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Slightly Foxed No 13 Spring 2007Editions
ReviewThis issue contains an article by Johnny about Christopher MacLehose and the Harvill Press. Here is the text: The more you read, the more you realise you want to read, for each book generates a further reading list. Only occasional readers imagine that reading is a matter of working through a list of classics, like moving a pile of logs. The rest of us know that every ‘classic’ multiplies infinitely into minor classics, frivolities and squibs. You cannot possibly read them all now, but you know you want to read them one day. Some of these you will buy and, although they may remain unread, they contain a promise of future pleasure and their company alone helps sustain an idea of yourself, and of the world. Looking along my own shelves I find that a high proportion, both read and unread, were published by Harvill. This was the name given to the imprint set up in 1947 by Manya Harari (HAR) and Marjorie Villiers (VILL), who had worked side by side on the Russian Desk in Intelligence during the war. They began with the specific intention of rebuilding cultural bridges lost during the war, especially those between Russia and the West. In 1958, when Harvill was absorbed by Collins, they published Doctor Zhivago (translated by Manya) and Lampedusa’s The Leopard Recently, my eye fell on six unassuming-looking books that made me pause. They are the ‘Leopard’ anthologies, published by Harvill Press, and they represent one of the great publishing ventures of our age. The first in the series, Dissonant Voices: The New Russian Fiction was published in 1991. Edited by Oleg Chukhontsev, a Russian poet who was ostracised in 1968 following his poem about Ivan the Terrible, which suggested that treason is a just repayment for tyranny, it is an impressive gathering of contemporary Russian literature in translation. Apart from a statement on the jacket that this ‘is an occasional series presenting the best of contemporary literature in translation and in English’, there is nothing to indicate any broader purpose. It looks more like a statement of intent. Turning The Page: Essays, Memoirs, Fiction, Poetry, and One Sermon, the second ‘Leopard’, published in 1993, is edited by MacLehose, Harvill’s genie. Its title, taken from Nadine Gordimer’s opening essay, seems to indicate a subtle shift in purpose for the series. In his preface, MacLehose declares that it ‘concerns itself with the political struggle of writers, their lives and work, and with aspects of the work of publishers.’ He also points out that the use of the leopard as emblem and title of the series ‘is a tribute to Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa.’ This is interesting for two reasons. First, it makes a deliberate connection with Harvill’s original publication of The Leopard. Secondly, most people would be surprised by the implication that The Leopard is political. What is its message? And what is the message of this second volume? With contributions ranging from a memoir by Richard Ford to translations of poems by Akhmatova and Mandelstam and an essay on typography by John Ryder, the contents are too diverse to sustain any message. The implicit point is the importance of excellence, and that excellence depends on independence. Since independence depends on politics, it may be said that all excellence is innately political by virtue of its independence. So the ‘Leopard’ series is political because it celebrates independence and excellence. It should therefore not entirely surprise us that Lampedusa’s novel, a supreme expression of intellectual independence, had a political reaction. The third ‘Leopard’, Frontiers (1994) ‘comprises works by writers from Britain, France, Italy, Holland, Ireland, Estonia, Denmark, China, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and the former Yugoslavia. [It] is devoted to frontiers, both tangible and abstract.’ The agenda is set in a superb essay by the Italian writer Claudio Magris, ‘Who Is On The Other Side: Considerations About Frontiers’, in which he discusses the relationship between borders and identity. Writing at a time, and close to a region (the former Yugoslavia), in which border disputes were producing genocide, he makes clear also that there are good reasons why individuals need borders. ‘The border constitutes a reality, it provides contours and outlines, it constructs the individual character… The frontier is form and thus it is also art.’ The volume also contains essays, fiction and travel pieces from a huge range of writers, from Andrew O’Hagan to Sartre; from the Dutch writers Cees Nooteboom and Harry Mulisch, to the Nobel-winning Portuguese writer Jose Saramago. It was 1999 before the next ‘Leopard’ appeared. Bearing Witness ‘embraces the work of outstanding writers from all over the world.’ Again, the breadth is remarkable. As with the previous two issues, there is a defining essay at the start. It is about Leopold Labedz who, between 1956 and 1989, edited ‘Survey’, a quarterly on East European and Soviet affairs, printing evidence of deceptions and violations of human rights and bearing witness ‘to the activity of individuals who called, with immense personal courage, for freedom within a totalitarian state.’ It’s a biographical essay by Jenefer Coates, who edited ‘Survey’ after Labedz and helped establish Index On Censorship. While not overtly political or related to literature, it bears the MacLehose stamp: here is a piece of writing that he believed ought to be given a stage. Its companions include a new translation of Pushkin’s ‘The Bronze Horseman’ by Peter Norman; a photographic essay about Burma by Robert Mort that draws attention to some of those who suffered under the military junta; an extract from a biographical essay on Keats by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar; an essay on the sea by Jonathan Raban; stories by the great contemporary Spanish writer Javier Marías and the superb but still mysteriously little-known American author James Salter. And much more. It is a marvellously rich brew. An Island of Sound: Hungarian Poetry and Fiction before and beyond the Iron Curtain was published in 2004, and the ‘Leopard’, The Norwegian Feeling For Real, was published in 2005. This was the last book to be published by Harvill before being taken over by Random House. Like the first ‘Leopard’, these last issues are more specialised, but they remain true to the seriousness of Harvill’s endeavour – to provide an outlet for foreign literature to the English-speaking world, and to enrich the literature available to us in this country. So powerful and energetic are the connections that MacLehose has forged through literature during his twenty years at the helm of Harvill that it sometimes seems as if all roads connect or intersect with Harvill. We are hugely indebted to him for our knowledge of Russian literature of the last hundred years: Mandelstam, Pasternak, Bulgakov, Grossman, Platonov, to name but a few. But he has also been an important conduit for work from the rest of Eastern Europe. Just looking from where I sit, I see books by Andric and Selenic from Serbia; Hrabal and Lustig from the Czech Republic; Kurkov from the Ukraine; Herling, a Pole; Kafka, Perutz, Ginzburg. It comes as a surprise to see that certain books were not published by him. And not only Eastern Europe. MacLehose also published W.G. Sebald in the UK, likewise Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, Javier Marías, Jose Saramago, Haruki Murakami, Peter Hoeg, Henning Mankell, C.K.Stead, Ismail Kadare, Yasar Kemal… The roll-call is stupendous. The range of his publishing testifies to the vitality of his curiosity and rare sensitivity to literary currents. But MacLehose is no mere literary impresario, as anybody who has been edited by him will confirm. A page of manuscript one had thought clean is returned covered in fifty marks with loops and arrows: it is observed that the word ‘lopsided’ was used forty pages ago, and does the author intend this repetition? The structure of a sentence has been duplicated and one of the two might be turned round; an adverb may be dispensed with; the logic joining one phrase to another is not clear; the reference to a Nordic God is inaccurate. He does not tell the author what to do or what he/she ought to think: divining their intentions, he nurses them towards fulfilment. And on the back of the page is a scrawl to a traffic warden: ‘In chemist. Back in 2 mins.’ No wonder the man is in the chemist. He never stops. Although being read so critically may first be unsettling for a writer, in the end it can only be uplifting. It validates their enterprise, and it is inspiring to find that a publisher’s taste and vision are founded on this bedrock of textual attention. And MacLehose’s concern with detail applies not only to the text but also to a book’s layout, printing and jacket. Such rigour is rare now in publishing, though it’s a moot point whether this is because it doesn’t exist or because it isn’t sufficiently valued. Perhaps publishers are afraid of it, because those who possess it expose their brethren as pure marketeers, reeds in the wind. It is very sad that Harvill foundered. But one of its great strengths was that it tried to operate within the mainstream of commercial publishing rather than on the grant-maintained fringes. Its books were not the product of a small press feeding a marginal interest, but of an immensely knowledgeable publisher who believed, unapologetically, that they should and would be read. They were intended to reach their readership under their own merits, without the taint of worthiness. Maybe MacLehose’s authors would have found other publishers in this country, but it is unlikely that they would have achieved such influence without him, for the Harvill colophon is an (almost) unimpeachable badge of quality. But if the project was not, in the end, independently viable then it had to come to grief. We may be grateful that it remained independent for as long as it did, but perhaps we should also be grateful to Random House for rescuing the pieces rather grumble about them as vultures. But whatever our views about Harvill’s demise, Christopher MacLehose’s achievements as a publisher, exemplified in the ‘Leopard’ anthologies, should be prized as a major contribution to our cultural life. It will be interesting to see what happens now with Quercus. - review by Johnny de Falbe |
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