Why David H. Lewis? The True Story Behind My Name Change

UPDATE 1.6.22  I am riposting this because of a wonderful  new comment left. 

The following is from the opening of one of two chapters I dropped before my book Big Top Typewriter went to press.  I came to believe that the subject of skating wandered too far off course.

17

Enter David Lewis

           

How ironic that the very first publication to accept my circus writing — The White Tops — would be the last to reject it.

            Believing the 1980s to have been an outstanding decade in big top history, I wrote an essay about its memorable attributes, “Circus in America: The New Golden Age,” and sent copies out to national magazines.  None jumped, and so I jumped back to my alma matter, sending the piece to The White Tops’ editor. He telephoned me about it, believing he might need to cut it by a third, were he to go with it, and how would I feel about that?   I replied that I was open to the idea.  

            A few weeks later, the story was returned without a cover letter.  How naked it looked inside a lonely envelope.  As cold as the editor’s cavalier rejection felt, it also felt liberating.  Suddenly I felt the freedom necessary to treat other subjects as fully as I had treated the circus.   Maybe in this way, I might now be able to achieve some success in other fields.  So I made a promise to myself, and wrote it down, that not until I realized success in writing on other subjects would I ever again write about the circus.

            So, what next? 

            Roller skating.  Why not?  If you have a problem with that, please lighten up for a few pages, for that’s where we’re going next.   Organ music, Maestro, if you please!

            I had enjoyed test and competitive roller dance from my boyhood up.  For a few years, I had taught dance and figure skating. In fact, when I received the first invitation from Able Green at Variety to write a piece for the next anniversary issue, I took his letter to Roll-O-Torium, the skating rink in San Pablo where I was then employed.  I had to show it to my boss, rink operator Betty Bendit.  She was working behind the refreshment counter when I met up with her.  She read the letter with delight, happy for my good news.  And then I skated back to the record-player booth, to announce — Couples Only!
      

How to Avoid Getting Stereotyped

To continue quoting from the deleted chapter: 

    

            Here is where my story took a sharp turn. After suffering numerous rejections of my roller skating manuscript by a multitude of book publishers, I began to wonder if they  were stereotyping me.  David Lewis Hammarstrom.  Isn't that the guy who writes circus books? Covers the subject for  Variety.                                       

             Desperation by default:  I needed a new identity, a new name, maybe shorter, yes shorter, that would make it not so easy for acquiring editors in a hasty rush to turn me down before even giving my sample chapters a decent peek.  Where have I seen that name before?  Oh yes, he writes circus books?  Oh yes, dear stereotyping editor, it’s me, and does that mean that I can’t write anything else?   

            I decided to scale back and go with my first two names.  But when discovering how many “David Lewis” authors there were out there, I added H for a middle initial.  That narrowed my name competition down to one doctor.  

            Under my  new name, I sent Roller Skating for Gold out to a small house in New Jersey, Scarecrow, that I had somehow overlooked or maybe deemed unsuitable.

            Never trust an assumption.

            From the very first publisher to receive samples chapters of Roller Skating for Gold by David H. Lewis — Drum rolls and trumpets!  — came …

            A phone call of interest ... A few months later, a contract!

I could thank veteran Macmillan sports editor David Biesel for that.  A true gentleman, and one of the best editors I would ever work with.  Dave was then turning out a series, American Sports History, for Scarecrow.   Did somebody say that timing is everything.  Or that most things happen by  accident?  I call it fate.

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By the way, I still regard the 1980s as the last great decade in American circus. 

 

First published, circa 2016 (I think)