Muse, by Jonathan Galassi

A very clever book by a long-time publisher at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.  As an insider in publishing, the author knows all about the personalities the players of various “literary” publishing houses, their competition for best-selling authors who will also garner significant prizes (National Book, Pulitzer, even the Nobel), and their rivalries.  The novel is seen through the eyes of Paul Dukach, who has risen to second in command at Purcell & Stern, whose head, Homer Stern, is larger than life in all respects.  Their closest competitor is the patrician house of Sterling Wainwright, who is the publisher of the most notable female poet of her time, Ida Perkins.  It helps that Ida is also Sterling’s cousin, but Homer and she have also shared “a thing” in the past (one of many such liaisons the notorious poet has engaged in).  Paul is not only entranced with her poetry but with all aspects of her long and eventful life and becomes close to Sterling despite his employment with Stern.  Literary references and in-jokes abound.  And the poetry Galassi has written as Ida’s is pretty good too.  Fun for those interested in the publishing scene, and a good book even if some, or many, of the references go over the reader’s head. Comes complete with a bibliography of Ida’s work.  258 pp.