript--it took her a whole afternoon--and erase every correction we had made. You see, it was ready to go to press, and we had made quite