Wylie in Academe: Students Meet Reality On Topic of Agent

The Columbia Publishing Course, that postgraduate rite of passage for so many of the book industry’s worker bees, was the scene of a dust-up last Monday when an afternoon panel discussion took an unexpected turn. At stake was nothing less than the honor of fearsome literary agent Andrew Wylie and his firm. If the youngsters in the audience had known better, they might have shielded their eyes.

Earlier that day, one of those youngsters had asked Lindy Hess, the head of the program, why Mr. Wylie seemed to have such a dark reputation. (Can-of-worms alert! This is what happens when people who have never worked in publishing suddenly find themselves immersed in and disoriented by the set of myths and unfamiliar traditions that, taken together, form the consciousness and the heartbeat of this industry. CPC—a six-week vocational training program, complete with guest speakers and workshops and field trips—is a crash course designed to introduce newcomers fresh out of college to this mythology.) And so Ms. Hess decided to use the question about Mr. Wylie’s reputation as an opportunity to give her students a learning experience.

It was a good day for the matter to come up: The panel scheduled for that afternoon was dedicated to agenting, and on the roster were some heavyweights: Jay Mandel of William Morris; Leigh Feldman of Darhansoff, Verrill and Feldman; and Scott Moyers of the Wylie Agency, where he has worked for almost a year as the big man’s number two.

Ms. Feldman was moderating. Before the panel, Ms. Hess asked her to raise the issue of Andrew Wylie and maybe have Mr. Moyers—a widely admired former editor who shocked the industry last summer when he crossed over to agenting—explain to the kids why people say the sorts of things about his boss that they do. Ms. Feldman agreed to bring it up.

Now, there was that scene in Back to the Future III, the one set in the Old West, where Thomas Wilson’s character, Buford Tannen, walks into the Hill Valley saloon with his cowboy posse, and Marty, who was smart enough to read up on the Tannen family before going back in time, figures out who he is and exclaims: “You’re ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen!” Except it turns out no one really calls Buford Tannen “Mad Dog” to his face, because when you do, he gets angry and tries to kill you.

Which is to say, if these were the old days, when the business of books was done over whiskey and cigars, the Columbia Publishing Course panel might have erupted into a serious donnybrook last week. Things being as they are, though, it was a very civil exchange.

“I don’t think anyone even mentioned the name,” Ms. Hess said, referring, of course, to “the Jackal,” that irrepressible moniker that Mr. Wylie earned in the early days of his ascent by habitually writing letters to authors explaining why it was in their interest to leave their agents and take up with him instead.

Still, to bring this up with Mr. Moyers was to put him on the stand: Suddenly, he found himself in front of a room full of kids having to defend his boss’ notorious business tactics. It was a pregnant moment, seeing as how when Mr. Moyers announced his intention last year to retire as an editor and join up with Wylie, industry observers wondered whether this nice, sweet guy was going to become a shark now that he was swimming among them.