“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last Wednesday, July 5, we mailed Emir to Eleanor Friede at Delacorte. This morning Eleanor called Jane to say that she “loved it,” and made a Jane a firm offer for its publication. Jane accepted the offer. Eleanor is to call again Friday after conferring the production manager about costs, etc., but in the meantime is preparing contracts. The production manager has the script with him in Albany, New York.

(At about the same time Emir was mailed, Jane sent Richard Bach “a crazy poem” that she’d written a couple of days earlier. Sunday, Richard called us from either Nevada or California. He gave Jane the excellent news that wherever he went the Seth books were known, and that Jane truly was changing our society through her work. This sort of news always surprises us, I guess, because we must be more isolated than we know; also, the sales aren’t all that great, so I always wonder just what the person bases such statements on when making them. But Dick’s message was certainly a heartening one, and one I’d say that Jane could really use to good effect.

(I had three questions for Seth. 1: Jane’s weight, which I’d realized recently, had dropped without my noticing it. Seth’s recent remark, that she was beginning to gain weight again, had alerted me to it, although I’d noticed in recent weeks that Jane was much too thin—when I helped her put on a shirt, take a bath, etc. 2: What’s going on generally with her, physically, or as Jane put it “Why is it—her recovery—taking so long?” 3. At least a few words from Seth generally on the whole Emir thing.)

Ruburt’s impulse to take Emir from Prentice—his impulse to call others, his call to Eleanor—all of these events represent a change of mood, and inner decisions of which Ruburt is not as yet aware.

[...] Jane has withdrawn Emir from consideration at Prentice-Hall, and in back of that decision lies a story too complicated to recite in detail here. Tam’s letter of today catalyzed her action, however, when he told her that Prentice-Hall had decided to publish Emir through the children’s department. [...]

[...] Eleanor is to see Emir for possible purchase. [...] I don’t think it any coincidence that Jane contacted Eleanor, who is the editor for Dick Bach, who is a counterpart of Jane’s. [Jane first called Pat Golbitz, but Pat was out of her office—so Pat doesn’t get to see Emir first.]

[...] Oversoul Seven is also involved in some fashion, especially the movie aspects —for when Jane called Eleanor Friede to offer her Emir, Eleanor told Jane she was about to call her about Seven, the call having to do with possible motion picture connotations, through a well-known screenwriter; that is the kind of event intertwined with the whole affair; nor have Jane and Eleanor contacted each other for probably a couple of years.

(“What do you think of Prentice’s reaction to the Emir thing?”)

[...] In the meantime, the copyedited manuscript for Emir arrived on the 18th, sent to us by Eleanor Friede at Delacorte Press; and since Emir is a short book, we were able to go over it during one evening and get it in the mail back to Eleanor late the next day. [...]

I mailed the last chapter of Emir to Prentice-Hall just a month ago (on February 8). [...] Emir, however, is of an in-between length — shorter than a novel, far longer than most children’s books — and she wonders: Is that fact going to complicate Prentice-Hall’s presentation of Emir as a story for “readers of all ages”? [...]

[...] Whose difficulties were minimal enough under the circumstances —one that provided creative freedom since, until Emir, Prentice had published his world-view books, poetry and novels, as well as my work. He made the Emir decision regretfully but very clearly. [...]

(Long pause at 9:19.) These methods of operation involved certain evidences of play, some social chatter, mutual trust, and left open the doors to a certain kind of unpredictable pattern of development—a pattern in which, for example, Tam could recognize the latent book in the Emir dream, and help fire Ruburt to write it, even though eventually Prentice was not the publisher. [...]

[...] Soon after Tam Mossman suggested in early October that she do a book on her dream about Emir,² Jane began work on that project with her usual enthusiasm. [...] She doesn’t know how long Emir will be. [...]

[...] Jane is calling her new book Emir’s Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers.

(I wrote Eleanor Friede a letter, agreeing to purchase the film for Emir, as both she and Tam have suggested. [...] In the meantime Eleanor will try to place Emir with some house; she’s talked with Tam about doing this. [...]

1. Those “other projects” included work by Jane and me on Emir and Volume 2 of “Unknown” Reality, respectively. (Jane has been told that everyone at Prentice-Hall, her publishing house, “just loves” Emir.) A couple of weeks ago Sue Watkins delivered the last two chapters of the manuscript for Psyche that she’s been typing for us; we still have to check that book and finish the notes for it. [...]

[...] Ruburt has had excellent results with Emir, and you should rejoice. You do, yet you think at what expense did Emir come—what restrictions of physical activity—and had you been somewhat different, would it all have been necessary?

(By way of contrast, I want to add here that this week Jane has been notified by Prentice-Hall of their most enthusiastic reception of her children’s book, Emir. Not only that, it appears that Prentice-Hall may have found at the same time the ideal illustrator for the work; black-and-white copies of sample illustrations have been sent to Jane, done by the female artist, with Tam’s assurances that the color is brilliant.

[...] In June, with no hard feelings involved on anybody’s part, Jane withdrew Emir from consideration at Prentice-Hall when the decision was made there to publish the story in two volumes; on July 12, Eleanor Friede at Delacorte Press accepted Emir for publication as a single book. [...]

(Resuming our chronology: On October 24, 1978, Jane worked out the Table of Contents for Seth’s Psyche, and started her Introduction for it on the 26th; we mailed Psyche to Tam in sections as we put the manuscript together, and finished with that endeavor on November 9. On November 14 Eleanor Friede visited us to renew an old friendship and to go over Emir with Jane. [...]

[...] On Friday, April 6, we received from the production department at Prentice-Hall the printer’s page proofs of the index for Seth’s Psyche, and on Saturday morning the proofs for Emir arrived from Eleanor Friede at Delacorte Press. We spent all of our waking hours checking everything, and on Monday Jane called certain people at Prentice-Hall to give her approval of the index while I mailed Emir back to Eleanor.

[...] Ruburt’s eyes have been improving, as his typing Emir shows. [...]

(10:52.)Emir is a delight. [...]

Almost three weeks ago I wrote in the Preface for Dreams that we were waiting to receive the first published copies of Jane’s Emir’s Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers. [...] All of us hope Emir does well in the marketplace.

(On the same day we received the letter from Holland, Jane also heard from Eleanor Friede, her editor at Delacorte Press: Eleanor sent the first color proof of the jacket design for Emir. [...]

Now: in Ruburt’s story of Emir, he presents a theoretical new earth, yet in the truest meaning of that term, earth is ever-new, for fresh energy comes into the exterior world from an interior source.

(This morning I mailed to Prentice-Hall the eighth and last chapter of Jane’s book, Emir’s Education in the Proper Use of Magical Powers.

[...] On September 12, Jane had a very vivid dream that she believes was rooted in a past life of hers in Turkey: Her dream involved a little boy, Prince Emir, who lived in a brand-new world in which death hadn’t been invented yet. Over the telephone three days later, Tam suggested that Jane do a children’s book, or one for “readers of all ages,” based on her dream about Emir;² the next day he called again, this time to give her the delightful news that he’d accepted James for publication.

[...] Jane has already written her first page of feelings; among other items, it concerned her feelings about the delays on Emir, and her sleeping for a couple of hours this afternoon.

(As for myself, since I mailed the corrected galley proofs for Emir back to Delacorte Press five-and-a-half weeks ago [on April 9], I’ve been keeping up with the new sessions for Mass Events, as well as those on other general subjects and for ourselves. [...]

(Odd notes: Today Jane received the contract for Emir from Delacorte, but is not about to sign it yet. [...]