“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt’s subject matter, however, was not routine, particularly back in those times. He felt that its unique nature meant that it could be quite difficult to sell. When he and Tam began to reach a relatively workable relationship, therefore, he began to value this more and more. He felt that in the beginning Tam stood up for him at Prentice several times. And Tam, it seemed, kept his hands away from the manuscript itself in the one way that Ruburt clearly understood: he did not generally change the copy. As the years went by Tam and Ruburt arrived at certain methods of operation that suited Ruburt personally, and that were understood by both of them.

(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.

Many of the typos, for example, did not exist for Ruburt. He valued the good feelings that existed between himself and Tam, and quite preferred for example not to deal with too many other people at Prentice, but to keep the situation as simple as possible. They settled many matters by hastily scribbled notes (pause), and by other methods that sometimes did not even seem to deal with the matter at hand.

That involved the deletion of copy, you see. He agreed with you thoroughly there. Though he did not agree about your opinion of Prentice per se, involving the difficulty, he blamed the foreign publisher. He felt, however, that some of your own anger against the foreign publisher was directed at Tam. Much of this involves simple differences in temperament. He did not deny the fact of your own visually acute behavior. He felt stupid when you became annoyed at typos or misspellings or whatever that he did not even perceive until you mentioned them. He felt between you and Prentice and Tam at various stages, of course, and did not feel certain of his old capacity to set the relationship right. He also began to distrust his own earlier methods of dealing with the situation.