Los Angeles Beat, Feb. 25 2001
A Few Facts about Kyle Hyde
by Martin Summer
February, 2001
It is often said that a novelist's first reader is the editor, but in my case, this is not true. As for me, when I have finished writing a novel, there is a certain person to whom I entrust the finished manuscript before anyone else, so he can be the first to read it and tell me what he thought about it. This person is my longtime friend George Graham and he has been the first reader of my novels since I resumed writing in 1990.
Why do I show my manuscripts to George first? That's because he is a very selfish and frank reader. If he doesn't like the first three lines, he'll nonchalantly voice his complaints and, so far, upon handing it back to me, he has never praised my work even once. Sometimes he even stops reading halfway through if it's not interesting.
So every time I hand over a manuscript to George, I feel my heart racing like a novelist who has just made his debut.
Last December, I called George over and, as usual, I handed him a manuscript of a novel that I had finally completed after a long period of research.
"Last Window, huh?"
George read out the novel's title on the cover upon receiving it.
"Is this about the ex-cop turned salesman you have told me about before?"
"Yes, it is. I have finally finished writing it, the story of that man."
"So if you hadn't met him at Hotel Dusk in 1979, this novel wouldn't exist, huh... Then that means that you also appear in this novel?"
"No, I don't. This novel's story takes place in 1980, one year after the night I met him."
"...huh?"
Here is the sequence of events that led to me writing the Kyle Hyde story from 1980 before the 1979 story of him.
In February 1999, in order to write a novel for which I had decided on Kyle Hyde, the man I had met at Hotel Dusk in December 1979, to be the protagonist, I recommenced my research on him. Of course, I conducted the research regarding his time as cop particularly enthusiastically, hence I left my house in LA for about a month and departed for Manhattan, where he had served as a police detective. That's when it happened. At the hotel in Manhattan where I was staying, a woman showed up to pay me a visit. Her name was Emilie Jeunet and she was the younger sister and manager of that famous French movie director whom not a single person in Hollywood does not know.
The reason Emilie couldn't wait for me to return to LA and followed me to Manhattan was because she wanted to acquire the film rights to my novel from 1998, "The Whereabouts of the Night". To be honest, I wasn't really interested in a film adaptation of my novel, but I succumbed to Emilie's enthusiasm and promised that, once back in LA, I would meet with her brother, the director, and listen to what he had to say.
"So, you returned to LA, met that director and learned that one of the residents of the apartment building where he used to live in his student days was Kyle Hyde?"
"Yeah, when I found out, I was really shocked by that coincidence. And then, I was even more shocked by the tale of Kyle Hyde from 1980 that the director told me. To tell the truth..."
"Wait, stop talking right there. I'll listen to what you have to say when I'm done reading this manuscript."
Two days after that, I was woken up by a phone call from George in the middle of the night. And then, from the other end of the receiver, I heard his words as the first reader of "Last Window".
"Martin, I get it now. Why you wanted to write this story. And, after reading it, I want to meet him, too. The man named Kyle Hyde."
This was the very first time in my life that George told me his sincere feelings, which to me, having recounted a few facts about Kyle Hyde, was the ultimate compliment.
