Inside Vermont Curiosities

Inside Vermont Curiosities
By
Robert F. Wilson

Vermont Curiosities was published by Globe Pequot Press in 2009 as part of a state series today numbering roughly 30 titles. A newly conceived and completely revised edition is scheduled July 15, 2016. I learned of the series’ existence while listening to a New Hampshire Public Radio program in 2007, as the host of “The Front Porch” was interviewing the author of a book titled New Hampshire Curiosities. Earlier that week I had finished work on my tenth consecutive career how-to book, and was not eager to start the next one—already assigned. Halfway through the interview I began to think there might be a way out: “Vermont Curiosities”—yes!

But was I ready for this drastic a change? I had never written a humorous travel book, as this one was described by its author. Even so, next morning I called a Globe Pequot editor to find out. She told me that though a Vermont title did not exist, an author had been assigned to the project. My hastily blurted offer to write an Alaska or Hawaii Curiosities version was shot down immediately. Only writers who lived in those same states were eligible. I thanked her and sent a résumé and cover note to keep my name alive.

Luck was with me. Two months later the editor called: The Vermont title was again open. In a few days, I received sample books, a lengthy statement of purpose, and specific marching orders. “Write with attitude” was one such order—meaning, I was sure, an attitude very different from the extremely matter-of-fact and proactive tone required for my career books. Their titles alone confirmed just how different: Conquer Résumé Objections; Conducting Better Job Interviews; Your Career in Healthcare, and seven more of the same. The style implied by these solemn choices further assured that landing an assignment in such unfamiliar terrain—and with so flimsy a platform—would face heavy odds. After false starts stretched out over several months, though, my half-dozen sample entries, assisted by two previously written, spirited articles in New York magazine and an unpublished story in Tennis magazine, prompted the editor to give me a shot.

Both of the articles were first-person stories matching the editor’s “attitude” requirement. The New York piece described an unsuccessful NBC TV audition for an on-air reporter’s job I had lobbied for (with no paid on-air experience), toward the end of 20 years on the editorial side of a publishing career. The audition experience was intention-producing in the extreme, but a gas nevertheless. A Tennis magazine editor who read the story thought it qualified me to crash the U.S. Open and somehow insinuate myself into a match with a female pro, with the inevitable humiliation and embarrassment part of my cost for a good story.

After a week of trolling, I generated a match with the world’s fifteenth-ranked woman player, and of course lost miserably. My story, though, was focused more on the 1977 tournament itself, primarily on the bizarre proceedings that occurred at the Forest Hills West Side Tennis Club throughout those two weeks–among them a shooting, several examples of unsportsmanlike conduct (including a player disqualified for using an improperly strung racquet–with plastic and cloth!), accusations of racist behavior, and the first transgender player to participate in a major tournament. Eventually, my story was rejected for being (as the editor wrote) “disrespectful to tennis the institution.” (The New York Times Magazine reprinted a shorter retrospective of the piece in 2012, the 30th anniversary of that fanciful occasion. The link to it appears below this copy–where a link to the New York>/em> magazine article also is included.