WHY IS THIS IN THE FILE?

Nobody took responsibility quickly enough.

Leonard Vetch, 66, a novelist whose insistence on reading the books he endorsed routinely endangered jacket deadlines, died Tuesday at home. His daughter confirmed the death. A publicist who had once represented him asked whether the family could provide a suitable sentence by noon.

Vetch wrote four novels, two of which remained in print, and blurbed thirty-seven books. He had been asked to blurb considerably more. At his desk, his daughter found a shopping bag of unopened galleys, a small envelope of bookmarks and a list headed People I Still Owe an Answer. The list included six people who had already published their books.

His reputation began in 2008 when a publisher sent him a 412-page debut on a Monday and requested an endorsement by Wednesday. Vetch called on Thursday to say he was on page 186.

“That’s wonderful,” the publicist told him. “Are you loving it?”

“I think it’s going to depend on what happens to the brother.”

“Could we say it’s impossible to put down?”

“I put it down to call you.”

The book went to press without his name. The publicist told colleagues he was very difficult.

Vetch was difficult in other ways. He noticed when an elderly character climbed stairs in a wheelchair. He looked up the train schedule if a novel depended on a midnight connection from a town with no rail service. He disliked the word luminous when there was no evidence anybody had turned on a light. He once returned a memoir with a note asking how its author had managed to attend two funerals, in different states, on the same afternoon. The author replied that the timeline was emotional rather than literal. Vetch said he understood but thought the highways should be informed.

His friends found his habit touching and inconvenient. They wanted the name of a respected novelist on the back of the book, not an extra month in which a respected novelist might develop an opinion. On one occasion, the author of a poetry collection mailed Vetch a hard copy, then a revised hard copy, then a third hard copy with a note explaining that the earlier versions were merely preliminary. The third arrived three days after the printer’s deadline. The author subsequently described Vetch as unsupportive of emerging voices.

He made no money from these labors. Each year at tax time, his wife asked whether the cardboard boxes behind the dining-room door belonged to a business. He answered that they belonged to people. She had stopped asking about the business several years earlier.

A veteran of the literary conference circuit, Vetch did not object to praise. He objected to praise in advance of acquaintance. He believed an endorsement should tell a reader something about the actual book, a position the industry regarded as morally admirable and operationally impossible.

Once, he liked a first novel enormously. It followed two sisters clearing out their mother’s apartment, including the boxes that had belonged to a man neither of them would name. Vetch called the author because he thought the final chapter, though beautiful, was evasive. They spoke for nearly an hour about what the sisters knew and what they refused to know. The author changed four sentences. Vetch wrote a precise and generous endorsement. The publicist asked whether he might replace it with something shorter, preferably including the word unforgettable.

He said the book was unforgettable in places but seemed to have been forgotten briefly in the middle.

Over time the requests became more efficient. A PDF arrived with a suggested line already attached. Another press sent only the first chapter and the jacket design, on which his name had been placed beneath a blank space. A third sent him a file that expired after seven days. The password stopped working on day five. The publicist apologized and asked if he could work from the synopsis.

Vetch had begun carrying books to medical appointments because the waiting rooms were among the few places where no one expected him to answer an email. During his last hospital stay, he asked his daughter to retrieve a novel from the hall table. She brought the wrong one. He read it anyway and told her afterward that the ending had been mishandled but the descriptions of weather were excellent.

His family has requested that publishers stop sending advance copies. Three packages arrived the morning after his death. One contained a 500-page novel with a note that read, We know this is short notice, but any kind words would mean the world.

Vetch is survived by his wife, two children and a final endorsement in pencil. It is thirteen words long: The first half is worth your time. I wish I believed the second.

The publicist has asked whether the family would consider trimming it to six.

“Normal” was considered and rejected.

KNOWN ASSOCIATES: readers, loiterers, people who should know better.

PUSH THE WEIRD BUTTON

A clerk has been notified. They are furious.