Saul Bellow’s former agent bilked some of her lesser literary lights out of $190,000 or more, and now – after resigning from her trade association for ethics violations – she refuses to pay it back, according to a recent lawsuit.
Harriet Wasserman, 69, an agent and one-night-stand lover of the late Nobel Prize-winning author, is accused of refusing to pay back royalties and advance checks she pilfered off prize-winning children’s-book authors Walter Dean Myers and Emily Arnold McCully and novelist Richard Bausch.
The three writers filed suit last week in Manhattan Supreme Court seeking reimbursement.
Wasserman has suffered several strokes in the last year, according to sources.
Both McCully and Bausch said her declining mental state, not deceit, was responsible for the missing funds.
“For 30 years, she was the best damn agent you could have,” said Bausch. “When I did relieve her after 30 years, it was because things weren’t getting done. Her excuses were worse than ‘My dog ate my homework.’ ”
Bausch said that after the two parted ways, he called publisher W.W. Norton & Co. only to discover that two checks totaling $10,000 had been cashed by Wasserman.
“The $10,000 is what I’m sure of,” he said. “There could be more.”
He fared better than McCully, who claims to be out $60,000, and Myers, who claims he was bilked for $120,000.
Wasserman began her legendary career as a book agent at Russell and Volkening Literary Agency, where she met Bellow in 1969, according to her tell-all book about the author called “Handsome Is.”
Bausch reported the missing money to the Association of Author’s Representatives in June 2006, which investigated. Before the association could release their finding, Wasserman resigned from the trade group and promised at the time to pay back all the funds.
Said Bausch, “I’m sorrowful about things having to come to this pass, and I wish there was a way to honor the woman as she was and have it mean something to her, without taking the loss of so much money.”