Twenty Stories. When she was pregnant with Maureen in Maine, she said “I’ve got the time and I’m not working on anything right now, so I’d like to assemble your next collection from stories that have never been in book form. You can give me as many as you want, but I get to select them and what order they fall in. It has to be my collection. Not the dedication — that should go to Rosalind and whatever we name the new one — but in things like signing off on the cover and even the print. Do you agree to the terms?” and he said “For another book that previously wasn’t there? Sure.” She chose twenty stories from about sixty he gave her to read, most of which had been in magazines or were coming out in them, and also the title: Twenty Stories by Martin Samuels. “There were five others I liked as much as the ones I picked and I would have included them. But twenty’s a better number and more memorable title for a collection; not too many, not too few, and no hyphen.” He couldn’t get a literary agent or publisher interested in the collection for more than three years. “I don’t know why,” he said. “It’s my best and also my favorite, and not just because you put it together, though that helped.” “I don’t feel I chose wrong,” and he said “You didn’t. You also made it my most diverse collection.” Then a small university press accepted it but wanted to cut it down to fifteen stories. She said “Hold out for twenty. They’ll agree to it. Tell them your wife, a professor of literature whose principle concentration is the contemporary short story — you don’t have to say it’s French and that I’m an adjunct assistant professor — worked hard at compiling the collection — use that word. I know I’m being maddeningly dictatorial about all this — not only giving you orders and no say but telling you what to tell them — but this collection’s special to me, so say your marriage is in jeopardy if you remove any of the stories or change the order they’re in. They’ll know you’re being facetious, but it might help persuade them. Also, that you want to see the book cover they have in mind and the design of the book and have the first right of approval of them. I think that’s the legal term.” “That isn’t done ever unless you’re a big-shot literary agent with tremendous clout or a writer making millions for them.” In Maine again, at the farmhouse a few weeks before the book’s publication date, she said a woman she knew in the French department at grad school gave up trying to find a tenure-track teaching position in New York and became a cultural affairs writer for Newsweek and also does occasional book reviews for it. “Evelyne’s specialty, of course, is all things French, as a writer and reviewer. But I saw some time back that she reviewed a new British novel. I want to send her a copy of Twenty Stories. I won’t tell her my part in it. I’m sure she’ll like it — our tastes were remarkably similar — and it might inspire her to review it, but without my suggesting she do it. I think it’s best when they come up with the idea themselves.” “Newsweek magazine? A review of a story collection by an almost complete literary unknown from a small university press in Baton Rouge? No chance,” and she said “What do we have to lose?” “One of my ten author copies, and I’m already down to three,” and she said “So we’ll buy more. Or you’ll ask the press to send it. No, she might not connect the name and will disregard the book. Chances are better if it comes directly from me with a personal note. That I’m teaching, living in Baltimore but still have my old apartment in New York, married to the writer, two children, and okay, this is our newest offspring…something, but I’ll work it out. I’ll send it off today.” The woman called a week later, thanking her for the book, saying it was a fast read and several of the stories were funny, the rape story and what seemed like an AIDS story very disturbing, and that she liked the collection enough to see what she could do to review it for the magazine. “No promises, but keep your fingers crossed. When you’re in New York next and hubby will look after your daughters, let’s you and I get together for a long overdue lunch. I have a lot to tell you and you were always an interested and broad-minded listener.” It was a week later. He’d just come back from the Blue Hill library with his mother. Gwen was on the second floor of the farmhouse. She must have heard the car and went to the room he worked in and raised the window screen and stuck her head outside and shouted “Martin, Martin, I have the most wonderful news. It’s in. We did it.